Newspaper War degenerates into Bias War
Denver CO is blessed with two regional daily newspapers, the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post. A few years ago the two papers realized that they were killing each other, and merged their operations. They share production and business facilities, but editorially they are independent of each other– not Independent with a capital I, because the Post is owned by Media News Group and the News is owned by E.W. Scripps. Editorially they compete with each other five days a week, but on weekends there is only a single paper, the News on Saturdays and the Post on Sundays. On each of those days the paper is subtitled with the other paper’s name, and each contains a single editorial page from the other. The Joint Operating Agreement concluded a newspaper war that had raged in Denver for over a hundred years.
Lately writers for the Post and News have been accusing each other of political bias, and published “scientific” analyses of content to support their claim. The analysis consisted of counting editorials and columns as either liberal or conservative– although one of the “analysts” (News Columnist Dave Kopel) said he thought it better to use the terms “left” and “right” because: “many leftists today are not liberal (that is, open-minded and tolerant). Likewise, many rightists today are not conservative (that is, cautious about changing things; George Bush’s foreign policy aims for radical change, the opposite of conservatism).”
A little bias is showing there already because while he is correct in principle, he has used a pejorative description of those on the left and a neutral if not actually supportive description of those on the right. After all, it’s not just Bush’s foreign policy that is aimed at radical change. Radical change is hardly at odds with conservatism, if we’re talking about a change from open-minded and tolerant policies to narrow-minded and intolerant ones. But there is method to Kopel’s madness… if he can get away with defining the left and right as simply being for or against radical change, then he has laid the groundwork for classifying editors and columnists any way he likes, or more “liberally” if we can be forgiven the pun.
In conducting his analysis, Kopel classifies the columnists and counts how many times they “appear” each week. Then he classifies the in-house editorials as either left- or right-biased. By “in-house” he means editorials that are written by local staff of either paper. This is an important distinction because a significant portion (from time to time a majority) of editorials are syndicated, that is, provided to the newspaper by their distant owners. The average reader does not know (or care) who wrote an editorial, and the cumulative impression of those editorials, whatever the source, is the usual measure of bias. If the syndicated editorials have a demonstrated bias, it is unfair to exclude them from the analysis. In fact they are consistently conservative, representing the opinions of those who own the newspapers, and occasionally are at odds with the local editors.
But that doesn’t allow Kopel to “prove” enough bias at the Post– he decides to include editorial cartoons. And “the pro-left imbalance becomes even greater if you also look at the business, sports and entertainment columnists.”
“A good newspaper doesn’t necessarily have to be balanced,” Kopel says. “On the other hand, a paper that aspires to reflect its state (as the News and Post both claim to do) should strive not only for racial-gender-sexual orientation diversity, but also for intellectual diversity.”
Woah there, big fella! Intellectual diversity? We see a new form of “affirmative action” looming on the horizon. For every intelligent writer a newspaper hires, they must also hire a dumb guy. Did he mean political diversity, or diversity of opinion? If so, he’s getting awfully close to endorsing the right-wing campaign to purge the college campuses of “liberal thinkers.”
The real story of this little bias war is that staff of the News was so incensed at accurate allegations of bias that they felt a need to demonstrate how the Post is even more biased, and to the opposite side! What a surprise! In reality, it’s just a tempest in a teacup. In classical propaganda terms, the “bias war” is a distractor, or creation of an artificial issue for people to focus on and take their attention off something else.
Newspaper columnists and editors are supposed to be biased. The non-advertising content of a newspaper fits into one of three categories: news, features, and opinions. News articles are “supposed” to follow a strict formula of fact-reporting, without any bias or shading by the writer. Features are more like magazine articles; they are supposed to be entertaining as well as informative, and the writer has a little more license and can exercise a little creativity. Opinion pieces, including editorials, columns, and cartoons,are meant to persuade. You expect an opinion writer to have an opinion, and that’s why you read him! Nobody expects any particular journalistic standards in “letters to the editor,” but the editor has absolute power over what letters get printed. On any given issue, he might pick three letters that support his opinion, and one from the opposite side for “balance.” In choosing the “opposition letter” he can usually find one that makes the opposite side look stupid.
Where bias is a problem is in the reporting of news, and that is what the “bias war” is taking our attention away from. There shouldn’t be any bias in new reporting, period. But both Denver papers engage is deliberate manipulation of news stories, every day, as we have demonstrated in Sten Gazette several times. Sometimes they don’t even know they are doing it, as when they print external “wire service” stories that are already twisted. Those account for the vast majority of non-local news stories, and we’ll talk about them another time.
If you want news that is unbiased, undistorted, factual, and timely– if you want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth– which of these papers should you be reading? It doesn’t matter! Actual news is way down on a newspaper’s list of priorities, and if you are looking for news you probably shouldn’t be wasting time wading through five pounds of ads and opinions. If you are looking for entertainment, or reinforcement of your own personal opinions, then you can choose one paper or the other depending on which way it leans. Except, of course, on Saturday and Sunday when you don’t have a choice.
–SG
What do you think? Please enter a comment below.
March 28th, 2005 at 2:54 pm
Here’s what’s going on: the “silent majority,” of average or below-average intelligence, religious (primarily Christian) fundamentalists, have been turned into an ever-sharper tool by the crafty power elite to pare away the most-valuable, top layer of our society’s creative, articulate, intelligent, diverse thinkers and producers so they can control all things. Woe be unto us unless we can come up with some way to halt, or slow this juggernaut. I’m scared for our children - really scared.
March 29th, 2005 at 9:54 am
I “want news that is unbiased, undistorted, factual, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”, is there any where these days I can get this type of news? My assumption is that there is not, but maybe someone has some suggestions of news sources that are close?
March 30th, 2005 at 10:00 pm
Your assumption is correct, to the extent that there is no SINGLE source for all the news you might care to read. We will be devoting an entire article to this subject soon, but if you’d rather not wait, we’d suggest taking a look at Reuters. or look for it on our Links page. Reuters is international and independent. The RNC hates them, which is a pretty good recommendation in our view. Read their history and policy pages, then for the heck of it compare to AP which is owned by “member” newspapers and UPI which is owned or at least controlled by religious interests. CNN is the best of the bunch on TV, but that’s not saying much, and their web-site probably prints as many AP articles as in-house. Here at SG we check BBC News headlines several times a day, but their “Americas” coverage is limited– interesting point of view when it happens, though.