“It seems that The Post’s editorial dislike of President George W. Bush has led to making every page of the newspaper an editorial page if the president can be criticized thereby,” writes Phil Sexton of Wellington.
“Friday’s front-page article on the videoconference with troops in Iraq,” he said, “was totally out of place. There is no valid journalistic reason to headline the article ‘ “Scripted” event’s aim: Rally war support.’ Such a headline may be appropriate for a piece on the editorial pages, but is not a news headline. It is without doubt an opinion based on no facts presented in the accompanying article.”
As it happens, the first thing I looked for in that morning’s paper was how the news staff played this politically tricky story. In my view, they nailed it.
The story qualified for the front not only because the administration was touting Saturday’s vote on a constitution as another major milestone justifying the invasion of Iraq. Polls also show that nearly six of 10 Americans believe the war was a mistake. Many readers, aware of the story from TV, would be looking to the newspaper for details. Among the president’s political critics, some would be predisposed to say that the troops were handpicked for their political sympathy with him. And some political supporters were going to say, “There they go hating on Bush again.”
Good newspapers routinely handle such politics with aplomb. Still, I’ve shared readers’ criticism of the press’ timidity toward the president when it was our job to question everything from the fabled weapons of mass destruction to the shifting justifications for the invasion. Here, from headlines to the lead to the rest of the report by Bob Deans of Cox Newspapers’ Washington Bureau, the paper factually described what happened:
“In a choreographed video conference call Thursday to 10 U.S. troops and an Iraqi soldier, President Bush sought to rally U.S. forces in Iraq and highlight the prospects for progress to an increasingly skeptical American public.”
The picture at the fold showed the president facing the screen full of troops. A line above the photo told the main story: “Bush, troops take stage.” The headline below, which Mr. Sexton disliked (” ‘Scripted’ event’s aim: Rally war support”), led readers into the story but did not ignore the story behind it.
My sense is that it saved me a barrage of calls from readers who would have accused the paper of ignoring that aspect. The report specifically quoted questions Mr. Bush asked and the soldiers’ responses. The only real issue of bias, it seems, is why the nation didn’t get to hear the troops from wherever in the political spectrum who question the president’s war and strategies.
Left over from last week is Barbara Buchman’s Oct. 5 note “about the front page and why it cannot be more ‘national’ in content, since there is a ‘Local’ section. I realize it is important to have important local issues on the front page,” she said, “but consider all that is happening in the country, i.e., the Tom DeLay subject for instance, which is a BIG story, and it is buried on the 14th page along with the Judith Miller story. It seems to me that these are very hot issues, and I think many in the media keep ducking them. The shooting at (a suburban Boca Raton) synagogue took up a tremendous amount of space, and although it was shocking, in my opinion it didn’t need front-page headlines. (And I am Jewish.)”
Post Managing Editor Bill Rose noted that the newspaper runs lots of national and international news on the front page. “But because we are the local newspaper of record, we also frequently run important local news stories on our front page. I think that’s good. Lots of readers consistently tell us they consider local news to be very important. And it’s not just us. Newspapers across the country, including the biggest in the business, routinely run local news on their front pages. A newspaper needs to reflect life for its readers and local news is a big part of that life.
“As for the DeLay story,” he said, “we ran the story of his indictment on our front page on Sept. 29. After all, he was forced to step down from his powerful post of House majority leader because of that indictment. In the next few days, we ran at least three more stories inside the A section. Then, when DeLay was indicted yet again, we put it on the front page again on Tuesday, Oct. 4. The indictment of one of the nation’s most powerful officeholders is always big news, and that’s how we played it.
“The DeLay story at question here was about the prosecutor claiming that the new indictment was based on new evidence not on a fear the other charges would be thrown out. Compared to the other stories that day, I didn’t think it was front-page news. It was another, lesser development, and we played it inside the newspaper.
“I think most folks would agree that the synagogue slaying was shocking. It made CNN and other national networks. When someone shoots someone at a special religious service and some folks are so terrified that they first think a terrorist has struck, that’s news. It had implications far beyond the community in which it occurred. And it merits our front page.”
