In our polarized political world, conservatives and liberals alike accuse the media of political bias. Fox News proclaims itself to be “fair and balanced,” yet liberals view it as an extension of right-wing talk radio. Washington Post Executive Editor Len Downie says he doesn’t even vote, to maintain his neutrality, yet conservatives regard the Post as a pillar of the “liberal media elite.” How should a community newspaper address political opinion, ideology and activity by its staff in this environment?

Avoid active involvement

This is an easy call for most newspapers, even in small communities. Most journalists believe and most newspapers require that editorial staff members should not run for office, hold office, campaign for political candidates and causes, lobby for legislation or make financial contributions to political candidates and causes. They also should not participate in advocacy rallies, marches or parades. This prohibition generally applies to all staff members, regardless of whether they have direct responsibility for covering politics. However, it absolutely applies in most cases to reporters and editors with any involvement in covering politics. The ban would apply similarly to local and national politics. A staff member who has any objection or any doubt about whether a particular activity would create a conflict should discuss the situation with her editor.

One frequent exception to this is that most journalists are allowed, and sometimes expected, to advocate for measures that support the public’s right to know and First Amendment rights to gather and disseminate information. For instance, an editor whose staff is forbidden from lobbying might join a statewide effort to lobby for a stronger open-meetings or open-records law or a shield law. Often these efforts work through a state freedom of information council.

Objectivity

Objectivity sounds lofty as a journalistic principle, but many readers don’t believe journalists are objective. And the fact is, we aren’t objects, we’re people. And we have opinions. Be honest with yourself about your opinions. Commit to covering both sides of an issue fairly. Try to present the facts of an issue, in addition to the conflicting opinions. Ask each side for facts, not just opinions. Challenge the facts they present, even if you share their opinions. Ask for their sources. Seek documentation. Question the biases of those who purport to give you the facts. A good reporter should be able to write about a contentious debate without either side being able to discern the reporter’s views on the issue. If a story stirs deep feelings, disclose those feelings to your editors and ask them to read closely for signs of bias. Depending on the depth of your feelings and your confidence in your ability to control them, you might ask your editors to assign another reporter or editor to the story.

Partisans will accuse anyone who’s not on their side of bias. Listen to those accusations honestly. You’re not reflecting your bias just because someone says you are. But you know what your bias is. If the complaint has any substance, examine it and consider whether you let your bias show. Or consider whether, in your attempt to be fair, you leaned the other way. Reporters and editors who insist that they are being objective can damage their credibility when readers can see the stories skewed in a particular direction. If you know a colleague with an opposing opinion to your own, ask her to read the story and tell you whether she thinks you have been fair.

Don’t confuse fairness with balance. Fairness requires giving people a chance to respond to charges. Fairness requires giving voice to the multiple views about an issue. However, fairness does not always require balance. Fairness requires an open-minded presentation of the facts of a story and the opinions about what those facts mean. If two sides are making claims that are completely contradictory, see if you can determine the facts. A balanced story would present both contradicting claims. But if the facts support one side, that isn’t a fair story or an accurate one. A fair story would present the facts and present each side’s explanation of the facts but would not present one side’s unsupported claim, without presenting the facts that contradict it.

Personal experience

Some issues really have little neutral ground. If you cover religion, you either belong to one of the faiths you cover or your own lack of faith gives you a tainted perspective about those faiths. The field has no neutral ground from which a reporter could give objective coverage that no one would question. If you are covering gay rights issues, your own sexual orientation, whatever it is, gives you a perspective that might skew your coverage in the eyes of some readers. Every sports reporter grew up with some favorite teams. This personal experience works for and against the reporter. Parents’ experience allows them to relate positively with other parents in sympathetic stories and tell their stories with greater understanding. Or the parents’ personal experience may deepen their revulsion about the actions of negligent or abusive parents they may cover and interfere with their ability to be fair to defendants. Your goal in reporting should be to use the knowledge and insight that your personal experience brings to the story and to control the emotions relating to your personal experience. Again, disclosing your emotional reaction to an editor or a colleague will help provide a check on unfair coverage stemming from your personal experience.

Community involvement

At one time, journalists went to great lengths to avoid involvements that might taint their coverage in any way. Some journalists and readers think that detachment went too far, resulting in journalists and publications that did not understand the communities they covered. Discuss what is the correct level of community involvement – and disclosure of community involvement – for journalists on your staff.

Most journalists accept involvement with a faith community and with children’s activities as reasonable activities that do not present frequent or difficult conflicts. Obviously, you would avoid covering your own congregation in most instances or disclose that you are. If your child is an outstanding athlete, you should avoid covering that team. Those conflicts are rare and pretty easy to manage. By the same token, most journalists accept that they should avoid running for office, holding elective or appointive public office and publicly supporting or contributing money to political candidates and causes, even if they don’t cover politics.

The difficult questions about community involvement, particularly in smaller communities, come in gray areas, such as family members’ involvement in politics and other newsworthy activities or involvement in private civic organizations that may occasionally make news. Discuss some actual and hypothetical situations in your community and your staff that might present possible conflicts. Discuss what sort of involvements you should prohibit, such as staff members holding leadership positions or serving on publicity committees. Discuss what sort of situations merit reassignments of stories or even beats to another reporter or editor. Discuss what sort of involvements you should disclose to readers.

Independence from advertisers

Advertisers pay for delivering their messages to an audience that trusts you. If you damage that trust, you degrade the primary product you sell to the advertisers. Keep this in mind (and don’t be bashful about explaining it to advertisers or publishers) when you face pressure or proposals to give editorial favors to advertisers. Advertising isn’t charity. If your ads are delivering results for advertisers, they need to advertise in your paper. You devalue your advertising and your news product by giving an advertiser unpaid access to your news columns. What’s more, you damage your credibility with readers. Advertisers might like the immediate payoff of special treatment in your news columns. But if you damage the trust of your readers, they will pay less attention to your news content, which means fewer eyes see the ads. Among the many gray areas of journalism ethics, this is one of those black-and-white issues. Giving special treatment to advertisers can only hurt.