Recent episodes involving major U.S. news organizations have stoked fears that outlets are preemptively self-censoring coverage that could offend former President Donald Trump, who remains neck-and-neck in the polls with Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of Election Day.
“One of the central media stories in the U.S. right now is the people who run big media companies making accommodations for a second Trump presidency and thinking about how to avoid antagonizing him,” Ben Smith, editor-in-chief and co-founder of the news site Semafor, tells NPR.
Semafor’s Max Tani first broke the news that the owner of the Los Angeles Times, Patrick Soon-Shiong, intervened to block the publication of an editorial endorsing Harris. The Trump campaign swiftly shared the Semafor story with supporters.