A low point for American journalism—and a high

The decision by the owners of two major American newspapers not to endorse a presidential candidate contrasts with the heroism of an abolitionist editor who gave his life in defense of free speech.

The decisions by Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos and Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong to spike their newspapers’ endorsements in the U.S. presidential election were an unmitigated disgrace. Their craven muzzling of their editors dealt a serious blow to one of the cornerstones of our democracy: a free and fearless press.

The justification advanced by Post publisher Will Lewis that the newspaper was “returning to our roots,” was so pathetic it scarcely merits a response. Two weeks before the most consequential election of our time, and on the same day that executives of Bezos’s space company Blue Origin met with Donald Trump, the Post suddenly realized that it had to return to its “we-don’t-endorse” “roots”—never mind the fact that it had abandoned those “roots” in 1976,  endorsing a candidate in that and every subsequent election except for Michael Dukakis’s doomed 1988 campaign? Uh-huh. And O.J. is still looking for the killer.

Bezos’s own defense of his decision was equally preposterous, but far more intellectually dangerous. After asserting no one trusts the press and that newspaper endorsements don’t matter anyway, Bezos wrote, “What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence.” By not endorsing, Bezos piously proclaimed, the Post was restoring its integrity and taking a step towards regaining its readers’ trust.

If Bezos had employed this kind of keen reasoning in creating Amazon, a vast fleet of decrepit 1980 Yugo delivery vans would be criss-crossing the country at this very moment. There are so many things wrong with his self-defense it’s hard to know where to start. First, his main argument, if taken literally, would undermine not just journalism, but civilization itself. Bezos is asserting that for a newspaper to express an opinion—for an endorsement is nothing more than an opinion—is to “create a perception of bias.” The cynicism, indeed the nihilism, of this statement is jaw-dropping. If it were true, all human discourse would be nothing more than a collision of biases. If someone were to say, “I don’t think it was a good idea for the German people to vote for the Nazi Party in the early 1930s,” they would be creating a perception of bias, and if they wanted to regain the trust of their listener, they should refrain from expressing that opinion. In fact, civil discourse depends on individuals doing their best to rise above their biases, and on assuming that those they are conversing with are doing the same. It requires a foundational belief in human rationality, objectivity and good faith. Of course people and institutions don’t always perfectly achieve those goals, but civil society is held together by the belief that they are the goals.

Bezos employs a consummate weasel-word, “perception,” in an attempt to give himself an escape from this soul-shriveling position. “Hey, I didn’t say my newspaper actually demonstrated bias by endorsing Harris—I only said it created the perception of bias.” But this argument is equally cynical and debased. If he admits that the Post issuing an endorsement does not actually demonstrate bias, then he is handing over de facto control of his newspaper to readers who are incapable of dealing with any opinions except the one they hold, and believe that any media outlet that does not share their views is bought and paid for.

This is, of course, the position advanced by Donald Trump, who believes that any media outlet that is critical of him is “fake news” and has called journalists “the enemy of the people.” Strip away Bezos’s bogus lofty rhetoric about regaining the readers’ trust, and his position isn’t that different from Trump’s. By endorsing Harris, as it was going to, the Post would be the enemy of half “the people,” namely Trump supporters, who would be even more convinced that the newspaper was simply a tool of the evil liberal deep state. But instead of accepting that outcome as an unfortunate but inevitable consequence of Trump’s corrosive attacks on the media, and standing up for the bedrock journalistic principle that a newspaper has the right to express an opinion on any subject, no matter how controversial, Bezos surrendered, waving specious banners of “integrity” and “independence” to disguise his craven and self-interested collapse. By so doing, he effectively accepted Trump and Fox News’s bogus claim that the “mainstream liberal media” is simply the mirror image of Fox News—i.e. an ideological tool. Rather than restoring his readers’ trust, Bezos destroyed it—as evidence by the fact that 250,000 subscribers have cancelled, 10 percent of the paper’s readership. Bezos doesn’t care: the Post is small potatoes for him. But his actions have done serious damage to journalism at a time when it is already reeling.

Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong also strove to cast his decision to spike his paper’s endorsement in high-minded terms. He claimed that issuing an endorsement would be too “divisive” in a bitterly contested election. This argument is as patently absurd as Bezos’s claim that his paper’s sitting this election out will restore readers’ trust: America’s bitter division is a tragic reality, and pretending to be neutral will not heal it.

