 "Photo: Miles Wisniewski")
On Oct. 17, 2008, the Chicago Tribune endorsed Barack Obama for president, causing a huge stir because the Tribune has not endorsed a Democratic presidential candidate for the past 150 years. As a staff, we have decided not to continue this tradition. Although newspapers have traditionally endorsed a candidate, we feel that the practice is outdated and threatens a newspaper's claim to objectivity.
In the 19th century, most newspapers were clearly and unashamedly partisan - they often were funded by political parties and, in turn, spread those parties' messages and endorsed those parties' candidates; editors were campaigners. The New York Post, founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton, was originally funded by and thus endorsed the Federalist Party. Other newspapers' party affiliations, such as the Washington Whig, a newspaper established in 1821 in Bridgeton, N.J., were even less veiled. The Hartford Courant, one of the oldest papers in the nation, so unabashedly endorsed Lincoln and the new Republican Party that when Lincoln won the 1860 election, the Courant's main headline actually read, "Victory, Victory, We've Got 'Em."
Today, newspapers endorse candidates through their staff editorial, which is different from a regular opinion piece in that it represents the view of the paper as a whole. But should the newspaper, as an institution, promote one candidate and affiliate itself with one party? Endorsing a candidate is especially risky because currently, distrust of the media is so prevalent. Only 19.6 percent of Americans in a recent Pew Research Center survey said they believed all or most of news media reporting, which is down 7.8 percent from 2003. Endorsing a presidential candidate may lead readers to question a paper's objectivity and to wonder whether news coverage on another candidate is biased, even though the news coverage may be completely objective. When objectivity is questioned, the paper's credibility is then in danger. For example, because the Chicago Tribune owns the Cubs, many people think its sports coverage is more favorable toward the Cubs, as opposed to the Sox. The Tribune sports editors measured the total column inches of each team's coverage one year and found them to be nearly equal, yet they are still criticized for favoring the Cubs in their coverage because of the affiliation.
The role of the newspaper as a source of information has also changed. In the 19th century, weekly newspapers, regardless if they were Republican, Whig or any other party-affiliated, were the sole source of information for the public. Thus, the newspaper's endorsement greatly influenced the way people voted. Today, with broadcast media and the Internet, we have a plethora of news resources with up-to-the-minute information. There are enough means of communication that people can make informed decisions without relying on the staff editorial. Though members of our generation are much more likely to utilize the Internet (online newspapers, blogs, news databases) or watch television news rather than pick up a newspaper according to a recent Harris poll, newspapers are still relevant. It's the weight of the staff editorial that has diminished in regard to the presidential election because people don't use the newspaper as their sole source of information anymore. Endorsing a candidate is outdated.
As of Oct. 27, 194 daily newspapers have endorsed Obama and 82 have endorsed McCain. But what's interesting is the newspapers that have announced they will not endorse a candidate. John Temple, editor of the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, said that his paper will not endorse a candidate because readers resent "evidence that their newspaper is in the tank for one political party or the other" and that endorsements cause readers to think a paper "is partisan as opposed to principled." We agree. Endorsements may cloud a paper's claim to objectivity in the readers' eyes. Also, though the newspaper is still an important news source, people now have other resources to shape their views, rendering the formerly influential staff editorial endorsement defunct. The only thing we endorse is voting.
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