By: Joe Strupp Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News, who blogs on the paper's Attytood.com site, urged newspapers Tuesday to stop endorsing candidates for president.
In a lengthy item posted today, Bunch puts forth the view that a paper should leave the choice strictly to voters, offering special criticism of the practice of endorsing one candidate in a Democratic primary and another in a Republican primary.
"Not endorsing individual candidates should be a matter of principle, and what's more, a look at the endorsement process so far in 2008 shows the end product, while well intentioned, is for the most part a vapid exercise," he writes.
"First, the principle. I believe that journalists, and certainly newspaper editorial pages, should be bastions of bold dynamic support for new ideas and civic values -- but not for individual candidates or political parties. The reason why is simple: Core beliefs are constant, while people can change. What's more, supporting a candidate -- even through a vehicle as tepid as most newspaper endorsements -- gives you being the appearance of becoming a partisan, at least in this sense: A partisan will look for an excuse that might condone the very same behavior -- a breach of ethics, say -- he would condemn in someone else."
The entire item can be found
here.
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