Adrian Northrup

The day after the midterm elections the UW-Eau Claire campus was a drastically different place than it had been for several weeks. The rows of signs endorsing candidates had disappeared. The multi-colored chalk messages promoting referendum positions were fading away. Students could walk on campus without encountering someone encouraging them to vote or handing them political literature.

The Spectator underwent changes as well. Suddenly the e-mail inboxes of section editors and reporters were much less daunting. Staffers were no longer scrambling off to one event or the other. The Editorial section, we all knew, would suddenly be much more difficult to fill.

Taken in sum, the end of the campaign season ushered in a considerably lower degree of excitement on campus and in the pages of The Spectator, but it also alleviated the pressure of partisans jockeying for visibility.

It’s why campaign season can be bittersweet for journalists.

Having a hand in delivering information of great societal importance on such an intense level can be exciting and rewarding. It can also be frustrating, especially when partisan bickering leads to unfair and usually unfounded accusations that we have our own agenda to push – a charge that disregards our purpose and challenges our very ethical standards.

Certainly journalists, as public servants, must be prepared to accept criticism and use it to improve the value of their work in the future. But let me make one fact very clear: we at The Spectator strive to prevent any political views we may have from affecting our coverage of candidates and issues. We don’t have any sort of agenda to discredit or distort in the name of our own political beliefs.

Charges that suggest otherwise always surface when a person of a particular political persuasion feels our coverage – whether in the news section or in our publication of opinion pieces – did not give their views justice. The charges are usually self-serving, rarely based on actual principle.

Of course our coverage is not perfect. Sometimes it’s not even satisfactory. Those problems are the direct result of human fallibility, a condition that will never disappear. Agenda has nothing to do with it.

Sometimes the negative sentiment is subtle. I’ll be on assignment and sense a certain level of cynicism or distrust, either because of my work or that of my fellow staff members. Or I’ll hear from a politically active friend that this or that person questions The Spectator’s motivations.

Other times it’s blatant and brazen, in the form of a letter to the editor, an angry e-mail or a heated political discussion.

I’m aware of remarks by Democrats, Republicans and others that level direct charges at our staff of having a political agenda or unavoidable natural bias.

I should point out that there are people from all political groups who have lauded praise on us, as well as offered constructive criticism that doesn’t degrade our ethics. Those people are greatly appreciated, and their thoughts, both positive and negative, are necessary to journalism and democracy.

But those who actually think an oversight or an inability to make it to an event suggests that we have our own political motivations unnecessarily damage the political process, as well as the credibility of the paper and of themselves.

In our news reporting, publication of opinion pieces and even staff editorials in which we take positions, independence from faction or agenda is paramount.

Perhaps the unfair assumptions some make is related to the nature of political partisanship. Some people, because they only think in terms of their agenda, assume that journalists are the same. By the very nature of our purpose and the training we receive, journalists are the direct antithesis of those with agendas, even when we make mistakes that may seem to suggest otherwise.

At the risk of over-generalizing, let me put forth a somewhat brazen message that addresses what seem to be commonly held feelings. Conservatives: there is no secret, underlying reason why we provide coverage to issues or ideas that you see as outlandish. We strive to treat all ideas and ways of life equally in our coverage, a practice that does not make us intrinsically liberal.
Liberals: We can’t take your charges that conservatives are ignorant and narrow-minded at face value. We have to take a measured approach. That doesn’t make us unenlightened.

Campaign season is over for now, which means we’re not likely to receive such self-serving criticism nearly as much. But as we all know, the next round is always approaching. For the sake of democracy, the public and your own agendas, be ready to criticize, to question and to challenge us. Just know that the only agenda we harbor is a general concern for the public interest, public being the key word. That’s the one motivation we all should share.