So far in this presidential election, 32 major newspapers have publicly endorsed Barack Obama for president with a total circulation of about 8.7 million people, and 25 have endorsed Mitt Romney with a total circulation of about 4.5 million. One paper that endorsed John McCain in 2008 has switched sides and endorsed Obama this year, and nine papers that endorsed Obama in 2008 now endorse Romney for president.
Seven major papers this year have said that they will not endorse a candidate. Four of those papers did offer endorsements in 2008. Even though the number of papers not endorsing candidates this year has risen, the vast majority of major newspapers are still expected to support one candidate over the other before all is said and done. In 2004, 29 percent of all papers in the United States gave an endorsement, and in 2008, 89 out of 100 of the most widely circulated papers in the nation endorsed either Obama or McCain.
But in an age when so much information is easily available about every facet of political campaigns, why do modern newspapers still feel the need to explicitly tell its readers to vote one way or another?
One of the biggest reasons for newspaper endorsements is tradition. In the 18th and 19th centuries especially, newspapers used to be publically affiliated with and supported by political parties. In 1936, the Chicago Tribune was owned by the ultra-conservative Robert McCormick, who was so opposed to FDR that right before the election that year he had switchboard operators answer the phone with, “Hello. Chicago Tribune. Only 10 days left to save the American way of life.”
Today, newspapers defend giving presidential endorsements by claiming that their reporters have much more access to candidates and information about their policy than the average American, so they are able to make a more informed political choice, which they in turn should pass on to the reader.
Practically speaking, however, newspaper endorsements simply do not change people’s minds about how they will vote.
One survey showed that only 1 percent of responders said that newspaper endorsements will greatly impact their votes, and 10 percent said they somewhat impacted their votes. A 2008 survey by the Pew Research Center showed that 69 percent of responders said newspaper endorsements have no impact on their votes and that they were more likely to listen to an endorsement by Oprah Winfrey.
But more importantly than the fact that they simply don’t do anything, newspaper endorsements should not be the norm, simply to avoid bias in our media. When a newspaper gives an endorsement, it is a flagrant display of that medium’s slanted political agenda. It makes the reader completely question the objectivity of anything the paper reports. We live in a country where you would be hard-pressed to find a major news outlet that does not flagrantly show bias and only presents hard facts. Instead of presenting news, media outlets instead present an argument for why you should think one way and not another.
Though newspaper endorsements seem natural and expected, they are just another manifestation of our national problem of bias in the media. Any news outlet that presents itself as “news” should not be allowed to so blatantly try to sell a product to its readers or viewers. Perhaps once we hold our news sources to a higher standard of objectivity and quality in reporting will we have a political climate that isn’t so partisan and isn’t such a ridiculous, flashy circus.
— Lindsay Lee is a junior in mathematics. She can be reached at [email protected].
