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USA Today Won't Endorse Candidate, Trusts 'Informed' Readers

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Via: John Russell • 4 weeks ago • 12 comments

By: Mediaite

USA Today Won't Endorse Candidate, Trusts 'Informed' Readers

A representative for the publication confirmed the paper would join The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post in sitting on the sidelines.

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S E E D E D C O N T E N T

USA Today will not endorse a candidate in the coming week before the election, explaining it will let its readers make "informed decisions" on their own.

A representative for the publication confirmed the paper - the country's fourth-largest by circulation - would join The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post in sitting on the sidelines. The Daily Beast reported:

A spokesperson for the paper told the Daily Beast on Monday that it will instead focus on providing "readers with the facts that matter and the trusted information they need to make informed decisions."
That's a stark difference from four years ago when USA Today broke with decades-old tradition to endorse Joe Biden for president. That endorsement claimed Donald Trump wasn't a capable leader and that the U.S. was "dangerously off course."

In October 2020, USA Today's editorial board cited then-President Donald Trump's handling of the Covid pandemic, the economy, and his character as reasons for a rare endorsement of then-candidate Joe Biden. The board wrote:

Four years ago, the Editorial Board — an ideologically and demographically diverse group of journalists that is separate from the news staff and operates by consensus — broke with tradition and took sides in the presidential race for the first time since USA TODAY was founded in 1982.
We urged readers not to vote for Donald Trump, calling the Republican nominee unfit for office because he lacked the "temperament, knowledge, steadiness and honesty that America needs from its presidents." We stopped short, however, of an outright endorsement of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee. This year, the Editorial Board unanimously supports the election of Joe Biden, who offers a shaken nation a harbor of calm and competence.

The board concluded, "Donald Trump has trampled [basic principles of civility], making more than 20,000 false or misleading statements, ducking responsibility for his actions, spewing streams of invective at his critics, trafficking in racial fear-mongering, governing more as the leader of the red states than of the United States, and relentlessly attacking the free press."

The Post and the Times are each under fire for declining to endorse a candidate in the race. The Post reportedly had an endorsement for Vice President Kamala Harris ready to publish but the paper decided not to run it.

Both papers have seen staff defections throughout the last week.

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Professor Principal

1 seeder JohnRussell 4 weeks ago

The handwriting is on the wall, if Trump wins the media will not hold him accountable.

Professor Expert

1.1 Buzz of the Orient replied to JohnRussell @1 4 weeks ago

"A representative for the publication confirmed the paper - the country's fourth-largest by circulation - would join The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post in sitting on the sidelines."

The three of them have a lot more faith in the intelligence of too many of the general American public than I have. Not only should God BLESS America, He needs to HELP it.

Professor Principal

2 Sean Treacy 4 weeks ago

Bezos hit it out of the park. He understands what's happened to traditional media this century:

In the annual public surveys about trust and reputation, journalists and the media have regularly fallen near the very bottom, often just above Congress. But in this year’s Gallup poll , we have managed to fall below Congress. Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working...
Likewise with newspapers. We must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement. Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose. Reality is an undefeated champion. It would be easy to blame others for our long and continuing fall in credibility (and, therefore, decline in impact), but a victim mentality will not help. Complaining is not a strategy. We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility...

Lack of credibility isn’t unique to The Post. Our brethren newspapers have the same issue. And it’s a problem not only for media, but also for the nation. Many people are turning to off-the-cuff podcasts, inaccurate social media posts and other unverified news sources, which can quickly spread misinformation and deepen divisions. The Washington Post and the New York Times win prizes, but increasingly we talk only to a certain elite. More and more, we talk to ourselves. (It wasn’t always this way — in the 1990s we achieved 80 percent household penetration in the D.C. metro area.)

While I do not and will not push my personal interest, I will also not allow this paper to stay on autopilot and fade into irrelevance — overtaken by unresearched podcasts and social media barbs

The MSM destroyed its viability by becoming nothing more than PR firms for the Democratic Party. The Trump years and their obsessive, dishonest partisan reporting destroyed these outlets. A commitment to truth instead of partisanship will go a long way to restoring the credibility of these outlets.

Professor Principal

2.1 seeder JohnRussell replied to Sean Treacy @2 4 weeks ago

The Washington Post has lost 8% of its subscriptions over this, 200,000 people.

All three of these newspapers endorsed Biden in 2020, before Trump attempted to overthrow the government. The idea that Kamala Harris in herself would cause all three papers to question their previous decision doesnt pass the smell test.

Only one candidate has promised retribution to those who cross him.

Professor Principal