I regularly read the articles from different news organizations, both throwback and new-school, as well as a host of blogs.
What amazes me is how can a news organization, (and all news organizations) that prides itself on its objective reporting can a) declare its support for one candidate and then b) continue to report about any/all of the other candidates.
I’m sure others have brought up this debate before, but doesn’t it just seem a bit odd?
I mean, it’s not like once the newspaper endorses a certain individual that it can suddenly stop writing about the Presidential elections — if anything they just begin to get heated up and expand the paper’s coverage.
I have a simple solution: any news organization, blog, or any organization that claims to be a fountain of news, should, after having endorsed a candidate, begin every, single article with the words in bold
FULL DISCLOSURE: THE ____________ Daily Times endorses XYZ candidate therefore take everything we say with a grain of salt, because it’s obviously going to be skewed.
The problem is, people reading the paper after an endorsement may stumble upon an article and not realize that this article’s paper has already had it’s paradigm shifted.
Radically.
As a journalist I say this — news organizations should not endorse political candidates — and if (read: when) they do, they should lead every article from there on out stating a full disclosure.
