Last fall, the Atlanta Journal Constitution decided to end its tradition of publishing endorsements for candidates and ballot measures.
“We have heard from readers – and we agree – that you don’t need us to tell you how to vote,” the newspaper’s editorial board said in an Oct. 9 column. “What readers tell us they need is information on who the candidates are, what they have done and what they want to do in the new job.”
The AJC, whose history dates back to 1868, is hardly the only major American newspaper that has decided not to issue political endorsements. USA Today and the Wall Street Journal are among others.
Every media outlet should be free to decide its own policies. Yet I regret that, in announcing its decision, the Atlanta Journal Constitution may have fed into a misconception of why other newspapers continue to offer endorsements.
Here on The Bee’s editorial board, we don’t offer positions on candidates and ballot measures because we want to “tell you how to vote.” We issue endorsements because we publish an opinion page.
Part of our mission is to sort through complex policy choices and, even when the options are less than perfect, take a position.
How can we do that for health care reform, water legislation, pension obligations and other matters and not do so for the basic building blocks of democracy – our elected representatives?
The endorsement process itself is another argument for this tradition to continue. In formulating our endorsements, members of our editorial board meet face-to-face with candidates. We watch debates, read the candidate’s position papers and attend voter forums.
This vetting process involves a lot of time and energy, and sometimes we grumble about it, but it has side benefits. Inevitably we learn new things about our community by spending time with scores of candidates, particularly those running for local seats.
Do newspaper endorsements have the impact they once did? Probably not, yet I don’t see that as a bad thing. With the growth of independent Web sites such as FactCheck.org and PolitiFact.com, voters can draw from a wealth of information on which to judge candidates, particularly those running for national office. Democracy is enhanced when voters can cross-check claims and counterclaims, and easily call up voting records and who is contributing big money to candidates. Newspaper endorsements, at their best, can be one of many helpful sources in sorting through the rhetoric.
Last year, when the Atlanta paper announced its decision to end endorsements, some readers cheered, as did some media analysts. Yet others noted that, in an increasingly complex and fractured world, endorsements continue to provide a public service.
“Here in California, the land of limitless, usually ill-conceived and often misleading ballot propositions, I depend on newspapers to cut through the fiscal and rhetorical voodoo associated with most of them,” wrote Alan Mutter, a former newspaper editor and Silicon Valley CEO who writes a blog on media issues (http://newsosaur.blogspot.com).
“While papers still provide he-said, she-said coverage of the highest-profile ballot measures, the propositions often are so intentionally befuddling that even the most diligent voter needs a straight steer from the newspaper’s editorial page.”
Strictly from a financial standpoint, it probably makes sense for newspapers to abandon the endorsement tradition. Inevitably, endorsements anger one set of readers or another and lead to misperceptions about our intentions.
Just a few weeks ago, our editorial board hosted a pair of journalists who work for two of South Korea’s largest newspapers, the Chosun Ilbo and the JoongAng Ilbo. While eating dinner, I asked these journalists if their papers published endorsements in their opinion sections. The answer was no. Why? “Because we might lose readers,” said one.
Over the next month, our editorial board will be meeting with candidates in competitive local, state and national races. We also will be vetting the five propositions on the June ballot, with a plan of publishing all of our endorsements by mid-May.
We do so not because we intend to swing elections or want to “tell people how to vote.” We do it because democracy is a tough exercise, rarely resulting in perfectly satisfying choices. If an opinion page can’t do the work of sorting through the tradeoffs, it is hard to make a compelling case that potential voters should do the same.