Our Blog: where do you stand?
Next Entry | Previous Entry | All Blog Entries | Subscribe to Feed
Newspapers debate their own ethical dilemmas
By: Maya Lunnemann | 10/24/2008
Steve Parker, deputy managing editor for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, is following in the footsteps of the Knoxville News Sentinel and asking his readers to debate about the ethics of newspapers endorsing a presidential candidate. The News Sentinel raises the following points:
Arguments in favor of continuing the tradition: Our editorial board follows the news closely, is well-informed on the issues and has a strong sense of the community, so our opinion is useful to readers. Endorsements, like all editorials, help spark debate and discussion, an essential part of the democratic process.
Arguments against continuing the tradition: We don't interview the presidential candidates, as we do the candidates for local and state offices, and, in this digital age, we have no special access to information about them. Presidential endorsements contribute to the polarization in our society and tend to aggravate readers and lead them to believe our coverage is biased.
Where do you stand on this ethical dilemma? Do you want your hometown newspapers or national media outlets endorsing political candidates?
Posted in Reputation Management
Dwight Wannabe says:
Fri, October 24, 2008 at 2:28:pm
My first instinct is “YEEEEEESSSSS! For the love of all that is HOLY, dump that silly, polarizing tradition! Has anybody in the past 30 years changed their vote because the editor of the local paper favored a candidate?”
But…
After mulling the nuances for a little while, I admit endorsements do have a raison d’etre.
They can be—in and of themselves—a welcome disclaimer of bias.
Kind of like when you listen to a political call-in show and the first thing out of the callers’ mouth is the preface: “I’m a lifelong ____________, but…” It represents the instinct to declare inherent bias in an effort to move past cynicism and wrestle with the More Salient Point at Hand.
In the case of a newspaper (such as the Post-Dispatch) which would endorse Joseph Stalin’s Wemaraner if it ran for office with a D printed after it’s name on the ballot, 60 years of solid Democrat endorsements are an important disclaimer to the reader of the page 14 blurb who is trying to figure out what did or did not happen at the Podunk Suburb town counsel meeting Wednesday night.
Those newspapers intellectually honest enough to endorse across the ideological spectrum deserve the cache that SHOULD belong to those 4th Estate institutions who value the dusty lessons of objectivity taught in J-School.
Soon enough it won’t matter a whit. Newspapers will be relics, and we’ll all dial into our segmented, customized version of news truth.
Q: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
A: Fewer and fewer people/subscriptions every day.
Mr. Newspaper Editor, you did it to yourself. You stopped demanding your staff write “THE Truth” and degenerated into just another medium writing “A Truth.” I can get “A Truth” for free with the click of a mouse. The only reason I have left to buy a paper is Dilbert, and you shrank the only selling point your paper has until I have to read it with a philatelic magnifying glass. Hmmm. I’ll wait a week and get that on line too.
I’d sooner buy a buggy whip.
——-