Determination
124
Minnesota
News Council
In the Matter of the Complaint of
Marcia Eland, Democratic candidate v. the Eden Prairie News
Participants included the complainant, Marcia Eland,
and Eden Prairie News editor Mark Weber.
Background:
Marcia Eland ran as a democrat for a seat in the Minnesota House of
Representatives in District 43A against the incumbent, Tom Workman.
Eland said she knew she had a slim chance of winning because the district
is predominantly Republican, but she felt it was important that there
be a challenger to keep people focused on the issues. Eland lost the
election.
Complaint:
"I'm not here because of just one incident," said Eland,
"but because I think there is a widespread problem (with election
coverage)." She brought several complaints against the paper,
alleging that through a series of choices and accidents, the paper
hampered her bid for office by carrying no information about her candidacy
in the last issue, while at the same time carrying an endorsement
for her opponent:
1. Letters: The newspaper did not run two letters
to the editor it received in support of her candidacy, nor Eland's
own letter to the editor. All letters were received by deadline for
the last issue before the election. Eland had submitted her letter
the week before, but had missed that week's deadline. She assumed
her letter would be published in the next issue. When she heard that
two supporters had submitted letters, and knowing space would be tight
in that issue, Eland called the paper and asked that her letter be
withdrawn in favor of the letters of her supporters. None was printed.
Eland said the editor told her he would not print letters from her
supporters because they did not live in Eden Prairie. Eland said the
paper is inconsistent in observing that standard. She pointed to previous
issues of the paper that contained letters from people outside Eden
Prairie written on behalf of candidates for other offices.
2. Endorsement: The paper endorsed her opponent
without ever interviewing her.
3. Advertising: The paper neglected to run an ad in the last
issue before the election, for which Eland had paid. They did run
her opponent's ad.
The News Council declined to hear the complaint
about advertising. The Council considers complaints about political
advertising only if they relate to political campaigns and only if
there is a charge of inaccuracy. In this case, both parties understood
that a clerical error kept the ad from appearing.
The complaint was summarized in the following votable
questions:
1. Was the Eden Prairie News unfair to Marcia Eland
in its handling of letters to the editor?
2. Was the newspaper unfair in not interviewing Eland as part of its
process of choosing a candidate to endorse?
Response:
The Eden Prairie News denied that it was unfair to Eland.
1. Letters: The paper said it ran more letters
in support of Eland than it did in support of her opponent, despite
not running the two letters received from people who were not residents
of Eden Prairie.
2. Endorsement: The paper said it had limited resources for
conducting endorsement interviews and did not feel it was necessary
to interview every candidate because it already had information about
them from a variety of sources.
Discussion:
Media member Brandt Williams asked if the paper had ever been accused
of bias. Weber said that no letters were ever received suggesting
such a thing, but he did acknowledge that "in indexes, as far
as Republicans go, we would be at the top of the list. It would be
very difficult for a Democrat to win a legislative race... I have
endorsed people I knew personally to be Democrats for city offices
(in non-partisan races)."
Letters
Media member Lee Canning asked Weber if he had ever published a letters
policy or had included one in a candidate packet sent out at the beginning
of an election season. Weber said his paper's (unwritten) policy is
to publish as many letters as it can, as intact as possible. Further,
he said he had, on occasion, asked people not to raise new issues
in the letters column just before an election. Otherwise, the paper
does not have a written policy on letters to the editor. After meeting
with Eland to try to resolve this complaint before the hearing, the
editor had agreed to develop and publish a policy before the next
election season. (At the time of the hearing, he had not yet done
so.)
Weber said that in the weeks leading up to an election
the paper gets many more letters to the editor than it has room to
print. When choosing, Weber said, he gives preference to Eden Prairie
residents (of which there are 12,000), but when there is extra space,
he includes letters from outside the area. He also looks for letters
about races he hasn't covered much or that have not appeared in the
letters column, and for letters that are compelling, well written,
and of interest to the general readership.
Weber questioned how many letters a paper should have
to publish for it to be considered fair and pointed out that he had
published more letters in support of Eland than of her opponent.
Eland dismissed Weber's contention that this constituted
fairness: "No letters were submitted in support of my opponent,
so it would have been rather hard to print them," she said.
Media member Pia Lopez asked Eland why she thought
that she should be able to ask that letters be published? Eland said
that it would not have been such a big issue except that the paper
had not printed her ad or her own letter, thereby providing no coverage
of her in the crucial last edition before the election: "Newspapers
are the primary source of information for people during an election
season. The challenger's challenge is to make themselves known. No
coverage in the last issue means they're not known."
Weber said that most of the letters were about the
hotly contested and controversial mayoral race. Weber said no candidate
other than mayor had received more than three letters. He tried to
print a representative sample of the voices of the community, correlated
to the amount of space he had.
