Published: March 30, 1999
Last Updated: May 20, 1999
Printer-friendly version

ASNE on the move

Dear American Editor:

Your first look at the credibility polling and focusing was excellent (The American Editor, January 1999). It raised questions that later reports may answer.

Among them:

• Are typical readers true apostles of objectivity, or do many of them see bias in fair, balanced news stories that fail to confirm readers’ longstanding biases?
• Do readers welcome opinionated reporting about sports, finance, arts and entertainment, and reject it only in the few pages that deal with politics or backyard stories?
• If analysts and investors insist on 35 percent cash flow and better numbers every quarter, are newspapers in a positions to pay for three or four levels of skilled editors to check, challenge, authenticate, balance, correct and perfect every screenful of copy in every newsroom?
• If fat, famous, fast-selling papers saturate their news columns with reporters’ opinions (occasionally slugged “analysis”), have those papers found the secret of survival?
• If two-thirds of Americans really believe the country is controlled by a tiny group of powerful, untouchable people, what reporting can alter that perception?