Political party rallies, like the one that took place on Friday evening at Verizon Arena when the Democratic Party of Arkansas amidst record heat held a marathon Jefferson Jackson Day dinner featuring everyone, including high octane Democratic operative Paul Begala. The Think Thank was there tweeting.
The coverage in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette the following day which featured a picture of the wife of the late Bill Gwatney, the former state party chairman and state senator who was murdered in his office at DPA headquarters, on the front page of the Arkansas section along with other things has stirred the partisan emotions of David Kinkade at The Arkansas Project.
I don’t much go in for “liberal media bias” bellyaching from conservatives, because it’s boring and unconstructive, like whining about the weather. But if you are an Arkansas Republican candidate for office in 2010, I’d keep in mind that the state’s largest daily newspaper and its chief political reporter have done you a tremendous favor by laying down their standard, at an early point in the process, for how you and your Democratic opposition will be treated in the coming campaign season. Rest assured, you will not receive the same type of coverage. Plan accordingly.
Mr. Kinkade has twice written on the op-ed pages of the Democrat Gazette in recent months. The first was about the role of bloggers in today’s media climate (an exception piece and you should read it). The second was about the value and impact of the TEA parties. Thorough and helpful for those of us who think TEA parties are a much like county fairs, I don’t recall the Dem-Gaz offering a counterpoint on the issue. In fact, the last time I checked the editorial board held Republicans in pretty high regard over there.
UPDATE: Check out the comments section for from Mr. Kinkade and me. And Mr. Tolbert’s covering this like it’s a Sarah Palin event. Read his blog for lots of long quotes from both of us.
Blogfight!
Blake, interesting analysis as always but perhaps you inadvertently proved Kinkade’s point for him. Could it be that the ADG’s normal editorial staff tilts so far to the left that they have to recruit someone from the outside to have a viewpoint from the right?
Blake,
My critique focused not on editorials and op-eds, but on news coverage, which is a separate operation. The ADG editorial page does indeed tilt to the right, though it should be noted that they frequently endorse Democrats for state and local office (in 2006, they endorsed the entire slate of Democrats for statewide constitutional offices, for example). But it’s not at all uncommon for editorial pages to be “unbalanced,” as they make no such pretense to balance and objectivity. And I’m pleased to have published there in the past, as far as that goes.
The question of how events are covered in the news section is entirely separate. In this case, the ADG sent a reporter and photographer to the Democratic event and offered a glowing write-up. A parallel, though smaller, event a month earlier held by state Republicans was almost completely ignored by the paper — they didn’t send a reporter or photographer, and ran a short wire copy story that focused on a peripheral national issue. That’s a rather significant difference in coverage, and given that the news department makes a pretense of objectivity and balanced coverage, it’s held to a different standard than that for the editorial board.
The tactic of conflating the editorial and news sections of the paper into a single entity is rather disingenuous when coming from those who know better.
D.
DK, Let’s be fair about a couple of things: First, I’d hardly call the headline “glowing.” In fact, when I read it I thought the opposite. Second, considering the circumstances – namely that this was the first JJ Dinner without Chairman Gwatney – you can certainly understand the photo as well as some public sentimentality.
Now, I can’t explain the lack of coverage for the Republican event, except to say that the Republican Party of Arkansas isn’t making anything worthy of real news right now (Mr. Webb’s comments notwithstanding), which is to suggest that perhaps the RPA event was simply less interesting. I won’t agree that Tim Pawlenty is worthy of coverage simply because he might run for President. Sometimes, these political events are just plain dull (and I say that for both sides).
Your argument is fair about the divide between editorial and news comment, but that perspective is known by only a small few numbers of people. I think most would believe that there is no separation between the two and that sometimes the news is slanted one way and the editorial is slanted another (and not always in the same directions).
Make no mistake, I have no issue with the editorial pages taking positions as they do. I wish there was more commentary in the paper, particularly on business issues, which is sparsely represented in the Democrat Gazette news sections, and it’s the first section I read every day.
All that being said, I’ll continue to disagree with you that the coverage was unbalanced.
And here I thought that print media was dead…glad they could give you guys something to write about today.
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Tolbert,
The widely-held view among those people who actually read the Democrat-Gazette’s editorial page — and many who don’t — is that it’s a fairly conservative page. Do you know who Paul Greenberg is?