Post-Dispatch endorsements: FAQs
Endorsements: a response.
For the last month or so, the Post-Dispatch editorial board has been offering its recommendations on candidates and issues on Tuesday’s ballot. Endorsements always generate a lot of comment and that is the case again this year. Human nature being what it is, we generally hear more from people who disagree with our choices than from those who agree.
So today we’re going to answer some of the most frequently asked questions:
1. Why do you endorse way more Democrats than Republicans?
In making choices among candidates, the editorial board is guided first by the principles espoused in Joseph Pulitzer’s Post-Dispatch Platform. It is printed daily at the top of the editorial page. You can also read it here.
The Platform admonishes us to be “drastically independent,” and “never belong to any party.” So why do we endorse so many Democrats?
We judge candidates not by party label, but on whether he or she shows commitment to “Platform values:” Does the candidate’s record or positions indicate that he will support progress and reform? Support honest government? Care for the least among us?
Republicans could certainly share those values, and many do. But at this point in the nation’s history, Democrats more often than Republicans tend to share Platform values. A Republican who shares those values would get our recommendation over a Democrat who doesn’t. I’d like to think we’d have endorsed Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and 1864. We did endorse Tom Dewey in 1948, mostly because the Post-Dispatch thought Harry Truman was too closely allied to the corrupt Pendergast machine in Kansas City.
Once we’ve considered allegiance to Platform values, we then look for evidence of a brain at work: does a candidate show that he has studied and understands the issues and can he discuss them intelligently?
Finally we examine, to the extent we are able, a candidate’s personal integrity and values. We then weigh all the candidates by these standards and make our endorsements.
Make no mistake: we know that some of the candidates we endorse are not likely to win. But if he shares Platform values, has a good, solid intelligent approach to the issues and personal integrity, he gets our recommendation. If a candidate does not share Platform values, but offers more in the way of brains and/or integrity than his opponent, we are likely to endorse him. Then again, there are a few candidates who, though they espouse Platform values, fall short in other areas. We won’t endorse them, either.
2. Who cares what you think?
Excellent point. We don’t have a monopoly on wisdom. But we are professional journalists who are paid to study issues and offer opinions on them, grounded by our experience and Platform values. Readers who don’t have time to devote to the full-time analysis of politics and issues, know where we’re coming from. Many readers tell us they’re guided by our recommendations (hence the “clip ‘n save” summary we offer this week). Others take our summary and vote just the opposite. That’s fine, too.
Many American newspapers, including this one, were founded so their publishers could have a forum for their political opinions…as well as a business opportunity. Joseph Pulitzer was among the first publishers to insist that news pages be independent of opinion pages. To this day we in the Editorial department are completely separate from the news department. If you’re upset with what they write, talk to them.
3. Why do you censor your columnists?
The editorial page is where we express our opinions as an editorial board, our cartoonist expresses his and where we print letters from readers. Opposite the editorial page (hence the term “op-ed”) is the commentary page, where local and syndicated columnists express their personal opinions and we run opinion articles on various national and local issues.
The rules are different for each page. When I write editorials (which I do five days a week) I write as a member of the editorial board. When I write my Sunday column, I write as me. By longstanding policy, columnists are not allowed to personally endorse political candidates. They can walk right up to it, but they can’t write things like “I’m voting for Obama.”
In the past few months, Charles Krauthammer, a conservative columnist syndicated by the Washington Post, has written eight or nine articles where he made it clear that he thought Barack Obama was not a good choice for president. We ran all of them. We’ve also run commentaries by local contributors critical of Obama. We’ve also run columns by writers critical of Sen. McCain. During the primary season, we ran many columns by Paul Krugman, a liberal New York Times columnist, that were critical of Obama.
No one, from whatever side, had crossed the line into direct personal endorsement until two Sunday ago, when Mr. Krauthammer did. We killed his column. His column for this past Sunday also included a personal endorsement, so we killed it, too. This time we included an explanation and a link to an online version of his column.
Why do we as a board get to express our endorsement and deny that privilege to Mr. Krauthammer? Because we’re writing editorials for the newspaper and he’s writing an opinion as one guy. As an editorial writer, I wrote (on behalf of the editorial board) this newspaper’s endorsement of Barack Obama. As a columnist, I couldn’t express my own endorsement. Them’s the rules.
(BTW, I wrote at least two editorials endorsing candidates for whom I do not personally plan to vote. That’s just way the business works.)
4. The Post-Dispatch doesn’t reflect the opinions of its readers. In fact, liberal bias is the reason newspapers are dying.
Actually, if you total up the vote in the 2000 and 2004 elections in the 12-county metro area, you’ll find that the St. Louis metropolitan area (our market) overwhelmingly supported Al Gore and John Kerry over George W. Bush. That’s just a fact.
Nationally, in 2004, newspaper endorsements were virtually split between Bush and Kerry. This year it’s running 2 to 1 Obama (read the list at Editor & Publisher). That trend changes each presidential election cycle despite criticism of liberal media bias.
As to the financial problems of newspapers, it’s true that printed newspapers are losing readers. But online newspaper sites, including STLToday.com, the Post-Dispatch website, are gaining readers by the thousands each day. In fact, there are more readers for the Post-Dispatch, in its combined electronic and paper editions, than at any time in its history. Is all of that because of our fine editorial staff and its positions? Of course not.
Just part of it.
