FARAI CHIDEYA, host:
A couple of weekends ago General Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama made big news. Since then we've seen a member of al-Qaeda endorse one of the candidates, and many more newspapers and magazines have had their say. Some chose Senator John McCain, others Senator Barack Obama. A few chose not to endorse anyone. For more on the power of media endorsements specifically we have Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor & Publisher magazine, Alfred Edmund Jr., editor-in-chief of Black Enterprise Magazine, and Carlos Sanchez, editor-in-chief of the Waco Tribune-Herald newspaper. Hello gentlemen.
GROUP: Hello, hey how are you doing?
CHIDEYA: I'm doing great. So Greg, yesterday your publication tallied the newspaper endorsements from across the country, so what did you find out?
Mr. GREG MITCHELL (Editor, Editor & Publisher magazine): Well we've actually updated it today so, an hour ago, so I can give you the latest which is 222 daily newspapers for Obama, and only 93 for McCain. Now that may not surprise some people, some people think, you know liberal bias and so forth, however I should point out that four years ago John Kerry and George Bush virtually split the endorsements right down the middle. And historically, going back many decades, Democrats have almost never won the most endorsements, and when they have won, it's been by a very bare margin. So think year it's a completely unprecedented landslide for the Democrats.
CHIDEYA: What does that really mean? Do you think that because of what you just pointed out that it usually is much tighter, that this effectively should be taken as a bellwether that Barack Obama is perhaps in a more solid lead that even the polls would state?
Mr. MITCHELL: Well, I think so. I mean, we can talk later about whether endorsements mean something, I think they do mean something. What's quite striking, just looking at the endorsements is, a couple of things, one thing, we've already tallied at least 48 and I suspect the number is going to end up much, much higher, number of newspapers that endorsed Bush in 2004 that have now endorsed Obama. And this includes many newspapers in red states. Three of the top five newspapers in Texas have switched from Bush to Obama. It's kind of a shocking turn of events. So I think that's quite significant. And if you just go around the country to the major cities. It's just one city after another.
The top newspaper has endorsed Obama, and it - also just one other thing I'll mention, what's most striking in these editorials, and this includes from the most GOP-leaning newspapers in the past, is the utter, almost disgust that you read for the McCain choice of Sarah Palin as vice president. I sort of predicted, about seven weeks ago, that the pick of Palin would turn out to be a political disaster for McCain, and certainly, in the view of the newspapers and in the latest polls, that seems to be true.
CHIDEYA: All right. Carlos Sanchez, who did you endorse in 2000, 2004 and this year?
Mr. CARLOS SANCHEZ (Editor-in-Chief, Waco Tribune-Herald): In 2000, Farai, we endorsed George W. Bush, who is actually one of our locals. His Crawford ranch is in our readership area. In 2004, however, we chose to endorse John Kerry, much to the consternation of a large part of the public, who likes to consider themselves a part of Bush country.
CHIDEYA: And this time around?
Mr. SANCHEZ: This year we chose none of the above. We gave great deliberation to the thought of which direction to endorse, and a couple of things became clear. One is, historically, this is the longest-lasting presidential election that we've ever witnessed in this country. Along those lines for the better part of 20 months, I have been getting a barrage of emails from various constituencies, supporting one candidate or the other, and without a single - well almost uniformly, almost unanimously the reason that these emailers were choosing one candidate, invariably was because the other candidate was evil for some reason or another. And this HAS kept up with something in demand that we have been trying on our editorial pages for the past several years. And that is the need for civility among public discourse in our community.
And we therefore decided to remove ourselves from the equation this election cycle and point to something that we thought was much more profoundly disturbing about this election cycle. And that is how uncivil public discourse has grown in this country.
CHIDEYA: You made a point - of saying look we're not doing this because folks need to get a grip?
Mr. SANCHEZ: Not only need to get a grip, but pointing out as we did in our editorial that on November 5th, the day after someone is chosen to be next president, you can pretty much guarantee that half of our country, either actively or passively will begin the process of undermining the winner. And we figure, given the stakes that are going on in this country at this time, that it is just a game we can no longer afford to play.
