Back when I was a reporter for the Rochester (NY) Democrat and Chronicle, our city editor once did an informal poll on our internal e-mail system as to what reporters and editors thought about the topic of abortion.
Not all the reporters and editors responded, but of those who did, there was a large number (including me) who were pro-choice and one brave lonely individual who was pro-life.
I recalled this the other day when I read that the University of Colorado Board of Regents intended to conduct a survey to determine whether conservatives and conservative viewpoints were underrepresented on the university’s faculty.
In the case of the D&C newsroom, I think our near-unanimity was a handicap in doing justice to both sides. We all tried to be as fair to all points of view as we could, but you never know what you are unconsciously taking for granted until you interact with someone whose assumptions are different.
I don’t what could have been done about this imbalance. Nobody asked my political opinions when I was interviewed for the job. I don’t think that would have been a proper question to ask, any more than a question about my religion. If a newspaper were ever to start an intentional policy of hiring more conservatives and Republicans, what they would get is a lot of opportunists claiming to be whatever they thought would get them hired.
It is a fact of life that certain occupations attract certain types of people, and it is also a fact of life that working in certain occupations gives you a certain point of view. I doubt you would find, to pick a few random examples, that the political opinions of military officers, climate scientists, engineers or bankers necessarily represent a cross-section of the population.
Looking back on my own work, I think I was biased not so much liberal or conservative as biased toward the point of view of the people I covered—in my case, the Rochester business community. This is an old and familiar tendency in newspaper work. The sports writer becomes a fan of the home team, the police reporter take on the point of view of the police, the political reporter starts to think of herself as a political insider.
The answer is not to try to correct a bias with a corresponding opposite bias, and certainly not to put journalism under the supervision of politicians, but to strive for professionalism, which means reporting the relevant facts as accurately and completely as you can, stating opposing views fairly and being willing to acknowledge errors and inconvenient truths.
I don’t in fact think we did a bad job of covering the abortion issue. Both sides complained about our coverage in about equal measure.
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Click on University of Colorado plan to survey political climate draws mixed reactions for a report on the Colorado regents’ plan. I found the link on the Unqualified Offerings web log. I agree with “Thoreau” on Class is a battlefield and Samuel Goldman of The American Conservative on Trolling for Conservatives.
What do you think?
Phil Ebersole's Blog 