The history of American newspaper publishing is full of examples of publishers bucking the trend their readers and reporters might want. William Randolph Hearst, Colonel John McCormick and Dorothy Schiff is three examples of opinionated publishers who stamp their personal views on the newspapers they own. It was Orson Welles, the director of the epic film 1941, who brought the issue to the fore.Citizen Kane” In Hearst’s thinly disguised biography, he emphasized how publishers were political players.

Now,Three major newspapers whose reporters and opinion writers have not been kind to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump – and was therefore expected to support Vice President Kamala Harris – Instead, we decided not to give any endorsement to the president. decisions taken Washington Post, Los Angeles Times And USA Today It angered not only her progressive readers but also her own staff, while giving conservatives a chance to accuse Harris of being unworthy of the endorsement.

“Obviously it doesn’t work”

Decisions are also being made at a time when there is full confidence in the news media. It’s at an all-time low, according to Gallup report Only 31 percent of Americans believe that what they read or hear from mainstream journalists is accurate and fair. The percentage of people who have zero trust in the news media has increased from just 4 percent in 1976 to 36 percent.

Billionaire owner Jeff Bezos MailHe used such data when explaining why he blocked the paper’s editorial board from endorsing Harris.

“Something we are doing is clearly not working,” he wrote. Posts My own opinion section. “Let me make an analogy. Voting machines must meet two requirements. They should count the votes accurately and people should to believe They are counting the votes correctly. The second requirement is different from the first and is at least as important. Likewise in newspapers. We must be righteous and we must believe that we are righteous.”

Mail had about 2.5 million subscribers before pollination, but 8 percent or 200,000 canceled in protestAccording to NPR. Among them were: Star Wars Actor Mark Hamill, a vocal critic of Trump, shared on social media that he had abandoned both of them. Los Angeles Times And to mail For their failure to confirm Harris.

Additionally, three members of the Post’s editorial board resigned, although they did not leave their positions. in that Los Angeles TimesBut at least three people left the paper after biotech billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, who also owns part of the LA Lakers NBA team, blocked an intentional endorsement of Harris.

Although Soon-Shiong did not make a clear statement about the reasons for this, his far-left daughter Nika, who has no official role in the organization, Los Angeles Times, He noted that Harris’s father’s newspaper was too pro-Israel to warrant his endorsement. “Genocide is a line in the sand,” he shared on X.

It is unknown how many thousands there are Los Angeles Times subscribers followed Hamill’s example and stopped paying for the paper, but the owner nearly begged readers not to leave. “I hope they realize that by not subscribing, this is contributing to the death of democracy and the death of the fourth estate,” he said in an interview with Spectrum News.

When resigning from office Posts editorial board, Pulitzer Prize-winning author David E. Hoffman wrote: “to mail The editorials became a beacon of hope, giving hope to dissidents, political prisoners and the voiceless.” He added that the country “faces a very real threat of autocracy with the candidacy of Donald Trump.” “I find it untenable and unreasonable that we have lost our voice in this dangerous moment.” Interestingly enough, Jennifer Rubin is the token “conservative” columnist. to mail praised journalists who resigned in protest, but he did not resign.

Bezos, on the other hand, was much less partisan in explaining his decision to block the editorial board from publishing his support for Harris.

“Most people believe the media is biased. “Anyone who doesn’t see this pays little attention to reality, and those who fight it lose,” Bezos wrote. “Reality is an invincible champion. It would be easy to blame others for our long-term and ongoing decline in credibility (and therefore decline in influence), but a victim mentality will not help. Complaining is not a strategy. To increase our credibility, we must work harder to control what we can control.

decision made by USA Today doesn’t get as much criticism as them Los Angeles Times And to mailProbably because the national newspaper has endorsed a presidential candidate only once in its four-decade existence, President Joe Biden four years ago.

Not just readers

The latest backlash is the latest in a trend of journalists vocally objecting to their employers’ editorial decisions. This issue came up then New York Times employees, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark. He took to internal Slack channels to complain about the decision to publish an Op/Ed written by . under the heading ““Send the Soldiers” He suggested that federal troops were needed to eliminate the “anarchy” caused by the protests sweeping the United States. Cotton claimed the riots were reminiscent of “the widespread violence of the 1960s.”

After editor James Bennett resigned the Times‘s union – unit of NewsGuild –C.W.A.– would issue a statement calling the column “a clear threat to the health and safety of the journalists we represent.” Bennett wrote an editorial for Economist says this” TimesThe problem has metastasized from liberal bias to illiberal bias, from the tendency to favor one side of the national debate to the urge to shut down the debate altogether. All the empathy and humility in the world would mean little against the pressures of intolerance and tribalism without one invaluable quality that Sulzberger does not emphasize: courage.”

Meanwhile, numerous media analysts, including two from the Poynter Institute, often side with editorial boards rather than owners.

“It’s understandable that readers are upset and looking for some form of protest. The easiest way is to cancel their subscription. to mail. But it probably just hurts to mail Employees are just as angry as readers. “Other than people saying bad things about it, the person behind the disapproval decision — owner Jeff Bezos — won’t really feel the impact of canceled subscriptions,” wrote veteran media writer Tom Jones.

“No matter how many times the statement is made that an editorial board and newsroom operate separately, most readers fail to see the distinction or do not believe there is such a difference,” wrote Rick Edmonds, media business analyst and news leader at Poynter. transformation.

“Polarized times”

“I understand these are (perhaps not only) polarized times. But the goal is to avoid offending the half of the audience who will vote for Trump. Being afraid of your own readers seems contrived to me. And laxity is a bad place for news organizations,” Edmonds wrote.

while to mail, Los Angeles Times And USA Today their disapproval makes headlines, many newspapers across the country support them; to contain New York Times. According to Wikipedia’s tracker, about 15 newspapers are supporting Trump so far, while there are about 150 newspapers supporting Harris.