My family and I are still traveling in the Republic of California, and this morning our local paper was the San Diego Tribune. Today’s edition featured four letters about the Republican convention, all of them harshly critical.
I suppose there’s nothing surprising about that; most papers these days are not noted for their fair and balanced coverage of politics. But note the letters policy that is featured prominently on the letters page (see above link; emphasis mine):
The San Diego Union-Tribune welcomes letters to the editor. Because of the number of letters received, and to allow as many readers as possible to be published, it is the policy of the newspaper to publish no more than one letter from the same author within 120 days. Letters may be edited. It is also our policy to publish letters supporting or opposing a particular issue in a ratio reflecting the number received on each side.
I suppose there are no Republicans in San Diego, or maybe the ones who are there are so dumb they can’t, or so arrogant they don’t, write.
UPDATE [4 Sept.]
I checked the SDUT again this morning, and just as some commenters had maintained, today’s Republican convention coverage was indeed fair and balanced: 4 critical, 4 supportive.
UPDATE II [5 Sept.]
Today’s Los Angeles Times published eight letters today under the heading “Republican Convention Ignites Fans and Foes.” Apparently Democratic fires burned much brighter, since 6 of the 8 were critical of the Republicans.
Now don’t jump to conclusions. It is certainly possible that 75% of LAT readers, or those among them who chose to write letters to the editor, support Kerry, just as it is possible that the LAT editors selected the letters randomly or with an eye to craftsmanship and style and not at all in an attempt to support one side over the other.
UPDATE III [6 Sept.]
We should all note Linda Seebach’s comment, below, that letters often swing first one way and then the other, and that in her experience the politics of the letters editor rarely affects what letters are published at most newspapers. Still, it’s at least interesting that, for yet another day, there is a notable (at least I’m noting it) imbalance in the campaign-related letters published in the Los Angeles Times. Eight letters were published today, and seven of them were critical of the Republicans. Even the one writer who plans to vote for Bush stated that he “will not register as a Republican because the ultraconservatives in their party … have too much influence.”
“I suppose there are no Republicans in San Diego, or maybe the ones who are there are so dumb they can’t, or so arrogant they don’t, write.”
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Seems that today, the majority of soCAL is mostly legal and illegal Mexican immigrants. Given that immigrants (legal and illegal) vote predominantly (if not exclusively) democrat, I don’t see any contradictions so large as to jump out and bite me. That aside, there are still a few Americans in soCAL, and no doubt a few do vote republican. And then there is the issue of editorial bias.
California is now half foreigners, and soon it will be 70%. And while they demand that the natives treat them with respect, it does not seem a recriprocal relationship in any way I have observed. Given that the democratic party has similar views, a democratic majority in Ca seems a foregone conclusion.
BTW, today the republican party ain’t much better, I see less and less difference between the two every day. Wonder where Arnold stands?
Time will tell.
On with the show.
Rich
John, I don’t mean to sound like a poor host, but I hope you post a retraction here and at OTLM. You came into an unfamiliar town and ignorantly disparaged its newspaper (which I don’t care about) and its citizens (which I do).
John, it’s entirely possible that even a San Diego paper might not get any letters explicitly supporting the Republican National Convention. SD is evidently a pretty conservative place, so a 4/0 divide on an “issue” in the liberal direction might look suspicious. But it isn’t an “issue”; it’s a convention. Up here in the SF Bay Area there was plenty of coverage of the Democratic Convention, but not a pile of letters praising it. Why would you bother? This is just not the sort of thing that people write letters in praise of to newspapers.
The fair comparison would be to go into the archives and see what the paper ran around the time of the Democratic Convention. I think you’d see a different picture there.
Hmmm, have to post an update here. I went into the SF Chronicle archives to see what they were running by way of Letters to the Editor during and right after the Democratic Convention (I take the Chron, but I was out of town), and, yep, people really do send Letters to the Editor extolling political conventions as stirring, uplifting, &c. I couldn’t imagine anyone bothering. My bad.
