Is the N&O a shill for the right wing? That criticism would surprise a lot of our readers, but it’s one being made lately by some folks who see excessive attention to the conservative John Locke Foundation in the pages of The News & Observer.
James Protzman of Chapel Hill says he did an analysis of N&O articles over the last several years and found 346 mentions of the Locke Foundation, compared with 19 of N.C. Policy Watch, a liberal think tank. “In other words,” he said, “the N&O relies on reports and opinion from JLF’s right-wing pundits 18 times more often than it does on opinion from thought leaders on the other side. Now that’s what I call fair and balanced.”
His findings are discussed on BlueNC.com, a self-described progressive Web site founded by Protzman and others.
There are some fallacies to this comparison. One is that many of those mentions of the Locke organization in The N&O are not positive. Another is that the Locke Foundation and Policy Watch aren’t comparable. The well-funded Locke group has a staff of 28 that cranks out reports, analysis, commentary and e-mails every day. N.C. Policy Watch is a small operation that advocates progressive positions but generates little original information.
Still, I think Protzman’s criticism merits closer attention, both because it’s getting interest among other readers and, more importantly, because the Locke Foundation is a phenomenon that is having significant impact on policy in North Carolina. Is it affecting The N&O?
I would say, yes. I did my own analysis of Locke stories in The N&O and found 65 references this year through August. About a third were routine, such as listings of public events, that I wouldn’t consider news coverage. Some were letters to the editor and op-ed pieces on the opinion pages.
Many references, 27 by my count, were in stories or columns that quoted the Locke Foundation, its staff and its steady stream of reports, commentary and analysis, all designed to push policy-making to the right.
John Hood, the foundation’s ever-quotable president, makes no apologies for that and indeed, says one reason for his organization’s creation “was to ensure that the public policy discussion includes these conservative views.” But he says media manipulation is not part of the plan.
“If your goal is just to get the conservative message out, that will not be effective,” he said. “What I try to encourage my staff to do is to provide usefulness and value to journalists seeking to provide balance in coverage of public policy issues.”
Rob Christensen, the N&O’s longtime political correspondent, says the paper does make more of an effort these days to include conservative views in its coverage, and the go-to voice often is the Locke Foundation. “I don’t think we have been listing to the right, and I don’t think the majority of our readers think that. But it is true that we do quote the Locke Foundation people in some of our stories. I think it is important that we have conservative voices in our stories. I think that adds to our credibility.”
Christensen notes that he has quoted Hood only twice in stories this year. One was in an extensive profile of the Locke Foundation’s financial godfather, businessman/politician Art Pope, that examined Pope’s conservative political empire, which Christensen called “Pope Political, Inc.”
The John Locke views also appear in The N&O’s opinion pages. The paper this year has published six letters to the editor and two op-ed pieces from Locke employees. Allen Torrey, op-ed editor, says he doesn’t consider those numbers disproportionate to the thousands of letters and hundreds of opinion pieces he runs each year. The paper also has published a number of letters critical of the Locke Foundation.
Some readers detect a Lockean flavor to the opinion columns of contributing columnist Rick Martinez.
Martinez has no direct relationship with the Locke Foundation, but his wife works there as an associate editor of its monthly newspaper, Carolina Journal. Torrey says there is normally no need to disclose what Martinez’s wife does for a living, unless he’s writing about the Locke Foundation.
Actually, Martinez did refer to the foundation in two columns, without disclosing his personal relationship. He told me that he treats the Locke Foundation like any other information source. “I’m very sensitive to that. I treat the John Locke Foundation just like I do the Common Sense Foundation and all the rest. I view them as a resource.”
The argument is made that one reason for the Locke Foundation’s high profile in the news pages is that it is the dominant player on the conservative side of North Carolina policy debate. On the other side is a constellation of liberal/progressive interest groups – N.C. Policy Watch, the N.C. Justice Center, Democracy North Carolina, the Common Sense Foundation and others – that individually don’t have as much heft but collectively get newspaper attention.
Chris Fitzsimon, director of Policy Watch, acknowledges as much, but he also says the Locke Foundation’s size and media savvy give it an advantage with the media. “I think the Locke Foundation is given an aura of credibility that they don’t really deserve.” That’s a function, he says, of the frequency of coverage of the Locke organization and a failure by reporters to assess closely its information.
My own view is that The N&O would not be serving its readers well if it ignored or downplayed the Locke Foundation. By virtue of generous funding, professional organization and aggressive leadership, it is a big player in North Carolina policy debate and warrants coverage as such.
But the newspaper also should bring the same skepticism to the Locke information machine that it does to other powerful institutions. Reporters should resist the temptation to go to Hood and Co. for the easy conservative quote and look instead for other voices from the right. The Locke Foundation reports and other information should be scrutinized to separate propaganda from fact. And the organization should be regarded not just as a resource — a word used both by Christensen and Martinez — but as an opinion manufacturer that is itself a story.
