Politicians would like to control newspaper
Getting caught in the middle of a verbal battle is not exactly a pleasant experience. The war of words for the upcoming May 20 primary election has already begun. As usual, the newspaper will be a target for both sides to attack.
We may have plenty of experience, unfortunately, from being verbally assaulted by various individuals and political groups in previous election campaigns, but that doesn’t make it any easier to endure.
When emotions run high, the extreme intensity level of the participants sometimes pushes the meter into the red zone.
People begin shouting. Tempers flare. Demands are made. Pressure is applied.
Let’s hope that our Founding Fathers, George Washington and John Adams, were wrong when they said partisan politics would be a serious threat to the survival of our democracy.
Washington and Adams, who were elected to the presidency on their own merits without a party label, believed politicians would be more concerned about the welfare of their parties, putting the interest of the party above the needs of the nation.
Newspapers, of course, have played a role in the election process from the days of the Revolution until now. The verbal battles were as intense in 1776 as they are today. Not much has really changed.
Politics can bring out the best and worst in some people. It is during those times that those responsible for distributing information to the voters can be viewed as the enemy.
Allegations of biased news coverage are as predictable as next year’s snowstorm. Those political partisans seldom see any significance in the fact that both sides always register complaints of stories being slanted or biased against their candidates.
Which raises this point. If we are intentionally favoring one party over the other, or one candidate for another, why do both sides accuse us of favoring the other? If you think about that, the complaint really doesn’t make sense.
Commonsense, however, is seldom found in a political campaign. The pressure builds as each day passes. The intensity, and the sensitivity to news coverage, steadily increases every day.
This frequently creates an atmosphere where complaints are common. The candidates often become suspicious and slightly paranoid. We’ve had episodes when candidates would count the number of words in a news story about their opponent, and demand that they be given an equal number of words.
Other complaints have focused on the location of stories on a page, headlines, the size of headlines, the number of photos of a candidate, and the size of the photos in the paper. The list of comparisons can be rather lengthy.
Then there are the phone calls to the owners of the newspaper alleging biased news coverage, to the publisher complaining about the editor, to the editor complaining about the reporter, to the reporter complaining about the headlines. It is not uncommon for pressure to be brought, at one time or the other, on almost everyone at the newspaper.
The threats can range from bringing pressure to have the editor fired, to canceling a subscription, to filing a lawsuit. Unfortunately, such unpleasant activities are far too common in local election campaigns.
As usual, this leaves the newspaper in the center of the political storms. Ninety-nine percent of the time we become attack targets simply because we provide news coverage of events that we did not initiate and that we cannot control.
Those who seek to control, censor or restrict the news coverage never seem to grasp the consequences of what they are trying to do.
If they were able to force the newspaper to provide what they judge to be favorable news coverage of their party or candidate, and ban so-called negative stories, how could they ever be certain about anything else the newspaper reported was true or accurate?
Who should control the news coverage, the stories, the headlines, and the photos? Only those with powerful political party connections? Editors and reporters are far from perfect. But as long as we have the freedom to choose, the choice is obvious.
Mike Ellis is the editor of the Herald-Standard. His e-mail address is: mellis@heraldstandard.com.