Two of the US’s biggest newspapers have refused to endorse a presidential candidate. This is how democracy dies

Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AAP by Denis Muller, The University of Melbourne In February 2017, as Donald Trump took office, The Washington Post adopted the first slogan in its 140-year history: Democracy Dies in Darkness. How ironic, then, that it should now be helping to extinguish the flame of American democracy by refusing to endorse a candidate for the forthcoming presidential election. This decision, and a similar one by the second of America’s big three newspapers, the Los Angeles Times, disgraces journalism, disgraces the papers’ own heritage and represents an abandonment of civic responsibility at a moment when United States faces its most consequential presidential election since the Civil War. At stake is whether the United States remains a functioning democracy or descends into a corrupt plutocracy led by a convicted criminal who has already incited violence to overturn a presidential election and has shown contempt for the conventions on which democracy rests. Everyone should cancel their Washington Post subscription after Bezos copped out on a presidential endorsement. It is shameful how far a once great newspaper has fallen. I cancelled today. — Allan Lichtman (@AllanLichtman) October 26, 2024 Why did they do it? Why would two of the Western world’s finest...