Editorial opinions

The Truth Matters, Chapter 14

This is the fourteenth chapter of my book, The Truth Matters. Chapter one is here, chapter two is here, chapter three is here, chapter four is here, chapter five is here, chapter six is here, chapter seven is here, chapter eight is here, chapter nine is here, chapter ten is here, chapter eleven is here, chapter twelve is here, chapter thirteen is here.

Key points:

· Newspaper editorials may have outlived their usefulness.

· Accountability and trustworthiness are better maintained when anonymity is minimized.

· Remember that opinions aren’t the same as reportage.

I think a major barrier to the credibility of media organizations, especially newspapers, is the existence of editorials. If you think about it, it’s very odd that such things even exist. Why should anyone think that a brief, anonymous statement on some issue matters to anyone? It isn’t as if editorial writers poll the reporters or even the other editorial writers to determine what the paper’s point of view should be on a particular issue. In practice, editorial writers write little, unsigned op-ed articles and the head of the editorial page decides whether to publish it or not. Although, theoretically, editorials reflect the perspective of the owner or publisher, in practice I doubt they have much to say about it short of appointing an editorial page editor who shares their general philosophy.

I suppose there are occasions when editorials can have an impact on policy or elections, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a case. During the 2016 election, virtually every newspaper in the United States rejected Donald Trump and either stayed neutral or endorsed Hillary Clinton. Did this overwhelming editorial consensus have any impact at the polls? None that I can see.

If editorials were merely worthless remnants of an earlier era that live on because of tradition, they would be harmless. But that is not the case. First, they are not costless in an era when newspaper budgets are severely squeezed. Big newspapers like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have large editorial boards that undoubtedly cost several million dollars per year to maintain. It is probably the case that such funds would be better spent on their core mission of reporting the news.

Second, in an era when newspapers have lost trust and credibility, it is a burden on the news side to prove that it is independent of its editorial philosophy. I know there are many reporters at the Wall Street Journal, which has a very conservative editorial page, who chafe when accused of tilting their reporting in a conservative direction or perhaps cause some embarrassment for them when their stories contradict the paper’s editorial line.

Although all newspapers claim to have a Chinese Wall between the news side and the editorial side (and the advertising side as well), I suspect that few readers believe this to be the case. It is in fact quite reasonable for them to assume that the news coverage at a paper like the New York Times with a liberal editorial position also tilts its news in that same direction. Even if a news story is objective and truthful on some topic that the paper has strongly-held views on, such as abortion or climate change, how can a reader know that inconvenient facts contrary to its editorial position weren’t left out or downplayed?

Indeed, the most sophisticated argument for media bias has nothing to do with the tilting of coverage or overt expressions of opinion by reporters. It has to do with much more subtle things such as what is news? It’s reasonable to say that if you took a list of the top stories of the day and asked a group of conservatives and a group of liberals to put those stories in order of importance, they would differ considerably in many respects.

Even in the internet age, the decision to put a story on page one is very important at every newspaper. Historically, the story on the upper right side of the paper has been deemed to be the most important of the day. It would be naïve to think that the decision to emphasize this particular item among all those available isn’t influenced by one’s political philosophy. If it happens to align with a paper’s editorial position, readers are going to suspect, rightly or wrongly, that there is a cause-and-effect relationship.

The problem, as I see it, is that editorials by their nature reflect an institutional point of view. By contrast, signed columns do not. They are the author’s opinion and no one else’s. Of course, the decision to run a particular columnist regularly may indicate an editorial judgement. But I know of no newspaper that runs only liberal or conservative columnists. Even the New York Times, probably our most liberal major newspaper, employs three conservative columnists and frequently publishes guest columns by those with a conservative point of view.

A more valid criticism of the opinions one sees on the editorial or op-ed page (which is short for opposite-the-editorial page) is that they tend to be bland and conventional. Indeed, that is the whole point of running regular columnists rather than nothing but guest columnists; the regulars are predictable and readers know exactly what they are going to get, just as they know exactly what’s on the menu when they go to McDonald’s.

Having written a syndicated column for many years, I was acutely aware that I was expected to fill a certain niche and I knew exactly who my columnist competitors were. I paid close attention to whether my subscribers actually ran a particular column and which ones appeared to be popular among the editors who decide to run mine or someone else’s.

I saw that my most popular columns were always those that took a very conventional point of view, one that was well within the mainstream of my political orientation. My least popular columns were those where I challenged my side’s ideas or positions. I’m not sure if editors were confused when I did this or if they feared that readers would be confused or alienated. In any case, it’s clear that there is a strong bias on both sides of the political spectrum against columnists who buck their own side; conformity is rewarded.

Of course, the price that is paid is that columns that are interesting, that might make people think, tend to be rejected in favor of the boring same-old/same-old. There are certain columnists we are all aware of who haven’t expressed a new thought in decades, yet are very widely syndicated. These two facts are in fact closely related.

Personally, I like having my point of view challenged and it would benefit readers to have a wider range of opinions expressed on the limited amount of space available on a newspaper editorial page. Although many papers now run additional columnists online, few take creative advantage of the additional space online to offer a wider range of opinions than they always have. Longtime practices die hard.

My advice would be to abolish editorials altogether. Put someone’s name on every opinion piece that appears. If the publisher wants to endorse a candidate, let her explain her own reasons for doing so rather than hiding behind the anonymity of an unsigned column that is deemed to represent the paper as a whole. Use the resources and space freed up by ending editorials to run more columns expressing a broader range of opinions on a wider variety of topics. Use the essentially unlimited space online to cultivate new voices and unconventional viewpoints. It costs practically nothing and may attract new readers turned off by the limited range of views currently available.

Readers should seek out such writers wherever they can be found online. Bookmark them, put them in your RSS feed, tweet and post their work on Facebook or other social media so that it reaches a broader audience. As with movies and books, word-of-mouth counts for a lot and you’d be surprised how many of your friends respect your judgment that some article or columnist is worth reading. This is one way average people can make a difference. The website PunditFact (www.politifact.com/punditfact/) is one place to look for truth and accuracy among opinion writers.