Sunday, February 24, 2008

N&O's battle to claim its a moderate

A word to Local Raleigh News and Observer editors, since you keep insisting in your blogs that you are a moderate newspaper, perhaps you should try harder in your articles. A simple example is in today's Sunday's newspaper, where they have an article on "What makes a perfect president?" To represent local opinions, they polled 5 people, one on page 1E and four on page 2E. Overall, they had 3 democrats, two independents, and a single republican. I doubt these proportions represent a moderate viewpoint or their local target readership.

The editors at the N&O have avidly claimed in their blog that they do not have any partisan view. But they are criticized by many people. Here is a recent article where yet another reader complain of them being liberal and taking a certain stance, and their common response is, we get complaints that we are too conservative. Well, choosing this proportion with 5 people is not the way to declare neutrality. I guess if I was an editor serious about trying to take a middle of the line approach, I would have chosen two democrats, two republicans, and an independent. But, thats just me.

My favorite line was where the one opinion was that President Clinton was the ideal president. Because he is smart. Wasn't he the one who had issues with basic definitions in his sex scandal?

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