Endorsements Are Manipulation. The Digital Free Press Will Never Make One.

By Yossi Schmidt, Founder and Editor-in-Chief

Every fall, like clockwork, the editorial boards come out. Newspapers that spent all year promising to simply report the news suddenly announce who you should vote for. They dress it up in serious language. They call it civic duty. They call it guidance.

I call it what it is: manipulation.

A news outlet has one thing worth anything, and that is the trust of its readers. People come to a newsroom because they want to know what happened, who said what, and what the record shows. They do not come to be told what to think. When an outlet takes the trust it earned by reporting and spends it on steering your vote, it is using you. It is cashing in your confidence for its own political preference.

Think about how an endorsement actually works. An outlet spends months covering a race. It decides which stories get the big headline and which get buried. It decides which quotes make the cut and which candidate gets the tough question. Then, a few weeks before Election Day, it announces which candidate it wants to win. Every reader is left with a question that can never be fully answered: was all that coverage the news, or was it the campaign?

That doubt does not go away after the election. Once a newsroom has picked a side, every story it writes about the winner or the loser carries that weight. A critical story about the candidate it opposed looks like score-settling. A soft story about the candidate it backed looks like a favor. Even when the reporting is honest, the endorsement poisons the well. Readers notice, and they should.

It is no surprise that trust in the news media keeps hitting record lows in national polling. People across the political spectrum feel that the press is not leveling with them, that the people delivering the news have already decided how the story should end. Endorsements are one of the clearest examples of exactly that. An outlet cannot ask to be trusted as a neutral referee on Monday and then put on a team jersey on Tuesday.

There is also something insulting about endorsements. They assume voters cannot be trusted to make up their own minds. They treat readers like an audience to be herded instead of adults who can weigh the facts and decide for themselves. Voters do not need an editor to tell them how to vote. They need the information, laid out plainly and fairly, so they can make the call on their own.

Some will say endorsements are just opinion, clearly labeled, and readers can ignore them. But that misses how influence works. An endorsement is not one more voice in the crowd. It is the institution itself, the masthead, putting its full weight behind one side. It comes from the same people who decide what you see as news. You cannot separate the two, no matter how many labels you put on the page.

That is why The Digital Free Press does not endorse candidates, and never will. Not for president, not for Congress, not for governor, not for city council. Not this year, and not in any year to come.

Instead, we are doing something we think actually serves voters. Between now and Election Day, Nov. 3, The Digital Free Press is publishing voter guides on races across the country, each with a short video and a full article. The point is simple: show you where every candidate stands, in their own words, side by side, and then get out of the way.

Every guide follows the same rules, every time:

Every candidate on the ballot is included. No one is left out because of party, money or polling.

Positions come from the candidates' own campaign websites and public statements, and we link our sources so you can check them yourself.

Each candidate gets equal space and is measured on the same issues.

If a campaign does not list a position, we say so plainly. We do not guess, and we do not fill in the blanks for anyone.

Where a candidate has a criminal conviction, a pending case or a formal ethics finding, we note it in one neutral line, with the source. We do not repeat attack ads or opponents' accusations.

And we do not tell you who to vote for. Ever.

We will not always be perfect. When we get something wrong, tell us. We will check it and correct it, openly, for everyone to see. That is part of earning trust, too.

Our readers come from every background and every political persuasion. Some agree with me on a lot. Some agree with me on very little. All of them deserve the same thing from The Digital Free Press: the facts, without a thumb on the scale.

The newsrooms that endorse will tell you they are helping you decide. They are not. They are deciding for you and hoping you follow. We think you can do better than that on your own.

Informing is our job. Deciding is yours.

Hold Everyone Accountable.