I realized early in my citizen advocacy adventures that what we read in the newspapers isn't always entirely accurate. As time went by, while I was on the Portland Planning Commission and especially when I ran for City Council, I noticed more and more how what the papers choose to print, where, when, and how they choose to print it, makes a big difference in conveying information.
Today's example, from Murmurs in Willamette Week:
"Thanks to Portland Public Schools board member Doug Morgan's travel plans, the race for his seat has hit a lull. Just weeks before ballots go out for the May 15 election, Morgan headed recently to China and Vietnam for a two-week trip on behalf of PSU's Hatfield School of Government. His challenger Ruth Adkins says Morgan's absence is causing the postponement of various events until he returns on April 9. "I'm here and I'm doing my best to talk to voters," Adkins says. "I feel like we both need to be here." Morgan's campaign manager Pat Mobley says, "I pressed Doug to try to get out of it," but adds, "He had just too many important relationships with decision-makers in those countries to not go." [Bold emphasis in original]
The first sentence conveys to me: "Everything is on hold while incumbent is out of town". That could be taken as the incumbent choosing travel over campaigning (negative for incumbent). It also could be read as showing the incumbent has the power to set the parameters of the race (negative for challenger). Either way, "hit a lull" implies "boring", which indeed is probably the core issue for Willamette Week with its reliance on controversy. Others might think there is still plenty to review in the differences between the candidates from their web sites and records, since many Portlanders have hardly heard of either.
The central part of the paragraph implies Ruth Adkins is having difficulty getting voters' attention without the incumbent. In fact, her campaign is rapidly gathering momentum, with great turnout at her houseparties and other events. She's seeking and winning endorsements (latest ones: Metro Councilor Robert Liberty; Sam Chase, Executive Director of the Community Development Network of affordable housing providers; and Chuck Currie, minister and blogger) and powering ahead on fundraising. Those activities are mostly what she would be doing at this time whether the incumbent was in Portland or not. People don't pay attention to primary elections until closer to when ballots arrive, and forum events for the Charter change ballot measures are mostly scheduled later in the month, too.
The last sentence, with WW's bolding, like the first can be taken two ways. "Incumbent is an important person well versed in high-level decision-making" is one take-home message. "Incumbent is too busy with his job to care about Portland's School Board" is the alternate way to read it.
I don't see a specific bias one way or the other in this Murmurs paragraph, I simply find the underlying inuendoes interesting. Do you ever wonder, when you're browsing through a newspaper while sipping your cup of tea or coffee, whether you're being steered towards a positive or negative impression of the people in the articles? Or whether you're intended to come away with the overall feeling that "Things are going well" or "Things are not going well"?
