Bias by omission on the death penalty
Sherri Sylvester of the invaluable Texas Media Watch penned a column for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram yesterday.
She brought up an interesting point about bias by omission:
There's also an odd, anti-Texas-style bias that keeps some positive stories about the state out of newspapers altogether.
In February, The New York Times reported a study on the death penalty showing that, contrary to what many locals believe, Texas is not more likely to sentence convicted murderers to death than other states and in fact is below the national average.
The Times version did not appear in any major Texas paper after it broke, although a version of the story by The Associated Press did appear in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Months later, a portion of it was cited in a news report on another issue.
A search of the Chronicle archives confirms Sylvester's assertion that the newspaper never ran the Times story or original reporting on the study.
That's hardly surprising, as the Chronicle's editorial stance is firmly anti-death penalty, and regular columnists Clay Robison, Cragg Hines, and Rick Casey can be counted on to blast the death penalty with some regularity. Indeed, sometimes the editorial position even bleeds over onto the news pages.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 09/29/04 05:11 PM | Houston Chronicle | Technorati | Sphere | Comments (0)
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