Spiking endorsement editorals is cowardice
News organizations who bowed to corporate pressure or fear of Trump acolytes should shut off the lights and close the door
Spike it.
National newspaper journalism is done.
"Spike" is an old newspaper term meaning to kill — or not publish — copy.
The meaning derives from the literal practice of taking typed pages of copy and spearing them on a metal spike to indicate they are not to be used.
Historically, stories got spiked because reporters didn't have enough information, weren't newsworthy, or editors didn't trust the accuracy.
News outlets formerly known as newspapers have been doing a lot of spiking lately, particularly when it comes to editorial presidential candidate endorsements.
National powerhouses including the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and USA Today each decided not to endorse a candidate in the presidential election.
Gannett, the nation's largest newspaper chain, muzzled its 217 daily newspapers on national endorsements last year.
“Why are we doing this? Because we believe America’s future is decided locally — one race at a time,” Gannett's Lark-Marie Antón said in a recent statement to CNN. “And with more than 200 publications across the nation, our public service is to provide readers with the facts that matter and the trusted information they need to make informed decisions.”
Anton's title is "corporate communications director."
A more appropriate title might be "alternative facts dispenser."
The reality is that American newspapers are too weak to take the hit from the supporters of former President Donald Trump, a convicted felon.
And we know how dangerous some of those Trump supporters are when they throw a fit. Never forget Jan. 6, 2021.
But it's not violence national newspapers fear. It's losing money.
Decades of declining circulation and advertising revenue have left most corporate-owned newspapers anemic to the point of being in a hospice without the fentanyl drip.
These news outlets worry about what will happen to their trickle of funding if the candidate they didn't endorse happens to win the White House.
Gannett is a company run by greedy hustlers who always valued the money it could shake out of the communities where its properties resided far more than the people the newspapers were supposed to serve.
"Properties" is the word Gannett uses to describe newspapers it owns. Those old brand names on the tops of websites and the waning print editions are just squares on a monopoly board to Gannett.
But it's not just sickly beasts like Gannett lying down to die in the alley.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. He's worth $217 billion.
He's got enough money to pay the power bill until the sun burns out.
But the one thing we know about rich men is there is no such thing as enough money.
If Trump wins and goes on the vengeance quest he's promised, his administration might cut Bezos off from lucrative government contracts. Amazon makes more than $10 billion selling the federal government cloud computing space.
Bezos owns an aerospace company called Blue Origin. Trump met with Blue Origin executives on the same day Bezos ordered the Post endorsement editorial spiked.
I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.
So, the editorial voice of the Washington Post falls silent.
This is the newspaper that fought the government to publish the Pentagon Papers, pursued the Watergate scandal, and outed the FBI's fumbling in ABSCAM. That was a million years ago when the people who ran newspapers were strong enough to face down the government.
It's a good thing longtime Post publisher Katherine Graham is dead. Looking at the cowering Post today would kill her.
One could fairly argue that the public no longer understands the difference between a news story and an editorial.
A news story is the facts as reporters and editors understand them at the time of publication. There should be no opinion or bias.
However, the news is assembled by humans and humans have inherent biases. Thus, the news is imperfect, as is the human condition.
An editorial is the institutional opinion of a newspaper. It gathers the full knowledge of the observations and analysis of the newsgathering to offer an informed opinion on an issue. They are usually unsigned.
Traditionally, they are written by one person after a vigorous debate about an issue among editorial writers, the newspaper's top editors, and its publisher.
That hasn't been true for about a decade. Gannett cut most of its editorial writing jobs in the past decade and reduced or eliminated opinion pages. One of the most informed opinions available to the public is snuffed.
Maybe it doesn’t matter anymore. Newspapers are riddled with wild-eyed radicals who want to indoctrinate people into distasteful things such as acceptance of others, individual liberty, social responsibility, and human decency.
There’s no place for that kind of thinking in our dumb century.
Everybody believes the news is slanted. People just choose which lie to believe. Liberals head to MSNBC. Conservatives camp out at Fox News. The truly disturbed and overwhelmingly stupid spread conspiracy theories on social media.
The most disturbing thing about these endorsement spikings is that Trump isn't even in power.
Newspapers were so frightened they silenced themselves.
Imagine what Trump could do to a free press when he actually is in power.
How long will it be before newspapers stop publishing facts because they're afraid of what people in power might say or do?
The Gannett property in Des Moines published a poll on Saturday that showed Vice President Kamala holds a slight lead over Trump, who awaits sentencing on 34 felony counts in New York.
A lot of Trump supporters didn't want to hear that. Some will say the poll, one of the most accurate in the country, is a lie.
When do newspapers give up publishing uncomfortable truths? If you set out to please everybody, you'll end up pleasing nobody.
For example, NPR reported the decision to spike their endorsement editorial cost the Washington Post some 200,000 subscribers.
Damned if you do. Damned if you don't.
For all the newspapers that swallowed their voices, I call them cowards.
They should be shunned and ignored.
Their effectiveness as a place for citizens to learn about and discuss their community, nation, and world is at an end.
They should shut off the lights and close the door.
They offer us nothing.
Maybe they believe this is the only path to survival. But what good is survival if the thing you become to survive is not worth being?
I am no longer a full-time journalist. I am a teacher who stacks paragraphs as a side hustle.
For what it's worth, I mailed in my absentee ballot last week. I voted for Harris. And now I've published the fact that I voted for Harris.
I did so because no corporation or government owns me or my words. I will speak my mind because I am a free man in America.
Daniel P. Finney is a member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative, but don’t hold that against them. Please visit their page to view a full roster of writers and consider subscribing to their columns. Writing is hard work; people ought to get paid for it. If you enjoy it, throw them a couple of bucks. They earned it.
Dan, apparently you have not read the Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics recently, but you should. Every other "journalist" who misinformed the public this news cycle through advocacy masked as journalism should as well. Ann Selzer probably had you and every other member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative flim flammed, because you all live in an unassailable, hermetically sealed hyperbaric echo chamber. Bezos had an excellent op-ed on his decision, "Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, “I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.” None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one. " Harris lost, resoundingly. The majority of Americans spoke and rejected Harris and the Democrat's agenda. Republicans have taken the presidency, senate and probably the house. The decision not to publish an unpopular opinion was the right one, cancel culture be damned. A media enterprise owner has a right to direct their business interests, and work towards elimination of actual and perceived bias in their publication, or come out as an advocacy platform. Bezos wisely chose the former. You and probably every other member of the Collaborative will continue to go in the opposite direction while also holding the insane notion that you all are impartial and somehow innately morally superior. Everyone on this platform got it wrong, stereotyped outgroups and projected their bigotry on the masses. Happily, they have no ability to be introspective so will come to no epiphanies and will continue on into complete irrelevance and obscurity.
Agree⁄!!!