Bias, Dumb, or What?
My blog buddy Banjo Jones, who would probably be a drinking buddy save for the fact that driving home drunk from the greater Brazosport area is a very bad idea for the Kevster, sends along the link to this column from Star-Telegram reader rep David House:
Some readers who believe the Star-Telegram splatters the paper with left-wing bias got an edition dripping with proof last Monday. Or so they felt.
What they actually received was proof of momentary blind spots in our editing process, the subjective nature of our work and an example of the perils of newspapering in this age of media-bashing.
It all began at the top of Monday's Page One, where we promoted Life & Arts' light-hearted comparison of Vice President Dick Cheney and Sen. John Edwards, the presumptive Democratic candidate for vice president.
Some readers found outrageous bias in the promo strip's pictures of the candidates. There was Edwards on the left end of the promo, flashing a cherubic smile, while Cheney glared sourly from the right end -- clearly, some readers concluded, a deliberate twist in using facial expressions to manipulate sympathies.
Turning to the Life & Arts package, readers found another loaded situation: a package headlined "Veep vs. Veep."
A large illustration combined already-existing stock Knight Ridder caricatures of Edwards and Cheney, both smiling. However, Cheney held a leaky oil barrel under one arm; Edwards was drawn simply as a preppy Mr. Smiley Guy.
Readers felt, and rightfully so, that the illustration demonized Cheney as a big-oil czar but presented Edwards as an innocent pretty boy, ignoring his law career and connections with powerful trial lawyers.
"You should've drawn [Edwards] chasing ambulances," one reader complained.
Not only that, but the first lines in the text of the comparison referred to Cheney as an "oldish 63" and Edwards as a "youngish 51." Readers protested the descriptions as ageism.
Angry readers barraged our Customer Service representatives and me, the reader advocate, with phone calls and e-mails that ranged from reasoned chastisement to furious denunciation and a few cancellations of subscriptions to (in those people's words) a "liberal rag."
I don't know that I'm buying into this. The choice of photos was unfortunate, but was it bias or just a little clueless? I dunno. I look at my favorite list of bias indicators, and I'm not so sure.
It's good, though, that the newspaper is being responsive to reader allegations of bias, and it's also good that they have a reader advocate who actually addresses readers and issues, unlike invisible Comical reader rep James T. Campbell.
One thing I've discovered from my dabbling in things over at CB is that readers are sometimes a little quick to cry bias (pot calling kettle? maybe). Indeed, it gets easy to read bias INTO writing when that's what you're trying to do. One has to be extremely careful not to do that. It helps to have hung out with Straussians (who would have a heart attack over ideological perversion of "the text" -- any text), but it still doesn't make one infallible.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 07/19/04 21:16 | Other | Technorati
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Comments
Liberal universities + liberal newsrooms = journalists who just think that way. IMHO it is bias if journalists do it intentionally. Unfortunately, many times what is called bias is really just the way those people think. And also lazy, sloppy reporting.
Like that NYT columnist who famously said she couldn't understand how Richard Nixon got reelected since she didn't know anyone who voted for him. They just don't have a view of the world that includes other ideas.
Posted by Anne @ 08:02 on 07/20/04
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