The unintended consequences of the Washington Post and LA Times "non endorsements ".

I've been thinking a lot about the decisions of Bezos and Soon-Shiong to block the decisions of the editorial boards of the Washington Post and the LA Times to endorse Kamala Harris.  And, the more I think about it, the more I think this was ultimately a win fo Harris.

Think about it.  If the endorsements had gone through, it would have been something so ordinary and expected, it would have rated barely a notice.  Sure, they would have shown up on lists of endorsements, but they wouldn't have really had any lasting effect.  After all, the NY Times endorsed Harris back in September,  how much play did that get?

But,  because of the honorable actions of the editors at the Post and Times resigning,  the story of the owners blocking the endorsements became widely known. The resulting censorship story has got significantly more coverage, even in the Post and the Times.  What is more, there is no doubt that the actual editors at the papers were endorsing Harris. 

It's like the analogy I read years ago about what makes something newsworthy.  If you write a story about a dog biting a man, no one cares. But, if you find a story about a man biting a dog, now that is newsworthy.  In this case Bezos and Soon-Shiong have created a man bites dog story that has gotten far more coverage than a simple endorsement ever would.