Kevin Horrigan is deputy editor of the editorial page. He writes editorials on local, state and national politics and public policy and also contributes a signed column to the Sunday Commentary Page. "The Old Sport" is a former sports columnist for the Post-Dispatch and for 10 years hosted radio talk shows on KMOX and KTRS in St. Louis. He lives in South St. Louis with his wife, Kate, and a dream of one day starting a professional catfish noodling tour. 
Please do not call yourselves professional journalists. Professional journalists are objective fact finders and neither of those apply to anyone on the PD EP.
Kevin, since you never actually bothered to vet Obama, do you ever lay in bed at night and wonder if your are wrong about your endorsement? You also endorsed John McCain and you have trashed him since and supported the Iraq
War.
Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
What I am pretty sure of, is that there is no point in reading the PD any longer if Obama wins because you all will continue to be too dishonest and ashamed to report any negative news about him just the way you have acted during the election campaign.
Drastically independent - Pffft… Have another donut.
We don’t have a monopoly on wisdom - Have still another donut.
We are professional journalists - Go ahead, take the last ten.
Never tolerate injustice or corruption - anything on LA Times Rashidi tape yet?
Why do you censor your columnists? - Because we can.
===
Mr. Horrigan,
You certainly made many valid points in your editorial about the role of the editorial board versus individual columnist verses the news department. However, I must take exception to several of your points.
The platform of the Post Dispatch is laudable in some ways but it is general enough to be interpreted in diametrically opposite manners. I thought the papers purpose was to be fair and accurate. This is at odds with standing up for the underdog. Unless the papers point is that it is inherently evil to be successful, straight, white and male. The only objective way to describe the papers view is left wing with an emphasis on government control over individual rights and a preference for equality of results over fairness and equal opportunity. It is the right of the editorial board to hold these views, but be honest about it.
Editorial are intended to reflect a point of view but as a paper you should be held to a higher standard than a partisan advocate. I do not object to the Post publishing editorials with which I frequently disagree. The problem is that the post frequently omits critical facts and misleads in the nature of a partisan.
For instance, a recent editorial espoused the view that the misnamed “Employee Free Choice Act” was needed in order to make it easier to unionize. The editorial never mentioned that the purpose of the act was to eliminate the secret ballot and interfere with individual states right to work laws. These are very critical facts that could influence an individual’s view of the act.
Also, a recent editorial defended ACORN by making a distinction between voter registration fraud and voter fraud based on the premise phony registrations do not lead to actual voter fraud because identification is required to vote. A separate editorial espoused the view that it is an unfair burden to require and identification to vote. This is the kind of circular and disingenuous reasoning that would lead one to believe that the paper is a partisan advocate rather than a source of information.
To be fair the Post printed my letters to the editor on both of these subjects.
I agree that there are numerous reasons that newspapers are losing circulation that have nothing to do with liberal bias. To deny that an extreme liberal bias exists in the mainstream media (both print and television) is so ridiculous that is challenges your creditability. The media in the United States in undeniable far to the left of the American public. This is only a problem because the news division presents themselves as unbiased.
BobZ.,
Maybe there’s nothing on the “LA Times Rushidi tape yet” because there is no LA Times Rushidi tape. Maybe the tape your knuckle-dragging friends are whipping up all this ignorant hysteria over is of a dinner to honor Rashid Khaldi. That’s the one the LA Times first reported about LAST APRIL.
How are the donuts, Bob?
4. The Post-Dispatch doesn’t reflect the opinions of its readers. In fact, liberal bias is the reason newspapers are dying.
Actually, if you total up the vote in the 2000 and 2004 elections in the 12-county metro area, you’ll find that the St. Louis metropolitan area (our market) overwhelmingly supported Al Gore and John Kerry over George W. Bush. That’s just a fact… As to the financial problems of newspapers, it’s true that printed newspapers are losing readers. But online newspaper sites, including STLToday.com, the Post-Dispatch website, are gaining readers by the thousands each day. In fact, there are more readers for the Post-Dispatch, in its combined electronic and paper editions, than at any time in its history.
___________________________________________________________
I do however, wonder if the readers reflect the opinions of the Post-Democrat. Is the P-D reporting the news, or is it swaying voters by slanted opinions? Makes me wonder, since this is indeed a trend specific to the P-D market area (as mentioed above), and not necessarily to the rest of the state where the P-D does not reach. So it appears that the P-D does not understand how media sponsorship of a candidate can sway voters.
So if liberal papers are dying, and the P-D is bigger than ever, is the P-D actually contending that it is NOT a liberal paper, even though they are also saying: “We judge candidates not by party label, but on whether he or she shows commitment to “Platform values:” Does the candidate’s record or positions indicate that he will support progress and reform? Support honest government? Care for the least among us?” - progressive usually correlates with liberal (socially).
I’m going to have to say that I’m more apt to believe blogger David H. (above), who calls the P-D editorial position “circular and disingenious logic”. Just from what I am reading in the article here, for sure. I mean, it does look just like that. And if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and quacks like a duck…
— BSdetector
“Maybe there’s nothing … because there is no LA Times Rushidi tape”
The LA Times acknowledged possession of a tape, partially reported on said tape, acknowledged withholding the tape — and yet BSdetector suggests maybe there is no tape … what a novel thought.
===
BobZ.,
The benefit was thrown for Rashid Khaldi. So it’s the Rashid Khaldi tape. OK?