Astroturf has become a growing problem for newspapers. You may know it as that fake grass used at some sports stadiums. But in newspaper jargon, it’s the term applied to canned letters-to-the-editor that purport to express a grass-roots opinion.
As the name implies, those letters are not the real thing. For the most part, they are not written by the individuals who sign them. Instead, they are the work of organizations that have made the same letters widely available to others in an orchestrated effort to sway public opinion.
Those who feel strongly about a topic usually something fraught with political implications often write letters to the editor to get their views across. But instead of being original, some readers rely on a form letter to make their point either because the canned letter expresses their feelings or because they cannot better express themselves.
Editors frown on canned letters because of the lack of originality even though they ostensibly express the writer’s opinion. Editors also object to them because they are part of an organized campaign.
“It’s a problem letters editors throughout the nation are aware of and bemoan,” said Beth Barber, who last week joined The San Diego Union-Tribune as letters editor.
She said form letters are often found on an organization’s Web site. “People go to a Web site, copy the form and e-mail it off and think they can get away with it,” she said.
While it’s The San Diego Union-Tribune’s policy not to print form letters, they are not ignored entirely, said Bill Osborne, senior editor for Opinion. They are included in the box scores that appear on Saturdays that tell readers the total number of letters received in a week and the hottest topics.
Some form letters are “from people in San Diego who have taken the time to assemble a letter and send it to us. It represents their point of view, and that’s a legitimate matter,” Osborne said.
So why not print the canned letters if they legitimately express a person’s opinion? Osborne said the Union-Tribune receives literally hundreds of letters per week and “we can only publish a handful” each day. “We want to give priority to those people who actually craft the letter on their own.”
Readers who are frustrated because they write frequently and haven’t had their letters published appreciate how stiff the competition is to get an opinion printed. Only about 10 percent of all letters to the editor are selected for publication. It’s no wonder editors want to give preference to original letters.
“Once you become aware it’s a campaign, organized and orchestrated in some way, you cut them off,” said Barber. She said it’s not enough for a letter writer to include a single original phrase or sentence.
Don Sevrens, a news editor for Opinion who assists in editing letters to the editor, said in the past six months, The San Diego Union-Tribune has received about 300 canned letters. That figure includes letters that differed somewhat in content but that contained key phrases that tipped editors off that an organized campaign was under way.
Sevrens said some of the form letters to the Union-Tribune came from the Republican National Committee and Planned Parenthood. There also was an organized effort to oppose drilling offshore that came from communities along the California coast. Locally, he said, residents of North County objected to a road closure and engaged in an orchestrated letter-writing campaign. One of those form letters slipped into the paper because the person doing the letters that week was not aware of the organized effort.
But, as far as Osborne and others in the Opinion department know, that’s the extent of those kinds of letters printed in the Union-Tribune. Much to the embarrassment of editors at some other newspapers, canned letters went undetected and were printed. In some instances, the same letter appeared in more than one newspaper.
Now that editors are aware of how pervasive the practice has become, they communicate with each other through a Web site when they want to know if anyone else has received a letter they are considering for publication but that appears suspicious.
Organized campaigns to sway public opinion are nothing new, of course. When I first started as readers representative 11 years ago, it was not uncommon to receive preprinted postcard after postcard that differed from one another only in the signature of the sender.
Since the Internet and proliferation of Web sites, the orchestrated campaigns have become more sophisticated. Access to canned letters may be obtained simply by going to a Web site, copying the letter and e-mailing it to a newspaper. But some, who may get the letter from a Web site, don’t use e-mail to send it to a newspaper. They send it via the U.S. Postal Service. Those letters are subject to the same screening as e-mailed letters and, once detected, have the same likelihood for publication zero.
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Gina Lubrano’s column commenting on the media appears Mondays. It is the policy of The San Diego Union-Tribune to correct all errors. To discuss accuracy or fairness in the news, please write to Gina Lubrano, readers representative, Box 120191, San Diego, CA 92112-0191, or telephone (619) 293-1525. Send e-mail to:
readers.rep@uniontrib.com.
