Last Updated: May 26, 1999
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A note from the president
Looking through another lens is part of credibility
project
By Sandy Rowe
Every time I have published or broadcast comments about the ASNE credibility
project, I can count on receiving a fistful of reaction letters from readers
and other journalists. Like letters to the editor, I take them as a reasonably
accurate barometer of intensity of feeling. Among them a common thread
has emerged. It boils down to this: some letter writers and columnists
think we should save the $1 million, buy beer all around and admit to unconscionable
political bias.
Ross Mackenzie, editor of the editorial pages of the Richmond (Va.)
Times-Dispatch, never known for temperate positions or benevolence toward
those with whom he disagrees, mocks our purpose in a column published in
July in the Times-Dispatch, revised for The American Editor and published
here.
"Heavy stuff, and high-sounding," he writes of ASNE’s project. "And
likely a large waste of time. For at least one major element in the press’
declining credibility is well-known — and has been for years, though too-many
self-important pressies choose to view it with blinkered eyes. Friends,
it’s the L-word — liberalism."
Others, less sharply, draw the same point.
"The press just sees America from a different — more leftward — perspective
than most readers," says an editorial in Investor’s Business Daily. "And
in today’s analysis-heavy style of coverage, where reporters not only tell
what happens, but suggest what to think, a lot of opinion can get into
stories."
A letter writer from Williamsburg, Va., who characterizes himself as
one who genuinely believes that editorial pages have made their way into
the news stories of our nation’s newspapers, asserts that "we readers do
indeed see the interpretation in our news as bias."
Nothing in the numbers brings comfort.
The Pew Research Center 1997 Media Report, says that 67 percent of people
questioned think the press tends to favor one side when dealing with political
and social issues. Couple that with our own survey of a cross-section of
1,037 newspaper professionals (the basis of the "Journalists of the ’90s"
report) in which 61 percent identified themselves as "liberal" or "Democrat"
or leaning that way, and you get the picture painted by our critics.
Yet journalists instinctively, passionately dismiss the critics as cranky
conservatives and claim not to be biased. That doesn’t seem to have gotten
us anywhere constructive.
I think we can’t imagine admitting any coverage could be biased because
we think of bias as assuming motive, and, knowing we are pure of heart
and intent, we will not concede our stories could be less than even-handed.
Also, frequently the examples thrown at us by our critics go to a narrow
point on a particularly contentious political or social issue that is easy
to refute. So, feeling smug about winning the narrow point, we don’t put
the larger issue under the microscope for examination.
Even practices that are second nature to us can convey bias to readers.
For example, we regularly choose anecdotes to personalize issues and
bring them to life with real people. But we fail to acknowledge that our
choices may reflect our conclusions. We think this journalistically sound
technique helps make the complex or abstract more understandable. And it
usually does. But during a recent reader panel at The Oregonian, several
readers said they thought it was a way we tilted toward one side. They
cited examples in health care coverage and welfare reform.
"The tendency to personalize one side and not the other gives one side
more credibility, I see that a lot. I see that with welfare reform," one
reader said.
"The day welfare reform passes ... you can just anticipate they are
going to tell the personal anecdotal story. ... Somebody who has just lost
their benefits is going to be affected by this. The fact that a whole lot
of taxpayers are going to be affected in a really small way, that’s a different
story. But it’s equally true. It’s not told the same way."
You don’t have to agree with any particular criticism to conclude that
we cannot improve our credibility with the majority of our public unless
we are willing to examine bias through their lens, not ours.
It may be some of the most difficult work of the credibility project.
And the most important. You can count on having us struggle with this at
the ASNE convention next spring as part of the full-day examination of
credibility.
Let’s don’t buy the beer yet. There’s a lot of work to be done.
Rowe is ASNE president and editor of The Oregonian, Portland.
