We just finished a big survey of our readers. Liberals, conservatives and moderates generally agreed that The Plain Dealer plays the news down the middle. Some liberals and conservatives aren’t so sure that the center is right place for us to be, though. They would like us to cover things with a slant closer to their own.
I’m writing to explain why we can’t do that, and how we plan to handle coverage in the future.
Our professional lives might be easier if we could just choose one side of the nation’s political divide and live there. As some conservative readers have reminded me, Fox News found success this way, by pitching its news and its talk shows purely to conservatives.
Fox News is a national organization, though. We are here for the citizens of Northeast Ohio. Fox News’ audience is overwhelmingly conservative. Ours is diverse: roughly 25 percent liberal and 25 percent conservative, with the remainder describing themselves as moderate.
Also, our newsrooms have different missions. We are here not to favor or oppose any political faction, or to build an audience by catering to one side. We are here for our readers, and we seek to serve and inform all sides.
Our subscribers generally understand this, and say they want us to fulfill that mission. Among their primary requests on our last survey: Tell us more about how things in Washington will affect our lives, and fact-check politicians more often.
We are committed to doing both those things, through the wire stories we choose and the local stories we pursue.
Here and at our sister company, cleveland.com, reporters will be tracking how our readers are affected by the changes in Washington. My counterpart at cleveland.com, Chris Quinn, wrote an excellent column last week about how his team will monitor the effects of Washington policymakers on Ohio. Within The PD’s newsroom, those changes will be followed closely by our specialists in business, economics, health, education, immigration, the environment, the nonprofit community and the arts.
In The Plain Dealer’s news columns and in our Sunday Forum section, we’ll consistently offer readers more fact-checking items, including some items addressing Internet-based “fake news” that we previously tended to disregard.
We’ll also look for ways to help readers understand the hidden factual claims behind seemingly straightforward statements. The Trump administration, for instance, says that the president’s recent executive order banning certain immigrants is necessary for national security. It has said that critics of the order would expose citizens to greater risk of terrorism.
That’s not a fact, though. It’s an assertion. Critics of President Trump’s order, including scores of experienced diplomats and some leading Republican national security experts, say it may instead harm national security, by spurring terrorist recruitment, shutting down tips to law enforcement agencies, and making it harder for allies to work with us. Every one of our readers has a stake in that debate, and we owe the public both sides of it.
Trump has reacted to such coverage by saying he is “at war” with the media. Here in Cleveland, we are not at war with Trump. We are, however, duty-bound to share with the public the truth, as best we can ascertain it.
Because some of our coverage inevitably will call some of Trump’s actions into question, some of his supporters may think we are biased. Because some of our coverage may seem to validate some of his actions, some of his opponents may feel likewise. I would ask only that people with strong feelings on either side double-check their perceptions.
Passions run high nowadays, and emotions can make partisans disbelieve even the best evidence, right in front of their eyes. One out of seven Trump voters, for instance, told researchers that they believed photos of the Trump and Obama inauguration crowds showed that Trump drew more people to the National Mall, which is false according to every available measurement.
For us, news reports are not about partisanship. We have been doing fact-checks for years, of Republicans and Democrats alike. In fact, American journalists have been clarifying political debates since the founding of the Republic. Our system of government depends on citizens who know enough to hold politicians accountable. That is why we have a First Amendment.
Switching to the realm of opinion journalism, some of our readers have begun to tell us that they cannot tolerate columns with opinions different from their own. Liberals and conservatives alike have urged us to censor or drop columnists with whom they disagree.
We can’t do that, either. Not just because our audience is so diverse, but because our mission is to expand public discussion, not to throttle it. We offer readers a range of opinions (some of which we may personally disagree with) to enrich public debate and to foster understanding across sectarian boundaries.
This, too, has roots as old as the United States. Our country was founded on Enlightenment ideas of public debate among informed citizens. Thomas Jefferson conveyed the spirit of the era when he wrote, “For here we are not afraid to follow the truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error, so long as reason is left free to combat it.”
All of us are the beneficiaries of a legacy of tolerance and free inquiry, and all of us have a duty — to ourselves, our neighbors and our descendants — to preserve it.
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
