I Cogitate

Writer wrong to paint journalists with same brush

John Winn Miller
Publisher’s Notebook
March 21, 2006

Cal Thomas, you’ve made me mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.

I’m tired of hearing radical columnists like you besmirch the good men and women who struggle daily to put out the very best newspaper they can.

Once again you’ve trotted out that stale cliche that newspapers like mine are undermined by what you claim is a liberal bias.

I know I can’t change your mind. But I’ll be doggone if I’m going to let your slander of my colleagues go unchallenged anymore.

Your complaint in a column that The Olympian ran Sunday is that journalists hold different values than a majority of Americans. Your cure? Have an affirmative action program to “aggressively seek out more conservative reporters and editors who will report more stories that reflect something other than a consistently liberal point of view.”

There’s a problem with your solution, though. You cited a recent survey of journalists that showed that only 6 percent of them believe that faith in God is necessary to being moral.

What you failed to mention is that the vast majority of self-described “conservative journalists” agreed with their liberal brethren about this in the survey by Project of Journalism Excellence. So adding conservative journalists wouldn’t fix what you perceive to be a serious disconnect between journalists and the public...

...At the same time, we are acutely aware of the need to be fair. We seek all sides to a story. We agonize every day on whether we have been balanced in our coverage. No one is harder on editors for mistakes or bias than editors.

Since I’ve been here, I’ve had left-wing protesters at my door and right-wing protesters cancel their subscriptions. That’s how I know we are being fair.

We do not — we cannot — wear our religion or political views on our sleeves. That doesn’t make us less moral than you.

It does, however, make us better journalists.

"If cable networks do the same thing at the Republican convention and interrupt or not cover Republicans, I think the conservatives out there, especially those who are fans of this network are going to scream and yell. So if you're going to be fair and balanced, I think you have not to cover at least as much of the Republican speakers as you've not covered of the Democratic speakers."

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