In the past two weeks I’ve been asked over and over if newsrooms should allow journalists to participate in caucuses and primaries where voters must publicly declare a political affiliation in order to get a ballot.
Editors and news directors want to know what boundaries to set. Journalists everywhere get uncomfortable when it feels like their right to vote clashes with newsroom policies.
I liked how Denver Post editor Greg Moore put it in his recent memo to staff. He said he would not prohibit folks from attending, but that he would prefer they hold back.
He shares the concern that many editors have, namely that a record of the political affiliations will reinforce the perception that newsrooms are biased. It’s a legitimate worry, given the slipping credibility of professional journalists.
Moore went on to point out that certain journalists with very specific job titles must not declare a political affiliation. His list was more inclusive than most, including all metro and business columnists, department heads and those in online operations.
Moore’s counterpart over at the Rocky Mountain News, John Temple, took an even more restrictive approach. He said no to all journalists participating in a caucus.
Editors in Duluth, Minn., and Tacoma, Wash., took on the issue this weekend as well, coming down in different places.
It’s a tough spot for the head of a newsroom to be in. You can’t prevent an employee from exercising a constitutional right. But you can minimize staffers’ involvement in political coverage if they have created a perception of bias or a conflict of interest. And if a significant portion of your staff can’t cover politics, can’t edit politics and can’t write headlines over political stories, that’s a problem too.
This might be a problem that’s peculiar to newsrooms in the United States, where news content (as opposed to opinion and editorial) remains free from political affiliation. It could be that someday we will move to something more like the European model, where many newsrooms reflect a political position.
I still think there’s value in a newsroom with a neutral point of view when it comes to politics. As long as neutrality is a value, it seems that caucuses and restrictive primaries will pose a difficult choice for journalists.