In late October, The Durango Herald ran endorsements for items on the general election ballot of La Plata County, as well as for president of the United States.
Such journalism runs in the face of the trend by large urban newspapers to no longer run endorsements, especially for the office of president. The Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, for example, just announced they’d not carry endorsements this fall for either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump.
The Christian Science Monitor has endorsed at the presidential level only five times, the last in 1964 under the storied editorship of Erwin Canham.
In the Monitor’s 1952 endorsement of Dwight Eisenhower, it stated: “This newspaper is committed to no party or person. It is committed to the independent support of righteous government. It strives to be objective and just, but it has never believed that independence, objectivity and justice forbid it to reach conclusions on specific issues or situations in the light of its information.
“However, The Christian Science Monitor does not presume to do its readers’ thinking. It offers its own views only as a contribution to the democratic process of testing opinions and shaping action by free discussion.”
Despite Canham’s thoughtful and logical explanation, an increasing number of newspapers, including his own, no longer editorially endorse candidates, including at the U.S. presidential level. It’s hard to argue against such non-endorsement policies as newspapers continue in a circulation and advertising free-fall, and editors are reluctant to report or write or endorse anything that might annoy and cause readers to cancel subscriptions. Too, so many, many people no longer even care what appears in their newspapers.
I clearly realize the world is a different place from when I was an 8-year-old in the 1950s and asked by a neighbor what I wanted to be when I grew up. I recall immediately responding, “I want to be a journalist for The Christian Science Monitor.” The Monitor then was, along with four other daily newspapers – Cleveland Press, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Elyria Chronicle-Telegram and Lorain Journal – to which my family subscribed and that we avidly read and discussed in our northern Ohio home.
Now can you imagine families subscribing to so many newspapers? Or of any kids today saying they dreamed to one day be a journalist for the Monitor, or indeed for any newspaper they grew up reading?
Thus, here’s my modest proposal: As newspapers are already an endangered species, whether in print or online, publishers might as well simply make a presidential endorsement as did the Durango Herald before the 2024 election. Why? Because it’s the right, courageous and ethical thing to do.
William A. Babcock, before recently retiring in Durango, was media ethics professor at universities in the U.S., China and Britain, and former senior international news editor at the Christian Science Monitor.