CHIDEYA: Alfred who did you choose and why? And is it typical for you to endorse?
Mr. ALFRED EDMOND JR (Editor-in-Chief, Black Enterprise Magazine): Well, we endorse Barack Obama. We actually endorsed him way back in our January 2008 issue, which would have gone to press really in November, even before the Ohio caucuses. It's the first time we've ever endorsed a candidate for president.
Now I want to qualify that a little bit, when Jesse Jackson ran in '84 and '88 we certainly championed his run as important to an African-American's involvement in the political process. Shirley Chisholm ran in 1972, when she was actually on the - the first advisory board of Black Enterprise Magazine when it was founded in 1970. And that was supported as something that was an important step for African-American and female participation in the political process.
But this is the first time we've said this is the right person for the job. The fact that he's black obviously has certain meaning to the Black Enterprise audience, but what our endorsement really laid out why this is the right person for the entire country, not just for Black Enterprise readers or black people in general.
CHIDEYA: There have been black candidates for president, some of them coming in more from a protest vote angle, some for the Democratic Party, some for the Republican Party. Right now you've got Alan Keyes running, as well as Cynthia McKinney. You have - as well as Barack Obama, you have a wide variety of black folks running for president this time around. What is it that you specifically liked from a business perspective about Senator Barack Obama?
Mr. EDMOND: Well, it was really talking about what has - who has the best plan for the economy. Now, at the time that we endorsed him in the beginning of the year, no one on either side of the political spectrum could have predicted that the economy would be where it is today. I mean - if we had we probably would have done some different things with our 401(k)s, than we ended up doing. But our feeling was that this is going to be the right person to really do what needed to be done, even before this economic crisis.
The middle class, no matter where you live, no matter what your race or your background, or even your political persuasion has been neglected over the last - I would say the last 15 to 20 years, certainly over the last eight to 12. And we saw his platform for his tax policies, his commitment to education, his commitment to environmental jobs as key to jump starting what had to be a return to really backing-up and boosting the middle class, and that's how we felt strongly. And that naturally helps small businesses, small black-owned businesses, those interested in education, production of competitive professionals across industries.
CHIDEYA: All right, I want to squeeze in enough time to get back to both Greg and Carlos. Greg when you listened to these two gentlemen talk about why they made the decisions to do what they did, that is to endorse Obama in one case, and to not endorse either candidate, what does it mean to a publication to do an endorsement, or not?
Mr. MITCHELL: Well, again some people who feel that there's a liberal bias in the media usually jump on any endorsement. As proof of that, if it goes in the liberal direction, but of course newspapers have been endorsing candidates since the beginning of time in the U.S.A. It's nothing new and they've done it regularly without a lot of you know controversy. It just seems that now people - some people feel, and I think legitimately in some cases, that endorsing a candidate tips your hand too much. And I would say that vast numbers of readers don't even understand that there is a separation between a newspaper's editorial staff and their newsroom. They assume they're all marching together, when actually you have many newspapers, let's say, that are quite conservative editorially, and their newsroom's very independent, or vice versus, so...
CHIDEYA: On that point, Carlos did you get any negative response to people who say, well we wanted your endorsement? We wanted you to endorse someone.
Mr. SANCHEZ: We did receive a lot of negative response we - we had expressions of support, but the common criticism is that we were being spineless for not choosing one candidate over the other. But one thing that I pointed out to one of the gentleman who sent me an email criticizing our lack of an endorsement, is that he went on to specify various positions as to why his candidate should be chosen. And I pointed out to him, that was the very first email I had gotten in 20 months, in which positions were taken, as opposed to attacks being waged.
CHIDEYA: Well, Carlos on that note I want to thank you all so much. Thank you.
Mr. SANCHEZ: Thank you.
Mr. MITCHELL: Thank you.
Mr. EDMOND JR: Thank you.
CHIDEYA: We were talking to Carlos Sanchez, editor-in-chief of the Waco Tribune-Herald, who spoke to us from KWBU in Wako, Texas. Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor & Publisher magazine and Alfred Edmond Jr., editor-in-chief of Black Enterprise Magazine, who joined us from our New York studios. Next on News & Notes, images of the presidential candidates.
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