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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: d.taggart who wrote (493360)	11/15/2003 10:54:22 PM
From: sandintoes	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Dig a little deeper when examining bias Let's do some pathology today on a suspected case of "liberal bias." The test case is a charge leveled against this newspaper and others around the country for failure to report a "major" story last week about a memo written by a Democratic staff member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The memo outlined how Democrats might be able to use some of the committee's yet-to-be-released findings on prewar intelligence about Iraq to make President Bush look bad. The first news about the memo broke on Sean Hannity's syndicated radio program Nov. 4. As far as I can find, no major newspapers or wire services that night moved anything about the controversy -- perhaps because they could not independently verify the content of the memo. By the next day, Sen. John D. "Jay" Rockefeller (D-W. Va.) acknowledged the memo was a draft written by a Democratic staff member but never distributed. That brought the subject to a bitter Senate floor debate the same day and obviously pushed the story well beyond Hannity's radio listeners. Stories about the Senate flare-up varied in length, but all of them provided details about the memo and comments from Republicans claiming the Democrats were going to politicize the committee's report. Democrats claimed the memo was the result of the Republicans' refusal to examine how the Bush administration used the intelligence it was provided. Many large newspapers carried accounts of the Senate action, usually inside their national news or Washington pages on Nov. 6. All the stories I read provided background about how splintered the committee -- usually the most bipartisan panel in Congress -- has been over the Iraq report. Readers of those newspapers had enough information to judge for themselves how important the story was. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution did not run a story about the memo or the Senate debate. Was that faulty news judgment? Yes. In hindsight, our national editors should have seen the wire accounts on the Senate debate and given them more consideration. But, if I'm sitting on the desk reading dozens of stories every night coming across the wire, I can see how it happened. Day after day, Washington reporters move stories about Republicans and Democrats trading partisan charges over the war, taxes, environmental regulations and other issues. The list is endless, especially as election years draw close. If we ran them all, we'd have little space in the paper for other national news. (The first mention of the memo showed up in our news columns this week when the committee announced it wouldn't meet again for the rest of this year.) Still, was the original decision not to run a story simply a bad call or an example of liberal bias? Here's where Hannity comes in. The story got its legs Nov. 4 and 5 on Hannity's radio and Fox News Channel programs. Hannity, whose stock in trade is commentary on the news, left no doubt where he stood on the story: the Democrat memo was "outrageous" and tantamount to treason in the time of war. It was a huge story, Hannity said, and the memo's existence was a clear indication that the Democrats cared more about winning next year's election than the security of the country. Many readers who contacted the paper about why the story was missing agreed with Hannity. The memo was a major story, they said, and it was being covered up by the AJC. The facts in this case show there was a story to report. By failing to do so, we opened ourselves up to a charge of bias. That's our lesson. For readers, it's good to remember that commentary about whether something is a major news story -- whether it comes from the editorial board of The New York Times or from Hannity and his cohorts at Fox News -- doesn't make it so. Accurate, timely and fair reporting will usually tell you what you need to know. ajc.com