Opinion | The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times Endorsement Calls Are Self-Sabotage

I can think of some compelling reasons that leading independent newspapers should not be in the business of endorsing candidates for president.Unfortunately, the acts of self-sabotage by The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times do not reflect any of them.And so one more bulwark against autocracy erodes.The owners of both papers took as long as possible to reveal what they had already concluded: For the first time in years — since 2004 for The Los Angeles Times and 1988 for The Post — each would refrain from endorsing a presidential candidate.

This inspired Donald Trump’s campaign to whoop that even Vice President Kamala Harris’s “fellow Californians know she’s not up for the job.” The Times’s editorial editor, Mariel Garza, resigned and said the decision made the organization look “craven and hypocritical.” Others followed.The Post’s endorsement of Ms.Harris had reportedly already been drafted, only to be shelved on the orders of its owner, Amazon’s founder, Mr.

Bezos.But it fell to the paper’s publisher, William Lewis, to announce the decision, saying, “We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.” Its editorial editor, David Shipley, in the face of his mutinous editorial board, said he owned the outcome, which he called a way of creating “independent space” for voters to make up their own minds.I’m not worried that Post and Los Angeles Times readers will have trouble deciding how to vote.

I’m worried they’ll have trouble deciding whom to trust.Both papers are owned by billionaires — Patrick Soon-Shiong at The Times and Mr.Bezos at The Post — and it is this grim similarity that raises alarms, especially in the case of The Post, whose “Democracy dies in darkness” motto now moans like an epitaph.

Rightly or wrongly, readers will reasonably conclude The Post backed off an endorsement of Ms.Harris to protect the owner’s business interests.

Those interests are vast, spread across comm...