Seattle Times Editor Admits Staff is ‘Blue’

Weekly Example of Media Bias   —   Posted on August 22, 2007

NOTE:  Karl Rove is President Bush’s Deputy Chief of Staff and political advisor

In an e-mail to his staff, Seattle Times Executive Editor Dave Boardman reported that in [the] Monday (Aug. 13) news meeting about planned story assignments, “when word came in of Karl Rove’s resignation, several people in the meeting started cheering.” [In his email] Boardman [said]: “That sort of expression is simply not appropriate for a newsroom.” In revealing the incident in his blog, the paper’s chief political reporter, David Postman, recognized that “it sounds like a conservative’s parody of how a news meeting would be run.”

In a follow up e-mail sent Wednesday, top editor Boardman conceded the display matched the overall politics at the paper: “If we wore our politics on our sleeves in here, I have no doubt that in this and in most other mainstream newsrooms in America, the majority of those sleeves would be of the same color: blue [meaning Democrats]. Survey after survey over the years have demonstrated that most of the people who go into this business tend to vote Democratic, at least in national elections. That is not particularly surprising, given how people make career decisions and that social service and activism is a primary driver for many journalists.”

Postman clarified in his August 14 “Postman on Politics” blog that “it was only a couple of people who cheered and they, thankfully, are not among the people who get a say in news play. But obviously news staff shouldn’t be cheering or jeering the day’s news.” Chief editor Boardman admonished in the Tuesday e-mail, “As we head into a major political year, now’s a good time to remember: Please keep your personal politics to yourself.”

• Go to MRC.org for the original posting.
• For a posting “Joe Scarborough Reveals MSNBC Newsroom Booed Bush Speech,” click here.
• And another post on personal politics in the newsroom by Bill Hobbs, go to NewsBusters.org.