Eland pointed with favor to a letter in support of
a mayoral candidate, Jean Harris, followed by an editor's note that
said there were seven other letters received in support of the candidate.
Eland wondered why no such statement could have been made about letters
in support of her.
Endorsement
Media member Nancy Conner asked Weber why, if he operates with such
limited resources, he still does endorsements? Weber said, "I
think it is our duty to do that. We've been able to collect information
and have some insight that the average voter hasn't been able to gather.
That makes us qualified to offer a recommendation."
Weber questioned Eland's contention that he did not
have enough information to make an informed decision. Weber said he
had talked with Eland early in the campaign, that he'd been the first
reporter to call her after she filed her candidacy in July. He'd also
read other papers' coverage, considered the views of readers, reviewed
the candidates' platforms and compared their priorities before making
a decision. He cited an interview of Eland conducted and printed in
a sister publication, the Chanhassen Villager and reprinted
in the Eden Prairie News. In that interview Eland discussed
her three main concerns; none of them was transportation, a key issue
for the people of Eden Prairie. "She emphasized education. I
felt that was down several pegs for our readers," Weber said.
Eland said transportation was not an issue in Chanhassen,
so she didn't discuss it during the interview with the Villager.
If she had been interviewed by a reporter from the Eden Prairie
News, she said she would have been happy to discuss transportation:
"If your biggest issue is lower taxes, you can't complain if
your roads aren't funded. It was a missed opportunity to inform the
voters."
Eland rebutted Weber's view of their initial conversation
after her filing. She said he called her during dinner the day of
the filing and they had had a three minute conversation. She had not
yet formulated her stand on the issues. She told him she couldn't
talk to him then.
Public member Ann Barkelew asked Weber if he had interviewed
Eland again between July and October. He said he had not, but the
Chanhassen editor had. (Weber is the publisher of the Chanhassen paper;
the editor works for him.) Media member Tony Carideo asked Weber if
he had worked with the Chanhassen editor to construct the interview
so as to address issues of special concern to Eden Prairie residents
as well as Chanhassen residents. Weber said he had not made such a
distinction because he felt the issues of each community were substantially
similar. "I knew transportation was a big issue because the community
had held focus groups."
"I was not given an opportunity to explain my
viewpoints on the issues," said Eland. But when asked if she
had taken the initiative to call the editor to talk with him about
her viewpoints, she said she had not. "No, I assumed he'd call
back. I could have called, but I didn't."
Public member Craig Shulstad asked Eland if, given
the tenor of the paper's endorsement of her opponent, it was actually
better not to be endorsed. He read from the endorsement as it appeared
in the paper: "Workman ... tempts political suicide with such
half-baked ideas as flogging repeat DWI offenders and calling himself
a Libertarian-slash-Republican. His diligence toward lowering taxes
and returning budget surpluses to voters is a plus ... unfortunately,
challenger Marcia Eland hasn't offered enough justification for change."
Eland said she found the endorsement very humorous:
"kind of a backward endorsement of me."
Council members asked Weber to describe his process
in making an endorsement decision. Weber said that the entire staff
gathers to study and talk about the candidates and issues. Public
member Jon Schroeder asked Weber if they communicated anything about
their endorsement process to candidates. Weber said they did not,
but that he thought that would be reasonable to do in the future.
Media member Elizabeth Costello asked Weber if there
was anything he would do differently in regard to endorsements, to
which Weber responded that he thought the endorsement process was
a fair one. "It's not all the responsibility of the newspaper.
The candidate should provide the paper with position papers, with
platforms and other statements."
Conner asked Eland if she had supplied the paper with
position papers. Eland said she wrote a letter to the editor with
her viewpoints on education,; it was published. She also wrote one
on health care, but had not supplied them with campaign literature.
"It didn't occur to me. I don't know if that's commonly done.
I was expecting a call for an interview."
Deliberation:
Questions of process dominated the deliberations. Canning said, "The
focus of the complaint is openness and awareness of the readers. The
Eden Prairie News owes more to its readers than it's owned
up to. If everyone knew the ground rules, we wouldn't be having this
hearing."
Public member Willie Johnson said, "Nothing promotes
fairness more than an open and clearly understood process." Elizabeth
Costello agreed: "I'd like to see some sort of policy in writing
regarding letters and something regarding endorsements. It would be
a prudent thing to do."
That said, many members felt empathy for the difficult
role of the editor during election season. Public member Jon Schroeder
said: "As a former reporter, publisher, editor, ad manager and
janitor at a paper smaller than yours, the last thing I want to do
is send a shot across the bow to discourage you, but we need to find
a way to communicate broadly these expectations and standards around
elections to elevate professionalism. That's why it's good to have
these conversations."
