THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 18, 1996 TAG: 9608170020
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: LYNN FEIGENBAUM
LENGTH: 122 lines
``Covering politics is always like sprinting through a minefield, but in an election year, the mines are more powerful and there are more of them. A false step can mean trouble.''
Henry McNulty, 1988, then ombudsman at The Hartford (Conn.) Courant
Any political gathering is a surefire bet to make a public editor feel like a spectator at a ping-pong match. Witness these comebacks to The Pilot's coverage of the Republican Convention:
Caller A: ``The Republicans are making a big to-do about nothing, because they're going nowhere this year. Even so, the newspaper always seem to be for the Republicans.'' PING!
Caller B: ``Your news seems to be heavily biased towards the liberal point of view - you should try to be more middle of the road, more even handed, more pro-Republican.'' PONG!
Caller C: ``I'm just curious why the newspaper would send a liberal up to the San Diego convention when you know he's going to write what he thinks and not actual facts. . . I'm talking about Guy Friddell.'' PING!
Caller D says Guy Friddell's last two columns have been ``sustenance'' to her. She thinks he's great and wanted to let him know it! PONG!
And so it goes. Political Ping-Pong Syndrome was most noticable in 1994, when Oliver North was running for the U.S. Senate from Virginia. A story that was anti-North treason to one Pilot reader was pro-North propaganda to another.
This dichotomy is a familiar one to public editors, particularly at election time. But the pluses and minuses don't entirely cancel each other out.
When a battle loomed over the Republicans' stand on abortion, both sides were pictured at the top of the Pilot's Aug. 7 front page: A woman carrying a sign saying ``Yank the Plank'' and another with the sign ``If the babies go, I go.'' Both were above the banner headline, ``Dole tries to calm abortion storm.''
One reader saw the entire presentation as divisive. ``What storm?'' he asked. ``Let's be careful of the words we're using here. . . I think that they're getting along better than the Democratic Party.''
Another noted that when a compromise was reached on the abortion issue, that story didn't even make the front page.
``So much for balanced reporting,'' he wrote. ``I guess I should be happy that the paper at least put the article in the first section and not in the comics section with `Doonesbury'. . . ''
Yet another reader was disturbed by Wednesday's reporting on the convention, which emphasized the GOP attacks on the Democratic incumbent.
``I cannot find one positive platform statement or concept,'' she said, ``but at least 12 negative comments that the Republicans used against Clinton.''
The caller also found negativity in the newspaper's vocabulary, such as referring to the ``GOP's calculated pitch'' and, on a comment headline, ``With scripts in hand, GOP bring us doses of boredom.''
As I see it, media coverage would be pretty boring if we didn't have political observers telling it like they think it is. We don't have to agree.
News reporting is something else. Loaded words like ``pitch'' and ``gimmick'' bring with them that aura of bias.
I was on vacation during a big chunk of the GOP convention, so I missed most of the TV and newspaper coverage. But looking back at a week of Pilots, I found the stories, and presentation, relatively balanced.
If the abortion debate was overplayed, then Monday's lead A1 story, ``Joyful GOP takes center stage,'' was dutifully exuberant - complete with the red, white and blue photo of fireworks exploding in San Diego.
Readers are often concerned about bias, pro or con. I see a different peril - being too cynical or too ga-ga. As the ombudsman wrote, ``A false step can mean trouble.''
Spelling it out. I'll let Guy Friddell defend his political views but I feel a need to clear up unwarranted charges that the Pilot columnist literally made chopped liver of his spelling.
In a column last weekend, he referred to Colin Powell giving Democrats the ``coup de gras.'' Ouch! That should, of course, be coup de grace - unless Powell planned to make pate de foie gras of the Democrats.
As one caller said, in reporting this egregious lapse, ``I had to make a call in order to get my teeth unclenched.''
Well, don't get lockjaw on Friddell's account. He dictated the column from San Diego and apparently something went wrong with the spelling on this side of the country.
But Friddell does put editors to the challenge. In a story Thursday, he said that Bob Dole ``shrinks from expatiating on his own virtues.''
Glad I didn't have to type that one in. It might have come out expaysheeating . . .
A halo for Pat Robertson? That's what some readers saw when they looked at the Pilot's front page on Aug. 7.
The story was about the American Bar Association granting full accreditation to the Regent University School of Law. And with it was a photo of Robertson, a white circle behind his head.
One reader was delighted by the photo (``It really made my day!'') while another found it a ``bit much.''
It shouldn't have been either. Photographer Bill Tiernan says the halo was a window in the back of the moot courtroom at Regent where the podium was set up.
The KKK: not entertaining. About a half dozen readers had a problem with last weekend's Sunday Break feature, ``The Bible & The Klan,'' a wire piece from Knight-Ridder Newspapers.
The story's lead-in stated: ``The KKK is increasingly turning to scripture to legitimize its message of racial hatred.''
Some callers objected to that premise. Others had a problem with a story of this nature appearing in what they see as an entertainment section.
``That seems to really trivialize the issue,'' said one woman. ``The Sunday Break section always has things for fun ways to spend your weekend, places to go, travel.''
Add more serious concerns to that list, said features editor Eric Sundquist. He points out that, just the day before, The Daily Break had a lead story about the architecture of the upcoming MacArthur Mall.
Treasuring, and trashing, the paper. A retired teacher (she didn't want her name in the paper) says she read my column last week and was struck by how negative all our callers are - they all seem to complain, complain, complain.
She just wanted to tell us that she loves everything about the Pilot, from cover to cover.
Well, that's certainly nice to hear, though I believe that a lot of those ``complaints'' are important for the newspaper. They keep things in perspective and remind us that we, as journalists, aren't infallible.
But compliments are accepted, too, including one from a Portsmouth woman who gave the Pilot's Sports department a 10 for its Olympic coverage.
``I just called to say how wonderful the newspapers looked all during the Olympics. . . the colors and everything,'' she said. ``I never wanted to put them in the trash until I had finished looking at them.''
A treasure today, trash tomorrow. Could be worse!
by CNB