Many Oppose Times Endorsement Stand

By David Shaw

March 18, 1976 12 AM PT

In 1973, the Los Angeles Times abandoned its policy of “routinely” endorsing candidates for President, governor and senator.

“Wide public exposure of the candidates for the top three partisan offices makes our judgment on these dispensible,” The Times said in an editorial. “Our readers have more than ample information on which to make up their minds.”

The Times’ editorial also said that readers “find it hard to believe that this newspaper’s editorial page endorsements really don’t affect the news columns.”

Most people in politics tend to agree with both those explanations. But they still disagree with the new endorsement policy.

“It’s an abdication of journalistic responsibility,” says Mayor Tom Bradley. “A newspaper owes it to its reader to periodically evaluate all the candidates and issues, and an endorsement in any race is just that -- a barometer of the paper’s views at a given point in time.”

One Times editorial writer -- echoing the sentiment of many politicians -- says the new policy was “designed primarily to save the Chandler family the inevitable embarrassment of one day having to break a lifelong Republican tradition and endorse a Democrat for President or governor.” (Times editors scoff at this charge.)

Although no other major American newspapers have recently formalized a policy of nonendorsement in specific races, many editors -- including those at the Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune and Washington Post -- are increasingly convinced that selectivity of some sort is necessary for both political effectiveness and journalistic responsibility.

Philip Geyelin, editor of the Washington Post editorial pages, thinks newspapers should endorse only in local races with which they are thoroughly familiar or in national races involving special circumstances -- and even then, only with extreme caution.

“If you endorse early in the campaign, you place a burden on your reporters because the politicians and the readers perceive them as no longer being totally objective, as reflecting your editorial position,” he says. “If you endorse late in the campaign, it doesn’t really have any effect, so you’re just indulging in a pretentious, presumptuous and largely meaningless exercise.”

Geyelin says the Post, which has made no presidential endorsements since 1952, came under considerable pressure to endorse Sen. George McGovern in 1972 after having played so instrumental a role in exposing the Watergate scandal. But Post editors had almost as many misgivings about McGovern as they did about Nixon.

“I think our editorials made it clear that we preferred McGovern, who was at least a decent, honest man,” Geyelin says, “but he had so many shortcomings, we couldn’t quite bring ourselves to formally endorse him.

“I know it would have been bolder to take the plunge, but that was one time I just didn’t think there was any water in the pool.”