High aims, high hurdles: Building fairness into political reporting
How does the Monitor approach political reporting with consistent fairness? In an era when politics-as-usual can sometimes mean devaluing facts, our politics editor says it’s a challenge.
What does it take to maintain fairness in political reporting at a divisive time, one in which “controlling the narrative” and “rousing the base” can mean pushing facts aside?
“One of the expressions that you hear at the Monitor a lot is ‘light, not heat,’” says the Monitor’s politics editor, Liz Marlantes. “And I think that can be a particularly beneficial approach in the realm of politics.”
Practically speaking, she tells the Monitor’s Samantha Laine Perfas, that means “trying to bring an objective and helpful perspective to various themes and issues and races in a way that will be a service to readers.”
That doesn’t mean presenting “both sides” in a way that creates false equivalencies when one side or the other strays from reality. It means acknowledging that there’s tremendous complexity around most issues, and calmly showing as many of those as possible so readers can form their own conclusions – and learn to push back on misinformation. It also calls for active listening, and not just to politicians. Reader feedback is always welcome.
“Sometimes we learn something new that we didn’t know about,” says Liz, “and at other times it’s just a chance to have a dialogue.”
Episode transcript
Samantha Laine Perfas: Welcome to “Why We Wrote This.” I’m your host, Samantha Laine Perfas.
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With the upcoming 2022 midterm elections, we thought it would be a great opportunity to look at how the Monitor approaches its political coverage with fairness and respect.
Today, I’m joined by Liz Marlantes, the Monitor’s politics editor, who talks about some of the challenges that arise when reporting on big issues. Here’s our conversation.
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Laine Perfas: Liz, we’re getting close to the midterms. I’m curious if the climate we’re seeing now is typical for this season.
Liz Marlantes: You know, it’s one of those things where you never really know until after the fact. I think you see a lot of discussion about how this is the most consequential election of our lifetimes, or things are as heated and toxic as they’ve ever been. And I would just say in a lot of ways, this election cycle is feeling … typical or normal.
Laine Perfas: That’s really interesting to hear. I want to talk specifically about the Monitor and how we cover politics. We’re typically known for having nonpartisan, fair reporting. How does our approach achieve that?
Marlantes: One of the expressions that you hear at the Monitor a lot is “light, not heat.” And I think that can be a particularly beneficial approach in the realm of politics, where certainly, you know, the political parties on both sides have every incentive in the world to be bringing heat. They [each] want to rile up their base. For obvious reasons, you have both parties saying, you know, if the other side wins, then it will be “the end of democracy.” But the Monitor takes a deliberately, kind of calm, non-sensationalist approach to, frankly, all of our reporting. We’re trying to bring an objective and helpful perspective to various themes and issues and races in a way that will be a service to readers.
Laine Perfas: I think sometimes you see a pushback against what is considered fair; a lot of people are questioning whether the media is even capable of being neutral. Could you talk about that a little bit?
Marlantes: I think there have been a couple of trends that have happened in recent years that have brought a lot of that to the forefront. You kind of have these two arguments, one of which is this idea that nobody’s neutral, nobody’s objective, every reporter has their own biases. And given that, it would be better to just be transparent about it and then let the reader decide whether they agree with that reporter’s position or not. And then the other thing that’s really happened in recent years is this critique of “both-sides-ism,” as it’s called, which is essentially an argument that if you try to portray both sides as having valid and equal points of view, then sometimes you’re elevating one side onto equal footing with the other side, when clearly one side is wrong or inferior or completely misleading everybody. And those have been powerful critiques. And there are aspects to that that I think are sometimes true. But I think it’s also made it even more clear to me, at least, that it is just still so important to try to approach every situation with an honest and open mind. My goal often is to point out to readers that there is complexity to everything. I think a far better approach is to just acknowledge that there’s tremendous complexity and many shades of gray and try to show as many of those as possible and then let the readers draw their own conclusions.
Laine Perfas: So what are some of the challenges our politics team faces in trying to do this?
Marlantes: Our national campaign reporter, Story Hinckley, just wrote about this. It’s gotten harder to get access to campaigns and candidates really on both sides of the aisle, but particularly the Republican side, since Donald Trump overtly started criticizing and attacking the media. And of course, he didn’t start doing that out of nowhere. Republicans have had in some ways legitimate complaints for many decades even that the media is more often on the side of Democrats on a number of issues and hasn’t treated Republicans fairly. But Trump really brought that argument to the forefront. And as a result of that, a lot of Republican campaigns now don’t really want to interact with the mainstream media, and a lot of Republican voters don’t want to interact with the mainstream media. And that has made our job harder in a lot of ways, because if you don’t get access, you can’t cover things well or accurately. And, you know, I will say increasingly, I think, you also see players on the left feeling like they can criticize reporters when reporters don’t present a totally friendly or totally positive portrayal. You know, both sides now have sort of access to a partisan echo chamber. Many voters now pretty much bypass what we would call the mainstream media and just consume, often through social media, a very partisan diet of information. And so that’s created a challenge. It’s really harder to get campaign coverage. It takes a lot more ingenuity and sometimes working around the campaign instead of with the campaign.
Laine Perfas: I’m thinking about one particular example of partisanship, and that’s around the 2020 election. How do you balance showing all perspectives of an issue while also adhering to the facts?
Marlantes: That has definitely been a challenge. We definitely try to make sure that our stories reflect the facts as we know them now about what happened in the 2020 election. We frequently will remind readers that the Trump campaign brought many lawsuits to court and lost nearly all of them. Even Trump officials, like former Attorney General Bill Barr, have admitted that the election was fair and secure. But we also need to cover the fact that many, many voters don’t think that’s true. And I think it’s important to show that point of view and try to understand that point of view, even if we are also in our story providing the context that shows why that point of view might be misinformed.
Laine Perfas: What do you do when you get pushback from readers? How do our reporters handle that?
Marlantes: It depends on the reporter. I know Linda Feldmann, who is our White House correspondent and our Washington bureau chief, responds to literally every email she gets unless, it’s just obscene or clearly not wanting a response. But I think the goal is to try to help our readers understand what we have learned through our reporting and the work that we’ve done. And if people want to reach out with questions or criticisms or pushback, most of our reporters welcome that because sometimes we learn something new that we didn’t know about, and at other times it’s just a chance to have a dialogue.
Laine Perfas: Listening to you talk, it sounds like it’s pretty challenging and can be pretty exhausting working in politics.
Marlantes: So yes. I mean, this is the busy time, of course. So most political reporters gear up for this and expect that the run up to an election is going to be, you know, more hectic and a lot more work than typical. But it’s also really fun and it’s really exciting to cover campaigns and to cover the issues that are so consequential to all Americans and for our reporters who get out and travel the country and, you know, get to see different places and talk to different voters and really spend time understanding what it is that this country is wrestling with at any given time and how people are feeling. I think there’s no better job, really.
Laine Perfas: Well, thank you so much, Liz, for sharing a little bit about what our politics team does.
Marlantes: It’s my pleasure.
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Laine Perfas: Thanks for listening. To find a transcript of this episode and the show notes visit csmonitor.com/whywewrotethis. You’ll also find links to some of our politics coverage. And, just a heads up, we will not be producing an episode next week, as we’ll be observing Veterans Day.
This episode was hosted and produced by me, Samantha Laine Perfas and edited by Clay Collins. Our sound engineers were Tim Malone, Jeff Turton and Alyssa Britton, with original music by Noel Flatt. Produced by the Christian Science Monitor. Copyright 2022.
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