This afternoon Lockerroom readers within a comfortable commute to the John Locke Foundation offices were able hear a presentation by Steve Ford of the News and Observer editorial page. It was a full house.
As I walked away, I couldn?t help asking myself over and over again: What was missing? Why did that presentation miss the mark? It was a failure to state assumptions and the failure falls equally on Ford and his audience.
During the Q&A, the most contested points centered around perceptions of bias, over- or under-play of certain issues, and the clear distinction between news and opinion at the paper. I think Ford did a good job of explaining his responsibilities at the paper, how the editorials and op-ed pages are put together and what procedures are in place to ensure smooth operation of an articulate civic forum. He strives for a forum to voice opinions based on a set of beliefs (the paper?s) as well as other opinions (contributors?.)
He probably could have done a better job explaining how people in the news business use words like opinion piece, editorial, column and contributing op-ed. He avoided news-jargon very well in response to a question about how the editorials are written when he said that the editorial writers must ?do their homework, do the necessary research.? The jargon-esque way to say this would have been to say the editorial writers must ?go report? the story. In the news business, the verb ?report? is used to mean alternately: to cover an event, to do research, to express the facts of a situation. Had Ford said that he reports on a editorial before writing it would have caused confusion to many simply because most people don?t use ?report? to mean ?research.? However, he failed to explain adequately the distinctions between the various types of articles that appear in the newspaper. Why do I cast this stone? Because I heard many questions during and after the presentation that missed this key point.
The blame is not Ford?s alone. As I said, he did a thorough job of explaining the processes at the paper and his responsibility. It was our fault too. Several questions did not take into account the clear differences between the various types of pieces that show up in the paper. Shame on us. Regular news readers should understand these distinctions without much elaboration. We missed an opportunity to ask other questions about the role of the N&O in our community and instead focused on beefs about bias or coverage that doesn?t match our individual preferences. Perhaps some in the audience wore blinders. Perhaps Ford was too sensitive to these questions and didn?t understand that his audience didn?t see the distinctions he made (several times) about how the N&O editorial process works.
Regardless, I hope he and others from the media will continue to take part in these luncheons ? both as speakers and as members of the audience ? because media outlets will continue to shape public debate and the JLF is a place full of ideas about public issues. Will we see him back for the next luncheon? Time will tell.
