Letter: Newspapers should not make endorsements

Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2003 | 9 a.m.

With all the controversy surrounding the Los Angeles Times' 11th-hour articles on gubernatorial candidate/actor Arnold Schwarznegger, coupled with their official stance against California's recall election, perhaps the time has come for newspapers everywhere to reconsider the practice of making political endorsements.

For years the newspaper has been the medium that people tend to associate with honesty and impartiality. When the public conjures up an image of a reporter going to jail to protect his source, it is invariably an ink-stained, slightly disheveled newspaperman, not a blow-dried TV anchor.

Yet, with the continual erosion of its readership and the recent scandals regarding story fabrications (e.g. the New York Times' Jayson Blair), it is an industry whose "trust factor" has suffered a black eye. So why court even the perception of bias by choosing sides in a political battle?

All newspaper endorsements do is serve as more fodder for the TV ad wars. Maybe it's time to leave endorsements to columnists, pundits, PACs and other special-interest groups whose political leanings are well known, and have newspapers concentrate on what they historically have done best -- deliver the facts and let the people decide.

BOB MAPLES, Reno