'Rubber stamp' editing

I too have been pondering the Daily Herald's recent campaign to build confidence among its patrons as a reaction to the national outcry over increasing journalistic bias that Americans are subjected to nowadays.

And after reading Section 1 on March 12, it is obvious to me that some responsibility rests with the Herald's own decision to seemingly rubber stamp the publishing of articles by their primary, national and international news services, The Washington Post and Associated Press.

The following reports by these news providers were written as news journalism, universally understood as the "unbiased reporting of facts that represent both sides to a conflict if one exists."

The first example was prominently displayed on Page 2, "Federal prosecutor won't quit, so he's fired." The article Associated Press reported on the Trump administration's firing of Preet Bharara, the only appointee of the 46 politically-appointed U.S. attorneys held over from the Obama administration who refused to resign as requested. And even though the reporting was accurate, harmful bias was injected as a consequence of the conspicuously sympathetic reporter failing to represent both sides of the conflict by not diligently reporting that it is standard operating procedure for incoming administrations to replace the loyal political appointees of outgoing presidents.

The second example appeared on Page 8, "Callers decry EPA chief's climate change stand." The bias in The Washington Post article comes from the reporter's own reluctance to put language into perspective relating to Scott Pruitt's disagreement that "human activity is a primary contributor to the global warming that we see," when the reporter immediately countered that the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has concluded that it is "extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming."

"Extremely likely?" Wasn't the same said of Hillary Clinton's chances?

Frank Gabl

Prospect Heights