• 
• CLASS
• JOBS
• AUTO
• HOMES

You liberals/right-wingers won’t print my letter

When I attended the National Conference of Editorial Writers convention in Little Rock two years ago, one of my favorite colleagues turned out to be Dick Hughes, editorial page editor of the Statesman Journal in Salem, Oregon.

He attended this year’s conference in Dallas and just wrote a column that begins this way:

“Three newspaper editorial writers go into a Texas bar.

“The first editorial writer is from Texas. He says: ‘Most of our readers are conservative, so most letters we publish are from conservatives. They still think we’re biased against them.’

“The second editorial writer is from Iowa. He says: ‘Most of our readers are liberal, so most letters we publish are from liberals. They still think we’re biased against them.’

“The third editorial writer is from Oregon. He says: ‘Our readers are conservatives, liberals, in the middle and at both ends, so we publish a mix of letters. They all think we’re biased against them.’

“If you’re looking for more of a punchline, sorry. There is none.”

I can identify. Janesville and surrounding communities have traditionally been heavily unionized, and unions favor Democrats, so the majority of our letters continue to be from liberals. Despite what you might think, however, we’ll print your letter regardless of political ideology, as long as we don’t question its factual accuracy, it meets our 250-word limit and you include your full name, address and phone number. And this time of year, letters endorsing one candidate or another are flowing in fast and furiously.

What about printing letters of conspiracy theorists? Here’s more from Hughes:

“We editorial writers discussed whether to continue publishing letters from so-called birthers—people who assert that President Obama is not a U.S. citizen or that he was born in Kenya instead of Hawaii.

“That claim is patently false. It’s been debunked by Snopes.com and numerous media organizations. Even if Obama were born in Kenya (which he wasn’t), he’d still be a U.S. citizen because his mother was a U.S. citizen and made her permanent home in the U.S.

“Some people believe otherwise. Do we publish their letters, even though all the facts indicate they’re untrue? Do we publish letters claiming that U.S. government was behind 9/11, even though there’s not a shred of factual evidence to support that rumor?

“Although we publish several thousand letters each year, we don’t have room for all of them. We have to make choices. If I weed out those conspiracy-theory letters, am I biased or am I being responsible?”

Gazette Editor Scott Angus and I are leaning more heavily toward rejecting such letters all the time. After all, simply by publishing conspiracy theories, we might lead some gullible people to believe they’re true. By doing so, then, we’re helping spread falsehoods.

Greg Peck can be reached at (608) 755-8278 or gpeck@gazettextra.com. Or follow him on Twitter