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Just before Super Tuesday, two editors of major newspapers in Colorado urged their staffers to stay away from the Colorado caucuses. Kelli Mc Bride, an ethics expert at the Poynter Institute, argued in favor of this traditional policy:
"It's a tough spot for the head of a newsroom to be in. You can't prevent an employee from exercising a constitutional right. But you can minimize staffers' involvement in political coverage if they have created a perception of bias or a conflict of interest."
But many journalists and bloggers are saying that it's time for change. My own view is that newsroom leaders should think of better ways to help their audience understand the real sources of bias in news coverage. Communication researches will readily report that those reasons are structural, not ideological.
Here's Robert Niles from the Online Journalism Review:
"Asking journalists to remain silent on politics cheats readers by promoting the idea that a well-informed, "objective" source will have nothing to say about which candidates for elected office offer the best hope for a community. If a "reporter's got nothing to say, why should anyone read him/her?
"Furthermore, it's hard to rest any non-participation policy on the need for "objectivity" when there's a such a schism in America today over what "objectivity" even means."
Heather Colvin wants us to remember that journalists are people, too:
The important thing to note is the difference between journalists and good journalists. Until someone steps behind an anchor desk, microphone, or sits down at a keyboard to convey news to a group of people with the assumption of an unbiased view resting on their shoulders, then their just people. But once they have their "journalist cap" on, pardon the use of a ridiculous image, then their opinions need to be null, their position neutral and their first loyalty should be to their readers. Good journalists understand that no one cares about their opinion."
In an interview with BlogHer last summer, National Public Radio host Michel Martin votes, but doesn't register with a party:
"[Y]ou know those journalists who say they don't vote in elections because they want to be so pure? I think that that's ridiculous, the idea that I'm going to give up my franchise.
Now, I don't register a political party, because I feel that's appropriate, even though that does effectively franchise me in the District of Columbia. That's a sacrifice I'm willing to make. But what I'm not willing to do is not vote at all."
According to a 2006 study, US journalists who report a party affiliation are as likely to be Republicans as Democrats. While the researchers found journalists describing themselves as "slightly more liberal" than the electorate as a whole, most of the differences are fairly small.
Rhetoric scholar and blogger Andrew Cline concisely identifies some of the biases that really affect news coverage:
"Is the news media biased toward liberals? Yes. Is the news media biased toward conservatives? Yes. These questions and answers are uninteresting because it is possible to find evidence--anecdotal and otherwise--to "prove" media bias of one stripe or another. Far more interesting and instructive is studying the inherent, or structural, biases of journalism as a professional practice--especially as mediated through television. I use the word "bias" here to challenge its current use by partisan critics. A more accepted, and perhaps more accurate, term would be 'frame.'"
Cline's long list of factors that tend to bias news coverage includes:
1. A bias in favor of stories with strong visual elements (in television, especially0
2. A bias in favor of what's current.
3. A proclivity to report bad news
4. A tendency to fit a story into a predetermined narrative.
I am a journalist. I am a lifelong registered Democrat. I don't have an ethical obligation to pretend that I don't have opinions. My obligation is to expose myself to a variety of views in order to "x-ray my blind spots," as journalism scholar Michael Bugeja argues. This, I do gladly, and the public has a right to hold me to it. But that is as far as I am willing to go.
