Can news in the guise of an editorial be biased?

Although we dish out a fair amount of criticism to the Chronicle, they occasionally deserve some credit for creativity.

The editors do seem to realize that it's not quite right to show outright bias on the news pages, even if they do it from time to time.

Of course, the editorial page is a different story. That's where opinions should be expressed, and for the most part, any media watcher who complains about "bias" on the editorial page is going to sound silly. Of course there's bias on the opinion page. It's called opinion!

However, here's where the Chronicle's creativity comes in.

What if you take a story that is about Texas politics but isn't really local? What if you dispatched your liberal Washington bureau opinion columnist to "cover" that story? And what if said columnist turned out a typically biased screed in the guise of a "news" column, but it ran on the editorial page? And what if that opinion column basically posed as "news" coverage of the story, thereby giving readers a completely slanted view of reality?

Would we call that an example of media bias?

I think so.

But give the Chronicle credit for being creative about it.

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 09/27/04 10:06 PM | Houston Chronicle | Technorati | Sphere | Comments (0)

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