Nels: Please explain your complaint. I honestly and sincerely do not see where John disparaged SD citizens. The comments about Republican non-writers was obviously sarcastic and I assume self-effacing (as far as political leanings). And your calling John ignorant in criticizing a newspapers “letter to the ed” policy reveals a lack of appreciation for First Amendment principles and frankly seems hypocritical for someone complaining of “disparaging” remarks.
Don’t people have any sense of irony anymore?
Nels – I’m sorry you took offense, or thought I gave it. I may well have an apology to offer, but if so it is for opaque sarcasm. For the past several days we were house-sitting for good friends who are San Diego area Republicans, and they (and their friends whom we met) clearly are neither dumb nor illiterate. I thought it odd that a paper that purported to select letters to reflect more or less proportionally the positions of all they received to publish four letters about the Republican convention that were all critical. The only possible explanations seemed to me to be that … Republicans don’t write letters to the editor, or the editor doesn’t publish them. I thought it would have been obvious that I thought the former possibility less likely.
By way of comparison (for whatever it’s worth), the letters section of the Los Angeles Times today publishes 9 letters about the Republican convention. As one would expect of the LAT, which after all does not promise that opinions will be reflected in proportion to what was received, 7 were critical of the Republicans.
John, I was probably too harsh, and for that I apologize. I’m glad to hear that you and your family made it safely to San Diego and I hope you are enjoying yourselves here.
What you accepted as a given – liberal bias at the Union-Tribune – is simply not present. San Diego is a solidly Republican city and fairly conservative by California standards. (This is apparently not common knowledge, as Rich demonstrated with his assumptions about Southern California and its fur’ners.)
The newspaper reflects the politics of its readers in its pro-business, pro-military, anti-taxation, anti-illegal-immigration, pro-law-and-order editorials and op-eds. It endorsed Bush in 2000 and, judging from the glowing editorials and op-eds that appeared within the same edition in which you read the letters to the editor, it will surely do the same this year. It endorsed the recall of Gray Davis and the election of Schwarzenegger. It has endorsed Democrats but would never support one like Kerry who’s voted against military spending, wants to rescind tax cuts, and is anti-outsourcing. One can fault the Union-Tribune for its mediocre quality, as most of its national and international articles are from wire services or reprinted from other newspapers, but its editors definitely lean right.
With liberal bias ruled out, and San Diego crawling with Republicans, perhaps you can understand why I interpreted your post as an insult, though on later reflection I should have just accepted that you were making a joke based on false assumptions.
As for why the Union-Tribune didn’t receive any pro-convention letters, I don’t know the answer. The time difference between NYC and here may have played a role; most folks don’t get home from work until 6:30 or 7:00 and therefore would have missed the primetime speeches. It may not have occured to viewers, particularly conservatives, who were pleased with what they heard to fire off letters to the editor. They may have been sensibly waiting until the convention was over, and they had heard Bush speak, before forming an opinion (you’ll notice the four letters they printed only make mention of the first night). Perhaps they all have blogs and posted their thoughts there.
Our paper also aims at reflecting, roughly, the mix of letters we get, but the mix is pretty lumpy. Unhappy people are more likely to write, and then the people who disagree with them notice their side isn’t represented and then they write because they’re unhappy with that. The political views of the letters editor have not been a significant factor at any of the four papers I’ve worked at, though that isn’t evidence that they never are.
As another San Diegan.. I point out that the SDUT has gone ever-farther to the left ever since Copley handed the reigns over to her son. He even fired Steve Kelly, who used to do the paper’s editorials over political differences.
Mrs. Copley had seemed pretty fair, and many even accused her of being more on the political right, and that she ran the paper that way too. But her son is definitely one acorn that fell a long way away from that tree.
“Even the one writer who plans to vote for Bush stated that he ‘will not register as a Republican because the ultraconservatives in their party … have too much influence.'”
You know, this makes no sense. If only ultraconservatives register Republican, then the Republican party will be comprised of ultraconservatives.