Two major newspapers, the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post, recently were forced by their owners not to publish already-drafted endorsements of Kamala Harris for president. If you were to put this news to some of my students, at least some would respond: Wait, there still are newspapers? They segregate news and opinion? They endorse?

News has changed so much in the past few decades, so the question is not the effect of newspaper endorsements. They never were that influential; most research suggested something less than a percentage point difference, mostly in bottom-of-the-ballot races or propositions. They can be more influential when a surprise endorsement (eg. conservative paper endorses liberal candidate) pops up in heavy rotation television and social media ads.

The notable worry is what these yanked endorsements tell us about the fading vitality and independence of news organizations.

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Famed New Yorker journalist A. J. Liebling in 1960 quipped, “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” Others had expressed similar sentiments earlier. The cynical sentiment seems particularly relevant today as publishers stepped in and quashed an endorsement, certainly not for the first time but in a big and public way.

Martin Baron is a former executive editor of the Washington Post, once had praised Post owner Jeff Bezos (multi-billionaire owner of Amazon and other ventures) for standing up to the Trump Administration and not interfering in journalistic choices. No more. Baron wrote of the Bezos imposition, “This is cowardice, with democracy as its casualty.” Other Post staffers, some of whom resigned in protest, could not accept as coincidence that executives from the Bezos aerospace company met with Donald Trump the same day as the spiking of the endorsement.

Multiple editorial writers at the Los Angeles Times also resigned when billionaire owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, who Politico reported once unsuccessfully attempted to secure a job in the Trump Administration, abruptly quashed presidential endorsements starting with this year.

Several years ago, I did some analysis of non-presidential newspaper endorsements, 20 newspapers each in 2002, 2004, and 2006, publishing the results in Newspaper Research Journal in 2007. The results hardly suggest a liberal-leaning press. The papers endorsed Republicans and Democrats in roughly equal numbers, but incumbents were endorsed at a rate exceeding four-to-one over challengers. Endorsed congressional candidates were slightly more conservative than the overall Congress, based on ratings from Americans for Democratic Action and the American Conservative Union.

Editor & Publisher magazine has tracked newspaper presidential endorsements since 1940. Throughout the 20th century, those endorsements leaned heavily toward Republican nominees. In recent elections, the pattern has been more mixed. The last three presidential elections, however, the Republicans have nominated a disturbingly unqualified, extreme, racist and criminal candidate in Donald Trump. Most endorsements went to the Democratic nominee, but one notices a growing trend of papers not to endorse for president at all, even while sometimes still endorsing down ballot.

The editorial/publisher board of newspapers may lean toward a Chamber of Commerce or country club Republican view of the world, but when the Republicans put forward a dangerous choice like Trump, they remember their watchdog role and say no—at least until the publisher steps in and forces cowardice upon them.

Mark D. Harmon is a professor of journalism and media at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.