Around 4:30 p.m. on the day of the Iowa caucuses, we had already signed off on a front-page display that included one dominant photograph when Dennis McGrath, a senior editor in charge of political coverage, raised a concern: Don’t we want to give equal treatment to both parties’ winners?

With that question, I knew the political season had truly begun.

I have been managing front-page displays on and off for more than a decade, and there is little that causes more frustration in a campaign season than trying to find a way to equally balance the photographs. From a visual perspective, a front page is more arresting if it is dominated by one strong image; page designers and photographers will almost always argue that one picture is better than several of equal size. But give prominent display to a Democrat one day, and the Republicans complain that we are a liberal rag. Lead with a Republican and the Democrats cry foul, regardless of the news value of the story. Some days, campaign workers see bias in the image that we pick, suggesting that we deliberately choose pictures that make candidates look unattractive.

And on it goes. These concerns don’t stop at photographs, but extend to headlines, captions, story play, the way we label candidates (conservative vs. liberal), the sources we choose and even the number of paragraphs in a story devoted to one candidate vs. another.

There is good reason for this, of course. Nothing is more important in our country than free, open elections, and the press has a powerful voice in informing the electorate. We lose credibility with readers if we look like we are favoring one candidate or party over time, and we all know that newspapers have the reputation of leaning left.

This year, I have asked McGrath to put together a group of editors, including photographers and copy editors, to examine ways in which political bias can creep into the paper and how we might prevent it. His group will look at everything from how we handle photographs as the campaign progresses to how we ensure that headlines written late at night don’t suggest a liberal or conservative bent. We want to bend over backwards to be fair, but we don’t want to bend over so far backwards that we aren’t telling uncomfortable truths when they need to be told. I believe that readers are more likely to trust us with the truth if they trust that we are being fair.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 13th, 2008 at 2:20 pm and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.