I have no idea whether Soon-Shiong actually believes this lofty pabulum. But hearing the billionaire invoke civic unity as a justification for muzzling his newspaper, it was impossible for me not to think about an earlier American newspaperman, whose enemies also accused him of destroying the “peace and harmony” of his community. That journalist’s name was Elijah Lovejoy. He was murdered for speaking out against slavery in 1837. And his heroism and dedication to principle contrasts painfully with the cowardice of the owners of the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.

Elijah Lovejoy is all but forgotten today, but he is one of the great American heroes. I learned about him because I recently finished writing the libretto for an oratorio about him, Elijah’s Call: Oratorio for an Abolitionist. The piece, composed by Allison Lovejoy (a distant relative of Elijah’s), will have its world premiere this Sunday, November 3 in San Francisco (details below).

In 1827, 24-year-old Elijah Lovejoy set out to walk across the country from his native state, Maine, to Missouri. The highly educated son of devoutly Christian parents, Lovejoy was in desperate search of his calling—but God had not yet appeared to him. When he arrived in the rough-and-tumble frontier town of St. Louis, he was shocked at the sinful behavior he found there. He became the editor of a daily newspaper, which he used as a pulpit to inveigh against the rampant immorality that plagued the city. Although Missouri was a slave state, Lovejoy did not raise at first that subject in his paper: slavery was too explosive a subject to handle. But in 1832, Lovejoy attended a fiery sermon by an abolitionist preacher named David Nelson, who thundered that in the eyes of God slavery was as great a sin as murder. Nelson’s words pierced Lovejoy’s soul, and he converted on the spot.

After his conversion, Lovejoy began, slowly and hesitantly at first, to speak out against slavery. He made it clear that he was not an abolitionist and did not favor the immediate emancipation of enslaved people. But this stance, moderate as it was, enraged his fellow Missourians, for whom even bringing slavery up was taboo. As he continued to editorialize against slavery, popular anger against him swelled. In late 1835, his enemies planned to tar and feather him. Talk of mob action to destroy his newspaper, the Observer, grew. He was warned not to walk the streets of St. Louis at any time. An assembly of leading citizens, including future U.S. senator Thomas Hart Benton, passed a resolution demanding that Lovejoy stop writing about slavery. The resolution stated that freedom of the press did not give the right to discuss the subject of slavery: it was too divisive. But Lovejoy would not be silent. When a Missouri mob burned an innocent free black man named Frances McIntosh at the stake, Lovejoy was so horrified he prayed for death—and his commitment to fighting slavery became even stronger.

Lovejoy’s enemies repeatedly accused him of being a fanatic, a “sanctimonious madman” who was inciting Negro slaves to revolt and—where have we heard this before?—tearing the community apart. Afraid that mobs would attack his young family and destroy his press, Lovejoy moved across the Mississippi River to Alton, Illinois. But conditions were no better there. Illinois was nominally a free state, but southern Illinois was filled with slaveowners who detested Lovejoy and threatened his life. Mobs broke into his newspaper office and threw his press into the river three times. A committee of citizens passed a resolution demanding that Lovejoy stop publishing “his incendiary doctrines which alone have a tendency to disturb the quiet of our citizens and neighbors.” When Lovejoy refused, a mob broke into his house and tried to seize him: his wife Celia fought them off with her bare hands.

The bitter conflict came to a climax at a public meeting in Alton on November 3, 1837. Rejecting a resolution defending Lovejoy’s right to speak, as guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution, a committee of leading citizens asked the editor to abandon the paper and leave Alton, in the interest of “peace and harmony.” It was clear that if Lovejoy did not comply, he would be killed.

Lovejoy rose, slowly walked to the front of the room, removed his coat and began to speak. His words are among the most courageous, eloquent and inspiring ever uttered in defense of free speech and moral principle.

