Determination
61
Minnesota
News Council
In the Matter of the Complaint of
Hoese DFL House Campaign Committee against the
Waconia Patriot, Norwood Times and Carver County News
The grievance arises out of the news coverage afforded
by the three newspapers of the 1984 election campaign for state representative
of District 35B, between K. J. McDonald (I-R), the incumbent, and
Jim Hoese (DFL), the challenger. McDonald won the strenuous campaign.
The Hoese DFL House Campaign Committee raises the following issues:
- That Hoese's political advertisements were consistently
placed in the three newspapers in poor locations, indicating a bias
against Hoese;
- That a letter to the editor on behalf of Hoese
was improperly edited and that a news story misquoted a Hoese supporter;
- That an editorial in the November 1, 1984, issue
of the newspapers criticized a Hoese campaign brochure without giving
the Hoese supporters an opportunity to reply to the criticism; and
- The newspapers refused to print a letter to the
editor on behalf of Hoese which rebutted a claim made by the McDonald
campaign committee in its advertising.
District 35B is so laid out that, according to the
parties, the only cost-effective local political advertising is in
a newspaper. Four newspapers serve the district. Three of them, the
three involved here, are owned by James D. Berreth, the publisher,
who resides in Watertown. Each of the three newspapers has its own
editor. The Carver County News is located at Watertown; the Waconia
Patriot at Waconia; and the Norwood Times at Norwood.
Present for the grievant were Marcy Waritz, Chairperson
of the DFL Committee, Henry Helgen, and Barb Hoese. Present on behalf
of the three newspapers was Rod S. Shilkrot, who was editor of the
Waconia Patriot at the time of the events involved here.
1. Ad placement: The Hoese committee claims
that its ads were consistently placed in disadvantageous locations
in these newspapers, suggestive of a bias against Hoese. Specifically,
the grievant claims that McDonald's ads were usually placed close
to the front pages of the newspapers, while the Hoese ads were relegated
to the back pages.
The three editors have made a careful review of the
issues of their newspapers involved and have compiled a summary of
the McDonald and Hoese ads that were published and the location of
each ad. It appears, first of all, that the McDonald campaign did
considerably more advertising than the Hoese campaign. In some issues
of the newspapers there were no Hoese ads. Whether forward placement
of ads is better than placement in the back pages, as Hoese argues,
is uncertain.
Assuming that forward placement is better for readership
purposes - and research is inconclusive on this - a careful review
of the record shows that there were a total of 19 issues of the three
newspapers in which ads were published for both candidates. In nine
of these issues, the Hoese ads were placed before the McDonald ads;
in eight issues, the McDonald ads were placed before the Hoese ads;
and in two issues the ads of both candidates were in the middle of
the newspapers. We do note that the McDonald ads appear to have received
more forward placement in the Carver County News. The News Council,
however, can find no bias favoring the McDonald campaign in the placement
of the ads, nor can it be said there is any consistent pattern of
ad placement favorable to either candidate.
We might add that the Hoese ads were usually submitted
to the Carver County Herald at Chaska (not a paper owned by Berreth)
and prepared there. These ads would then be given to Berreth's three
newspapers under a shared-exchange arrangement. While, for example,
the Waconia Patriot would receive notice of the ad insertions and
the sizes of the ads, this information did not always arrive in a
timely manner and, in some instances, depending on the weekly page
composition schedule at the Waconia office, might unintentionally
affect placement of the ads. McDonald ads, on the other hand, were
submitted in Watertown and prepared in Waconia at the Patriot.
The grievance of biased ad placement is denied.
2. Improperly edited letter: Joel Kamerud submitted
a four-paragraph letter to the editor on behalf of Hoese, referring
to the candidate's effective skills as a communicator, which was printed
in several papers. The Carver County News published a one-paragraph
letter from Joel Kamerud which was simply a generalized endorsement
of Hoese. The two letters are completely different and clearly the
one-paragraph letter cannot be an "edited" version of the
first letter; indeed, one wonders if Joel Kamerud, who did not submit
testimony, may have written two different letters or if some mix-up
in letters occurred. The newspapers state they did no editing.In any
event, the News Council lacks sufficient information to make a judgment
on this grievance.
