BIAS, NOT MISSPELLINGS, ARE MOST DAMAGING TO NEWSPAPERS SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE Date: Sunday, February 7, 1999 Section: Source: By LINDA SEEBACH Scripps Howard News Service Memo: Column Colorado Springs may not use. (Linda Seebach is an editorial writer for the Denver Rocky Mountain News. E-mail seebach(at)denver-rmn.com). Edition: Long before I ever thought of working as a journalist, I was the kind of reader who pesters newspapers about their mistakes. I lived in Minnesota then, and the target of my attentions was the Minneapolis Star-Tribune - a fine paper, but short of perfection, as are all human endeavors. One Sunday, having noticed several conspicuous errors on the front page - and having, apparently, nothing more constructive to do - I went through the entire paper line by line, including sections like sports that I never looked at, snipping out an inch of copy for every offending misspelled word, misplaced apostrophe, arithmetical error and so forth, and gluing them to sheets of paper folded into three columns. I filled almost three sheets. The reader's representative at the Star-Tribune, Lou Gelfand, accepted this display of obsession with great forbearance, and we had thereafter a sporadic correspondence, mostly consisting of my complaints about liberal bias in news stories, which was plainer to me than to him. He challenged me to document what I saw as bias, and by chance a few days later the Star-Tribune published a story perfect for that purpose. It was about a company that operated for-profit schools - still somewhat controversial, but in the mid-'80s absolutely heretical - and it oozed the reporter's contempt for this despicable practice. Unconsciously on the reporter's part, I have no doubt. My analysis - it ran to six pages, single-spaced - covered everything from the framing of the story to the people quoted to the choice of adjectives and adverbs. Two things happened in consequence. Lou invited me to one of the Star Tribune's community outreach programs, a day-long introduction to the paper's operations that ended with the afternoon news meeting. It was the day before President Reagan met Mikhail Gorbachev for the first time, and the editors talked about whether the most significant event was the moment of greeting in Geneva, or the inevitable communique when the summit was over. They opted for the first handshake, and I never forgot how exciting it was to fall asleep knowing that historic photograph would land on my doorstep in the morning. They played it big, too. And second, a couple of years later when I applied for the job of reader's representative at the Minnesota Daily, the student newspaper at the University of Minnesota, I submitted that six-page analysis as a writing sample. One thing led to another, and here I am on the receiving end of readers' comments, which is one reason I've followed with such interest a project of the American Society of Newspaper Editors on media credibility. It's OK to laugh; most of the people in the focus groups did too. One major finding is that people think there are too many factual errors and too many spelling and grammar mistakes in their newspapers, and they wonder who they can trust papers on the big things if reporters and editors can't get the small things right. I once supposed that observation was both original and telling, but now I know that small errors - though irritating and inexcusable - are seldom a reliable indicator of trustworthiness in significant matters. The dreadful for-profit schools story had no minor errors, nor was it wrong in any matter of fact that needed a published correction. The ASNE asked people who had personal knowledge of a news story whether it was reported correctly. More than 40 percent said no, but of those twice as many said there were misinterpretations as said there were factual errors. At the same time, a large majority wanted "facts and explanations" rather than "just the facts," but one person's explanation may be another's misinterpretation. Analysis shades imperceptibly into opinion. Most readers understand there is a place for writing with a strong point of view - "Keep your opinion on the editorial page," said one focus-group member - and object only when it spills over into the news report. That's how I understand the purpose of opinion writing. My paper's commentary section, like most I'm familiar with, often publishes conflicting opinions, but an individual opinion writer no more has a professional obligation to present the other side's position than does a lawyer summing up a client's case. I too object to news stories that take sides, and to that extent I agree with the three-quarters of ASNE's respondents who believe there's bias in the news media. What I understand better than I did in the long-ago days when I pestered Lou Gelfand and the Star-Tribune is that even when it's present, it's almost never any more deliberate than those misspelled words or misplaced decimal points.