Lovejoy began by denying that the issue at hand was whether he should publish a newspaper in Alton. “I have the right to do it,” he said. “I know that I have the right freely to speak and publish my sentiments, subject only to the laws of the land for the abuse of that right. This right was given to me by my maker, and is solemnly guaranteed by the constitution of these United States and of this state. What I wish to know of you is whether you will protect me in the exercise of this right; or whether…I am to continue to be subjected to personal indignity and outrage…It is simply a question of whether the law shall be enforced, or whether the mob shall be allowed…to continue to trample under their feet… the rights of an innocent individual.”

“God, in his providence—so say all my brethren, and so I think—has devolved upon me the responsibility of maintaining my ground here; and Mr. Chairman, I am determined to do it. A voice comes to me from Maine, from Massachusetts, from Connecticut, from New York, from Pennsylvania—yea, from Kentucky, from Mississippi, from Missouri—calling upon me in the name of all that is dear in heaven and earth, to stand fast; and by the help of God, I will stand. I know I am but one and you are many. My strength would avail but little against you all. You can crush me if you will; but I will die at my post, for I cannot and will not forsake it.

“…I am hunted as a partridge upon the mountains. I am pursued as a felon through your streets. And to the guardian power of the law I look in vain for that protection against violence which even the vilest criminal may claim.

“Yet think not that I am unhappy. Think not that I regret the choice that I have made...No, sir, I am not unhappy. I have counted the cost, and stand prepared freely to offer up my all in the service of God. Yes, sir, I am fully aware of all the sacrifice I make in here pledging myself to continue this contest to the last.”

There was a moment of silence while Lovejoy wept.

“”Forgive these tears—I had not intended to shed them. And they flow not for myself, but others. But I am commanded to forsake father and mother and wife and children for Jesus’ sake; and as His professed disciple I stand prepared to do it. The time for fulfilling this pledge in my case, it seems to me, has come.

“Sir, I dare not flee away from Alton. Should I attempt it, I should feel that the angel of the Lord with his flaming sword was pursuing me wherever I went. It is because I fear God that I am not afraid of all who oppose me in this city. No, sir, the contest has commenced here; and here it must be finished. Before God and you all, I here pledge myself to continue it—if need be, till death. If I fall, my grave shall be made it Alton.”

After he finished speaking, Lovejoy left the hall. Even some of his enemies were crying when he finished. But others redoubled their attacks on the young editor. The Illinois Attorney General, Usher Linder, delivered a short, vicious speech that hinted that Lovejoy was insane, finishing by introducing a resolution “that the discussion of the doctrines of immediate abolitionism…would be destructive of the peace and harmony of the citizens of Alton, and that, therefore, we cannot recommend the reestablishment of that paper.” Later, Linder told someone, “Elijah Lovejoy will be killed within two weeks.”

Four days later, a drunken mob surrounded a warehouse where Lovejoy and a handful of his supporters were guarding a new press that had just been delivered. They used a ladder to set fire to the roof. When Lovejoy rushed out to push over the ladder, two leading citizens, both doctors, shot him five times. He crawled back inside, said “My God, I am shot!” and died. No one was ever convicted of his murder.

News of Lovejoy’s murder hit the country like a thunderbolt. In death, he achieved more for the abolitionist cause than he ever could in life. With the publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, his death was one of the two greatest boosts to the antislavery movement before the Civil War.

Elijah’s younger brother, Owen, who saw Elijah gunned down, dedicated his life to the cause of abolition. Owen Lovejoy went on to become a founder of the anti-slavery Republican Party and a friend and key political supporter of a young Illinois congressman named Abraham Lincoln, who was to become president of the United States in 1860. When Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, he reportedly asked that Owen Lovejoy be present.

Lovejoy’s legacy lives on whenever journalists do their job, which is simply to report the facts accurately and to express their opinions fearlessly. It is honored when journalists who have been silenced resign in protest, as a number of editors at the Post and the Times did. And it is betrayed when powerful interests muzzle or mute the press for whatever reason—including all-too-familiar claims that taking controversial positions will divide the country.

Elijah Lovejoy was martyred almost 200 years ago. But as these deeply disturbing events make clear, his dauntless defense of free speech is needed more than ever.   

Elijah’s Call: Oratorio for an Abolitionist, composed by Allison Lovejoy and with libretto by Gary Kamiya, will have its world premiere on Sunday, Nov. 3 at 2 pm at the Palace of Fine Arts Theater, San Francisco. For tickets, click here.