Looking at a meta-analysis of newspaper endorsements of the top hundred newspapers by circulation, a few things strike me. First, the two largest newspapers, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today, do not generally endorse candidates. There are a couple of others as well, perhaps most notably Deseret News, which one imagines would lean pro-Romney if for nothing other than its name. Secondly, both these newspapers have lost fairly significant ground to newspapers that do in the last four years, USA Today in particular. Thirdly, the influence of such newspapers has diminished. Their total subscriptions went from 27,138,751 subscriptions to 23,598,488, a loss of over three and a half million. Thirdly, it is notable that Romney already outnumbers McCain in the number of endorsements he’s received, and is only two hundred thousand behind McCain in terms of subscriptions of those newspapers. Since there are still a little under a third of newspapers who have not endorse either candidate, things look more optimistic for him than McCain, and indeed he is significantly closer to Obama in terms of both newspapers and subscribers than McCain was (though lagging behind Obama in aggregate).

Regardless, I looked at the two largest newspapers’ endorsements, for two reasons. First, if we presume subscription number has any effect on newspapers influence, and we must if we are to accept the premise that newspapers can influence the matter at all, these two papers combined represent over one percent of the electorate and a little under ten percent of top hundred newspaper subscriptions. Secondly newspapers desire success and thus might seek to emulate their styles if not their content. Thirdly they are more directly comparable simply for the fact both newspapers endorsed Barrack Obama both in this and the previous election, thus both being ‘loyalists’ of his. Indeed, the Times has not endorsed a Republican since Eisenhower.

I wonder, and in truth do not know, how endorsement decisions are made. But it seems to break all rules of professionalism present elsewhere. The articles are unabashedly normative, loyalist, and hostile in a way uncommon to professional press and more suited to party rags. Notably the LA Times calls it an ‘endorsement’ while the New York Times calls it an ‘editorial’, but it is not really the latter because this is a statement of the views of the newspaper, not just the writer. It is true that it is an opinion rather than news, but it cannot be followed by the usual disavowal that it is the writer’s and not the newspaper’s opinion which is a staple of that genre. Despite the increased culpability, there is little admission of imperfection in either, and nearly half of the LA Times piece is dedicated not to talking up Obama but attacking Romney. While this is expected of politicos, it certainly opens them to criticism and accusations of dirty partisanship I would think a paper would avoid.

I also find it remarkable how blind both endorsements seem. They seem entirely unaware, for example, that someone might look at certain things they condemn Romney for and see them as good things. If they were aware, I think, they would have put some arguments in support of such a position, and thus its absence speaks to it. To use a more controversial example, both the LA Times and New York Times speak of the overturning of Roe v Wade as a strike against Romney without explaining or qualifying it, ignoring that the last Gallup poll has’pro-choice’ Americans are at a record low and outnumbered by ‘pro-life’ Americans. This is not to open that debate, I feel I must stress, but merely to point out that they treat this as a persuasive argument rather than a point to be defended. If we take this as a true barometer of the opinions of the newspaper, that implies the newspaper is so liberal that it cannot understand conservatism as a phenomenon, which is unfortunate.

Also, to the Los Angeles Times, ‘modulating’ is not an acceptable synonym for mutable, varying, wishy washy, flip flopping, or any such word, if not in denotation then in connotation.

All in all, I’m skeptical of the effects this will actually have on the election, but they are interesting as a phenomena in of themselves. And perhaps more interestingly to me, it seems perhaps the most firm evidence for the liberal leanings of the press, which up till now I had seen little but speculation and the bitter raving of conservatives about.

Sources:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/154838/Pro-Choice-Americans-Record-Low.aspx
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/2012_newspaper_endorsements.php

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/endorsements/la-ed-end-president-20121021,0,5490210.story