Lopez, at the time of this hearing editorial page
editor for the St. Cloud Times (now with the Duluth News-Tribune),
said she understood the pressures that the endorsement process puts
on editors and questioned whether a single endorsement interview was
of such importance: "It is very time-consuming trying to interview
all the candidates, but our judgment is not based on a single interview.
It is based on following the candidates over time, over years, even."
Lopez was also concerned about the candidate making
requests of the paper. She said that if candidates call her, she tells
them to have the letter-writer call her. Public member Julie Tilley
said she had no problem with the candidate calling, because the candidate
is working with groups of supporters on a single effort. "With
the missed ad, no endorsement and the letters not printed, given that
context, it doesn't surprise me." Conner agreed, saying, "Even
though Ms. Eland wasn't the letter-writer, her campaign was directly
impacted. She is not a disinterested third party."
Public member Rachel Quenemoen asked: "Whose
responsibility is it to promote name recognition and get information
out to the public, the campaign or the newspaper? What responsibility
does a newspaper have in a campaign and to whom does it have that
responsibility? To the public. There was a muddle here."
Groeneveld saw a missed opportunity: "Weber said
she didn't address the issues; then why not sit down and ask questions?
Maybe fax a questionnaire to all the candidates. It's the responsibility
of the paper to go out there and solicit views if they think it's
not being addressed."
But Williams disagreed: it's up to both parties. "The
lack of initiative of the candidate was strange. Why wasn't there
more information sent, more faxing where you stand on issues?"
Media member Tony Carideo tempered the responsibility
of the paper with the realities small papers face in working with
limited resources: "Weber had his hands full with a mayoral race.
I can see how other races may have been given short shrift. But with
that said, I still think the paper was remarkably passive in getting
information from other candidates. If the editor moved into the campaign
season knowing he was going to be consumed by one race, he should
have, early on, done things ... mechanized the process, to get that
information."
As for the candidate, Carideo continued, "It
was incumbent upon her to reach out to the paper if she feels the
paper is not being proactive. Just as she reaches out to voters, she
should reach out to the newspaper. A handful of letters to the editor
does not cut it. What we have here are two parties who are both way
too passive in the electoral process."
Barkelew didn't believe a distinction should be drawn
between big and small papers when it came to endorsements: "When
people are busy, they rely upon the newspaper. They believe the newspaper
has really done its homework and usually the paper says it has. I'm
not sure that readers can put on one hat for a large daily paper and
another hat for a weekly afternoon paper. If transportation was an
important issue, the paper owed it to the candidate to ask about that
issue before making its endorsement."
Bauerlein didn't agree with the tenor of the discussion:
"When it comes to editorials, it's the newspaper's job to be
biased, in a political sense. That's why there are still papers called
the Red Wing Republican Eagle. That is what newspapers have
historically done, to be the voice of a certain segment of the population."
She continued, "Fairness in the letters page
is another matter. It seems everyone agrees on the key lesson here.
We'd all like everyone to know what the rules are for the letters
page." She also agreed that neither side was active enough in
seeking information. She suggested the editor invite candidates to
submit information, opinions, position papers, all of which could
be considered in its endorsement process.
Groeneveld challenged that proposal, saying that journalists
are highly suspicious about slick PR campaigns: "As a working
journalist, I almost have a bias against stuff that comes in from
candidates. I always trust my own questions more." He believed
it was necessary for the paper to talk to the candidates before an
endorsement.
The Vote
1. On the question of whether the Eden Prairie News was unfair
to Marcia Eland in its handling of letters to the editor, the Council
voted 19-3 to deny the complaint:
Upholding the complaint: Cleary, Johnson, Reister
Denying the complaint: Bailey, Barkelew, Bauerlein, Canning,
Carideo, Conner, Costello, Diaz, Groeneveld, Keller, Lopez, Neddermeyer,
Quenemoen, Scales, Schroeder, Shulstad, Stauffer, Tilley, Williams
2. On the question of whether the Eden Prairie
News was unfair to Marcia Eland in not interviewing her as part
of its process in choosing a candidate to endorse, the Council voted
13-9 to deny the complaint:
Upholding the complaint: Bailey, Carideo, Cleary,
Costello, Groeneveld, Johnson, Keller, Scales, Tilley
Denying the complaint: Barkelew, Bauerlein, Canning, Conner,
Diaz, Lopez, Neddermeyer, Quenemoen, Reister, Schroeder, Shulstad,
Stauffer, Williams
Presiding: Stringer
News Council Statement
After the vote, the Council adopted a resolution to
address to all news outlets:
On behalf of readers, the News Council urges all newspapers,
at the outset of a campaign season, to publish their letters policy
and endorsement process, and to describe the efforts they will make
to solicit information from candidates.
August 19, 1999
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