In this extremely tight presidential race, the big surprise of the fall campaign turned out to be the failure of two major newspapers to deliver the expected endorsements of Kamala Harris and against Donald Trump. With voting underway in many states, Los Angeles Times‘ owner and The Washington PostHis publisher made unforgivably late announcements that they had suddenly become disenchanted with the whole notion of endorsing presidential candidates.

Withholding support for Harris after all that both papers have reported about Trump’s manifest unfitness for office strikes me as plain cowardice. Although I served on Los Angeles Times‘ the editorial board for 18 years, I think one can reasonably question the value of endorsements. Still, the timing here invites speculation that these papers are preparing for a possible Trump victory, signaling a willingness to adapt to the incoming administration rather than resist it.

With each paper, the editorial board prepared a draft or draft of a Harris approval and waited (and waited and waited) for final approval. Wednesday, the LA Times Editorial editor Mariel Garza told her team, including me, that the owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, would not allow any endorsements to run. He then resigned in protest.

Like thousands of angry ones Times readers canceled their subscriptions, Soon-Shiong publicly claimed on X that she asked the editorial board to write an analysis of “all the POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE policies of EACH candidate” during their respective terms in the White House. But he said the council “chose to remain silent”.

Nonsense. I made no such choice. We were ready to support Harris, and Soon-Shiong’s post on X was the first I or my fellow editors had heard of a parallel analysis. After being so casually thrown under the bus, I resigned on Thursday. My colleague Karin Klein has also announced that she will resign.

Friday, the Post editor and managing director, William Lewis, issued a statement that his paper would not endorse in the presidential race, now or ever. A member of Post the editor resigned. Canceled subscribers.

Read: Don’t cancel The Washington Post. Cancel Amazon Prime.

Remember, this is the same news organization that, during the first Trump administration, adopted the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” He can die in broad daylight. In this year’s race, a no-choice ignores Trump’s singular unfitness for office, demonstrated time and time again by his dishonesty, his false claims to have won the 2020 election, his criminal convictions, his impeachable crimes , his race baiting, his threats of retaliation against his opponents and many other traits that make him a danger to the nation.

Lewis and Soon-Shiong both explained that they want to let voters make their own decisions.

I hear some version of this irritating claim every four years, though it usually comes from readers who ask why editorial boards don’t just report the facts, as news should, leaving judgment up to readers. Newspaper publishers and owners should know better.

Editorials express a newspaper’s institutional point of view, based on a clearly articulated set of values ​​and expressed through logical (and sometimes emotional) arguments supported by evidence. In a process unique to journalism, they are shaped by the daily back-and-forth between editorial writers. The editorial board is separate from the newsroom, where reporters should keep their opinions to themselves.

Pleadings and other editorials are much like a lawyer’s closing argument to a jury after a long trial with numerous witnesses and exhibits. They remind readers of everything they’ve read, seen, and heard, then pull it all together into a persuasive presentation. They make a case. And then readers decide.

The Times The editorial board went more than three decades without endorsing presidential races, in large part because readers and the editorial staff were so outraged by Richard Nixon’s 1972 re-election bid that editors were too cautious (or rather , too chicken) to take a stand again. But shortly after I arrived at Timesthe newsroom promised to start advocating for president again in the 2008 primary. We argued—in an editorial, of course—that if we claimed to support transparency, voter involvement, and civic participation, then we had an obligation to make a decision and to strongly defend our choice.

In a series of pre-approval editorials, I’ve invited readers to examine a set of foundational ideas like “liberty” and the “pursuit of happiness” and question how these and other principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution applies. to current challenges. We then measured the primary candidates against those values ​​and made the case for the relatively unknown Barack Obama.

Some critics argue that editorials don’t change anyone’s vote, but that’s not the point. Even voters who have already made up their minds are often looking for a well-reasoned explanation of why their choice is the right one. And let’s not be so sure that a strong argument on an editorial page, even one from California or the District of Columbia, won’t affect the outcome of a close race that could be won or lost by just a few votes in a single constituency. Pennsylvania.

Paul Farhi: Is American journalism headed for an ‘extinction event’?

Soon-Shiong’s alternative, a choiceless pros and cons matrix, would not be an editorial. It would be like a lawyer deciding not to bother with a closing argument and instead saying, “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, here are some reasons why you should rule for my client, and also a bunch of reasons to decide against him”. Nor does the proposed side-by-side analysis of Trump and Harris’s policies make much sense on its own terms. Trump as president has been the most important decision maker during his tenure. Harris, as vice president, was not a decision maker at all, so the comparison would be inept. An editorial board would immediately identify that flaw. Soon-Shiong may have missed it, but I wonder if he meant to direct the outcome of the opinion.

In the short circuit Times editorial board, Soon-Shiong’s message only became more incoherent. He said Thursday that his goal is to avoid political division. But his adult daughter, Nika Soon-Shiong, said in a series of X posts and on a Saturday New York Times the story that the family met and collectively decided not to endorse Harris to protest the vice president’s support for Israel. That’s not true, Patrick Soon-Shiong said Los Angeles Times Saturday.

“Nika speaks in her own personal capacity regarding her opinion,” but not for Timeshe said.

Instead of a clear, well-argued editorial, readers are left with an indecipherable message and a journalistic failure. Someone should write about this. It could be a good editorial.