News-Record.com

When you can see an article about luggage as having political implications, then YOU are what's wrong with print journalism. James Warren is the personification of "whatsamatta" with print media. Sometimes, it's just a cigar.

However, what I miss in print media is the LACK of opinion in writing that used to be there. We read what happened, not the "take" on it that reporters now include. (The President went to Montana to discuss his social security plan with farmers...as opposed to: The President, after hearing boos for the first time from the liberal side of the aisle, went to a Republican stronghold in the western states to talk about Social Security in front of a hand-picked audience.)

You're right -- the N&R and whatever other % does not cover the White House daily from the inside. But to those certain loud and ubiquitous critics, EVERYONE does. EVERYTHING is about red/blue; rep/dem; for/against. Descartes abounds.

The problem is twofold:

1) There is a bias. It's not pronounced in every story, but it DOES exist. It exists in the way a reporter approaches a story. If it's not direct, it's around the edges. It doesn't always have to do with how the reporter covers the White House. It has to do with the city council meeting or the state house or even the police department. Does the reporter believe himself/herself that there is a problem with entitlements or a welfare state? If not, you're not going to get the same coverage on an issue about those types of things than if there was a reporter who believed there was a problem. Everything reporters do depends on what THEY think. They decide what sources to call. They decide how much credence to lend to a point of view.

2) Newspapers have focused too much on trying to "move stories forward." Because newspapers deliver little or no real NEW news each day, they feel compelled to provide context. "If we can't tell them something they don't already know, let's be forward-looking." Well, that gets in you in trouble, because it calls for speculation and that means figuring out what kind/type of speculation to include. I have sat in HUNDREDS (yes, hundreds) of newspaper news budget meetings in which that is the discussion about a story. "Let's move this forward." It is a doomed strategy.

Thanks, Sue and Jim. I think that if our editorial page were conservative, many people would think the entire paper is. I got a call last week complaining that we didn't reprint President Bush's State of the Union because we were biased against him. We haven't reprinted any president's State of the Union for at least 15 years. Heck, the Wall Street Journal didn't even reprint the speech.

I can't remember any complaint about a local story being slanted in favor of a liberal outlook, unless it involved national politics. And we write so rarely about national politics in the news sections. So, what about all those local stories? Bias against the Jaycees on A1 this morning? Bias in Jim Schlosser's column? For or against Bostic Construction? Is it liberal or conservative?

I think Sue's got a point. If you're inclined to think in terms of red state-blue state, then that's the primary prism you use to view everything.

Actually, I'll take issue with Jim's assessment of how reporters think. My observations, going back to Reagan's first term when "dismantling big government" first got on the table for serious discussion, are that reporters frequently get ACCUSED of "supporting the welfare state" or "supporting big government" when where they're actually coming from is, "If it's worth government's doing, then it's worth government's funding it adequately, and if it's not worth government's doing, then why don't you just say so?"

In other words, want to kill a program or agency? Fine by me; make your case. Grownups don't starve an agency or program and then belittle it for not doing as good a job as it could. Politicians, on the other hand, do this all the time.

Good points Lex. You seem to take the rational approach.

But, even your approach leaves lots of room for latitude: what does "adequately" mean? I might think that it is being funded adequately, but there is waste in the system or that there are large ineffiencies causing it not to work.

You might think it is funded inadquately and take that approach in your stories and reporting that it is not.

"Adequately" is a somewhat subjective and context-sensitive term, certainly. But there's room in most such situations for rational people of good will to come to some level of agreement on what that term might mean.

Dismissing out-of-hand any reporters who ask questions of would-be budget-cutters as "supporters of big government" is not rational. And yet that's the typical (yea, verily, knee-jerk) response.