BABIES are being kissed. Mud is being slung. And that can only mean one thing: It's election time again.Politicians seeking election or re-election have various media at their disposal, including campaign ads in broadcast and print forms, Web sites, and of course, news outlets.
The content of campaign ads and candidate Web sites are almost completely up to the individual campaigns, and thus don't always tell the whole story. Thus, discerning voters rely on news outlets to present a thorough picture of the political landscape.
Newspapers must sift through the propaganda and present voters with the facts so that they can make informed decisions. They must make sure their stories allow equal space to each candidate in a race, or risk justified accusations of bias and a lack of fair play. Even stories that do not focus on campaign issues, but that include comment from one side, for whatever reason, must be balanced.
In the past three weeks, The Cavalier Daily has covered campaign events by U.S. Rep. Virgil Goode, R-5, and his Democratic opponent, Meredith Richards. The story about Goode's event ran Sept. 4, and the one about Richards ran last Wednesday. I'm glad the staff gave equal weight to both stories -- they appeared in roughly the same place on the front page with large photos. However, each story lacked comment from the opposing campaign. While the newspaper gave equal time to both sides, the stories themselves were unbalanced.
The lack of balance was particularly pronounced in Wednesday's story, which included Richards' criticism of Goode, and no opportunity for Goode to answer back. Richards accused the congressman of holding back environmental progress by supporting the Bush administration's environmental policies. By not getting comment from Goode, The Cavalier Daily put him in a barrel and gave Richards the gun. The paper absolutely should have allowed Goode's campaign the opportunity to answer this criticism, both to show fairness to the candidates, and to give voters as much information as possible.
Council coverage concerns
In a related topic, a reader commented that Monday's story on the new Student Activities Center sounded "like it rolled off the CD fax machine in the form of a press release from StudCo." The story did have three sources, and all offered glowing endorsements of the center. Unfortunately, all three were officers of the Student Council. Generally, a news article should have at least two sources. If they are all from the same organization, however, it doesn't matter if there are a dozen; there probably won't be sufficient variety of perspective and opinion.
The reader correctly pointed out that the story needed comment from some of the organizations affected by the move to the center. That additional perspective would have added weight to the statement that the center is a "phenomenal achievement." Or maybe someone would have said the center was a waste of time and money, and then the story would have taken a completely different turn.
The story also needed some explanation and possibly different perspectives on some of the statements made by the Council members. Council President Micah Schwartz said money would be saved. We should not have to take his word for it. How is the money being saved, and who is saving it?
Headline headaches
What's in a headline, anyway? It's an advertisement for a story, and as a complaint from one reader shows, it often does determine whether or not a story is read. Interesting headlines are always nice. Accurate headlines are a necessity.
So what happened on Wednesday in the sports section? The headline claims that Kwakou Robinson "makes opposing defenses quake for Virginia." But the story and the photo caption make clear that Robinson is a defensive end. My knowledge of football is slight, but as far as I understand it, if Robinson is a defensive end, he's not going to have much interaction with "opposing defenses," right? A reader complained that the poor headline deterred her from reading what was a fine article.
Also in Wednesday's paper, a Life story got this headline: "University student travels to Ireland with human rights group and sees first hand the impunity taking place in Indonesia." The dictionary definition of "impunity" is "free from punishment." Way into the story, it becomes clear that "impunity" is used by human rights groups to mean "no accountability for human rights violations." But this jargon should not be used in a headline where it cannot be defined.
Monday's paper headlined an international news brief, "Bush has first-ever talk with a PLA official." They meant PA -- the Palestinian Authority. The PLA was the Palestinian Liberation Army. Totally different.
Headline errors happen at all papers. I'd even go so far as to say that an occasional error is probably inevitable. In general, The Cavalier Daily does a good job with headlines, as they do with most of their work. Though it may seem that I'm being very hard on them, I do think this paper's caliber is top-notch among its peers. But there's always room for improvement, even at the top.
(Masha Herbst can be reached at ombud@
cavalierdaily.com.)
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