Grievant claims that the chairperson of the Hoese
Campaign Committee was misquoted in a news article about the campaign.
The writer of the news article testified the quote used was as written
in his notes and that he believes it fairly reflects what was said.
Here again, the News Council, on this record, declines to make a judgment.
The News Council declines to resolve the factual disputes
on the Joel Kamerud letter and the alleged misquote, and these grievances
are dismissed.
Editorial: Before the election campaign started,
the Berreth newspapers were concerned about their "vulnerability"
to any claims of bias because of a longtime friendship between the
publisher Berreth, and candidate McDonald. Consequently, the publisher
and editors established a policy that the three newspapers would not
endorse a candidate for the District 35B seat.
The newspapers state they made every effort to report
the election campaign fairly, and it is significant that, with the
exception of the one alleged misquote, there is no claim by the Hoese
committee that the news coverage was not fair. However, in the November
1, 1984 issue of the newspapers, the last issue before the election,
an editorial appeared criticizing a promotional brochure that had
just been distributed by the Hoese supporters. The brochure quoted
from an editor's column critical of McDonald that had appeared in
the Waconia Patriot four years earlier. It was, of course, unfair
for the Hoese committee to use a four-year-old quote of a former editor
to suggest that such was the position of the newspapers in 1984. The
newspapers, quite properly, responded with an editorial to correct
this mistaken impression. The editorial, we might add, even while
making the correction, did not make an endorsement, but only clarified
the newspapers' own position.
The grievance on the editorial is denied.
Refusal to print letter: On October 25, 1984,
the McDonald supporters published an advertisement in which it was
stated that McDonald had high ratings from the Farmers Union. The
Hoese supporters obtained a letter from Willis Eken of the Farmers
Union stating that McDonald, in fact, had a very low rating from the
Farmers Union. The Hoese supporters asked that this letter be published
in the November 1, 1984, issue of the newspapers as a letter to the
editor. This request was refused as an attempt to raise a new issue
at the last minute.
It would seem that the Hoese committee could have
responded to the statement of Farmers Union support in the McDonald
political ad with an ad of its own. It chose, however, to attempt
a response in the letters to the editor column. The News Council believes
that the Eken letter should have been published. It did not raise
a new issue at the last minute but only responded to an issue that
the McDonald committee had raised on October 25, and the issue of
Farmers Union support was one of substance. We think better practice
would have been to publish the Eken letter.
The grievance on the Eken letter is sustained.
Concurring: Ashmore, Casey, Chucker, Earley,
Falkman, Graven, King, Persons, Ryan, Selby, Simonett
Partial Dissent: Ziegenhagen joined by Peek
and Sundin - We dissent from the majority decision as it relates to
the Carver County News. In that newspaper, there appears a clear and
consistent pattern of front-of-the-paper placement of ads for K. J.
McDonald and the IR party, and a clear pattern of back-of-the-paper
placement for Hoese, the DFL candidate. Only on weeks when Hoese bought
no ads did McDonald's ads appear toward the back of the papers.
Most egregious was the favorable placement of K. J.
McDonald's ad along with one for the IR Party on the front page of
the voter's guide, perhaps the most important edition of the newspaper
for those running in the election. In that section, Hoese's ad appeared
on page 2 and additional IR and McDonald ads appeared on page 3. Local
candidates in districts such as those served by the Carver County
News must depend almost entirely on the community newspaper to reach
their voters. It is the only mass media available at a cost candidates
can afford and still meet the spending limits set by law. For that
reason, publishers should enact procedures that give oversight to
fairness in not only political campaign reporting but also in readers'
access to the paper and to advertising placement. This extra effort
enhances a newspaper's acceptance in its community as a fair and impartial
medium, one vital to the practice of democracy.
October 11, 1985
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