Is The Newspaper Political Endorsement A Thing Of The Past?

from the hopefully... dept

Tue, Oct 13th 2009 8:30pm — Mike Masnick

Romenesko recently pointed us to the news that the Atlanta Journal Constitution has decided to do away with political endorsements, and instead, focus on trying to provide more information on what candidates positions really are on various issues. This makes a lot of sense. I'd always wondered how much impact (if any) newspaper endorsements had these days. It may have been significant in the past, perhaps, but these days, with so many ways of getting information about candidates, it's difficult to see how an 11th hour endorsement from a newspaper people probably don't trust anyway is going to make a difference. And, of course, I could never understand how newspapers hold themselves up as bastions of objective reporting... and then turn around and endorse candidates. While I tend to think that the whole concept of journalist objectivity is overblown, these newspaper endorsements weren't helping either way. Hopefully other newspapers will follow suit.

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Filed Under: newspapers, political endorsement

8 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 13 Oct 2009 @ 9:45pm

Once upon a time I think that newspaper editors were sort of intellectual celebrities, and special ones at that, famous for their responsibility for upholding the integrity of an important institution of democracy. Under those circumstances they are at least as entitled to--and maybe moreso--make an endorsement than any other celebrity. However the importance of newspapers as an institution of democracy is decreasing, in absolute terms and relative to other citizens' news sources, and this particular activity, like many other newspapers' activities, is seeming somewhat irrelevant.
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Dan, 14 Oct 2009 @ 12:16am

Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one and nobody else cares.
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Azrael, 14 Oct 2009 @ 12:23am

Happy to tell you but here in Romania this is old news. The Adevarul newspaper (the second biggest quality one) has this policy since the 2004 general and presidential elections and now, for the presidential election, several other have joined it.
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Azrael, 14 Oct 2009 @ 12:37am

Happy to tell you but here in Romania this is old news. The Adevarul newspaper (the second biggest quality one) has this policy since the 2004 general and presidential elections and now, for the presidential election, several other have joined it.
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Shienen, 14 Oct 2009 @ 2:06am

What's really annoying is when they dramatically announce that they've swapped sides!

Hold 2 editions of the Sun next to eachother from a week apart and one is New Labour, the other Conservative. They did a whole Front Page of 'Why We're Ditching Labour' and I just thought 'what a load of bollocks, you were bitching chronic about Cameron last week and now he's shitting angels, wtf?'
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John Doe, 14 Oct 2009 @ 4:13am

It is about time!
Check my past comments and you will see I have complained about this for some time. How the hell can a newspaper endorse a candidate?
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Chuck Norris' Enemy (deceased) (profile), 14 Oct 2009 @ 6:40am

Predicted Endorsements
The local paper always picks a straight Dem ticket with exception of one Republican in a county district running for State House of Representatives where the Republican is a sure win. Then if there are more than one Democrat running in an area, they pick the woman or racial minority candidate. Gotta love the process!
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Jesse, 14 Oct 2009 @ 7:19am

You're right. Nobody blindly follows Fox News.
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