Coincidence? When news and editorial dovetail
On July 5, the Washington Post's Mike Allen reported that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D) is the latest member of Congress to turn in revised (and, in her case specifically, delinquent) expense reports for a number of trips paid for by sponsors.
Readers of the Houston Chronicle, who have been treated to any number of stories about House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R) from Gebe Martinez and the newspaper's lackluster D.C. bureau, still have not been treated to coverage of Pelosi's latest travails, either from the AP or the D.C. bureau.
On the other hand, the national section on July 5 did contain a "news analysis" piece by Harvey Rice on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Rice's focus is on the extent to which the 5th Circuit is overruled by the Supreme Court, particularly on death penalty cases. Rice quotes only one person who is not critical of the 5th Circuit. The column isn't subtle.
Believing that content in newspapers doesn't appear magically, but rather that content (or the decision not to cover something) reflects choices made by editors and writers, we do find it curious that a newspaper that's been all too eager to cover House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's alleged ethical lapses doesn't even see fit to run AP coverage of similar lapses by his opposition counterpart. Further, it's just as curious that a newspaper with strong anti-death-penalty editorial views decides to run a critical piece on the 5th Circuit at the moment when there is some speculation that President Bush will nominate a conservative from that court to the Supreme Court.
Perhaps these editorial judgments are magically coincidental and not reflective of any sort of editorial perspective bleeding over into the news coverage, but it's enough to make reasonable people wonder.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 07/06/05 06:36 PM | Houston Chronicle | Print | Comments (2)
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