No one for president? I’ll endorse that | Mulshine

I don’t know whether great minds really do think alike, but billionaire doctor Patrick Soon-Shiong and I certainly do.
Earlier this month, I ran a column of advice for voters in the hotly contested presidential election to be held a week from today.
I advised the voters to ignore the candidates’ personalities and instead, “Make a list of all the government policies you dislike. Then go down that list and put a check next to the name of the candidate most likely to curtail them. On Election Day, pull the lever for that candidate.”
So I was pleased to see biotech billionaire Soon-Shiong offering similar advice last week to the members of the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times, which he bought in 2018.
He told the members of the board that instead of endorsing a candidate for president, they should “draft a factual analysis of all the positive and negative policies by each candidate during their tenures at the White House, and how these policies affected the nation.”
I was glad to see a medical services billionaire offer ideas so similar to my own.
But the members of the editorial board were not happy. Three of them resigned in protest because the paper did not endorse Democrat Kamala Harris.
There was a similar tiff at the Washington Post, which is owned by tech billionaire Jeff Bezos. Two columnists resigned there.
As someone who’s been in the news business for almost 50 years, I can certainly see why a journalist would protest something that was written.
But something that wasn’t written?
That’s a new one on me.
I fear these journalists have fallen victim to the most pernicious notion in journalism. That is the idea that their duty is not merely to express their opinions, but to see that those opinions are adopted by the powers-that-be.
The great H.L. Mencken exposed that fallacy more than a century ago, when he wrote: “The function of a newspaper in a democracy is to stand as a sort of chronic opposition to the reigning quacks. The minute it begins to out-whoop them it forfeits its character and becomes ridiculous.”
With this move, the media are whooping all too loud, says Jonathan Turley.
Turley, who is a legal scholar and media critic, penned a column the other day congratulating the Washington Post for declining to make an endorsement in the presidential race.
“Over two decades ago, I wrote a column calling for newspapers to end the practice of all election endorsements,” he wrote. “When I first came out against political endorsements, the media had not taken the plunge into advocacy journalism, which is now strangling the life out of this industry.”
He cited a statement by former New York Times writer and current journalism professor Nikole Hannah-Jones declaring that “all journalism is activism.”
He also cited San Francisco Chronicle editor Emilio Garcia-Ruiz’s statement that “Objectivity has got to go.”
“I’m honestly alarmed by the rise of advocacy journalism. It’s killing this profession,” Turley told me when I phoned him. “The reporters are all sawing away on the branch they’re sitting on.”
Turley said the critics of the Post’s action – or inaction – don’t seem to grant that the other side may have a valid argument.
“They don’t even acknowledge the possibility there could be a principled reason for the refusal to make an endorsement,” he said. “They don’t even raise a good-faith interest.”
As for Soon-Shiong, he and I are content to leave the choice to the individual voter. You can see why that makes sense.
Just consider the issue of abortion. My pro-life friends wouldn’t vote for a pro-choicer under any conditions. My pro-choice friends wouldn’t back a pro-lifer.
Try and tell a gun-owner to vote for someone who disagrees that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms.
And so on down the list of issues. Immigration? Fracking? Climate change? Gender identity? The Gaza War? Ukraine?
As my billionaire ally in Los Angeles notes, the voters don’t need someone to run that laundry list through the washer and dryer for them.
They can do their own laundry.
As for all those disgruntled editorial writers who left the Times and the Post, there are dozens of websites out there that will tell you how to start your own newspaper.
Then you can endorse whomever you want.
Or even no one at all.
More: Recent Paul Mulshine columns.
Paul Mulshine may be reached at [email protected].
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