Why do newspapers have editorials, endorsements?

Writing editorials and making political endorsements always seemed like a strange thing for newspapers to do, since they’re supposed to be in the “being impartial” biz. So why do they do it? After all, most other businesses don’t seem to feel the need to let us know where they stand on things.

I can only think of three possibilities for how this got started in the old days:

  1. You decided to start a newspaper to get news out to people. Then you saw that huge press and were overwhelmed by the ease with which you could gift the world with your opinions.

  2. You decided to start a newspaper to get your opinions out to people, but realized you’d also have to give them a little news, as an incentive to buy.

  3. You wanted to be completely unbiased in your paper’s reporting, but you realized that this would require superhuman self-control, so you allowed yourself the editorial page on which to vent your dark side.

Wherever did you get that idea? Of course newspapers aren’t impartial, and most of them don’t even claim to be.

There’s a place in newspapers for paid shilling – advertisements; for objective news – the news reports; and for opinion – the editorials and columnists’ columns.

People are entitled to opinions – reporters and editors in particular form them, after being exposed to the news on a daily basis. Areas set aside for intelligently rerasoned opinion, known to the readers to be such, frees them to remain objective in reporting. Read about “yellow journalism” sometime – what newspapers did in the past makes Rupert Murdoch look like the soul of objectivity by comparison.

Some papers were started to push 1 party. If you look around some of them still have Democrat or Republican in their name.

Newspapers – especially in the 19th century, but carrying over – were not supposed to be impartial reporters of news. Every big city had multiple newspapers, and the major ones had well known editorial slants.

Impartial news was not so much the ideal as it was a marketing ploy. In a big city, you’d have, say, a Democratic newspaper, a Republican newspaper, and an independent one. Democrats would buy the Democratic newspaper and would ignore the Republican one.* They’d also pick up the independent newspaper, for nothing else to see if it agreed with them. Republicans would only buy the Republican newspaper, but would pick up the independent paper, too. Thus, the independent paper drew from both groups and had a higher circulation. Thus, the idea of journalistic impartiality was born – you could make more money with it than with slanted news.

Of course, in that environment, partisan papers would have partisan editorials (and news, too). The independent papers kept the opinions in the editorial section and made a differentiation between editorial and news. But they would still take sides in order to show where they stood; they just could not be assumed to take the party line on a particular issue.

*Just like Democrats today are more likely to watch MSNBC and ignore Fox News.

Objectivity in newspapers is a relatively new thing. It only developed in the nineteenth century:

Editorials serve two purposes, the obvious purpose is to state the paper’s view. In the hey day of news, from 1900 - 1950, all major cities had a least three major papers. Therefore you always got a pro-view an anti-view and at least one to back one of them up.

Newspaper to a degree were like “talk radio” today. We listen to Rush because we know what side he’s on, it’s really entertainment.

The other thing people don’t realize as much is the Supreme Court has long recognized the constitutional right to state an opinion as free speech.

This is very important to newspapers.

If you claim something you need the facts to back it up or you may get sued. If I report something in the paper I have a chance of getting sued, so I better make sure it’s 100% defendable.

But opinions are not so. And if you notice on the editorial page, the Op-Ed page and the “letters to the editor” pages the newspapers make it crystal clear THIS IS AN OPINION. They clearly spell out THIS ISN’T NEWS.

This give the newspaper a round about way to state what they believe is true, even if they can’t prove it.

If I say “Tom Cruise is gay,” and can’t back that up and millions of people say “I won’t see his movies from now on.” Cruise can sue and if he can prove his career was hurt he’ll win damages, unless I can back the fact up Cruise is gay.

But if I put it on an editorial page or a letter to the editor and phrase it in such a way that it’s opinion I am protected."

Similar to what happened when Oprah said she wouldn’t eat beef and her fans stopped buying beef and the beef industry sued. They lost. Oprah was just stating her opinion and she has a right to do that.

If I say “Tom Cruise sucks and if I was anyone reading this post, I’d not see his movies, 'cause people who suck don’t deserve a career,” and then Tom Cruise’s movies all dry up, well he’s out of luck. Why? 'Cause that’s my opinion and and I’m entitled to it. I’m entitled to express it.

So this is the one of the stronger reasons editorial pages exist.

One more historical note is in the past, newspapers were a source of pride and in reality an extension of the owner. William Randolph Hearst used his papers as a big platform, so in the past newspapers were an ego boost and extension to their owner. (And I mean all owners not only Hearst)