 | ||||||
 | ||||||
| ||||||
| ||||||
| Hot Type, for the week of April 1, 2005 -- continued
Signs of Bias Last week a photograph I would normally have zero interest in was e-mailed to me: a view of the front yard of Steve Huntley's house on a corner in Wilmette. Huntley's the editor of the editorial pages of the Sun-Times, and the photograph was sent by Wilmette partisans who were furious at him. A school board race has passions running high in the suburb, and Huntley's pages sided with the insurgents. There've been no Sun-Times editorials on the upcoming District 39 election on April 5, and no articles either. But on March 21 occasional op-ed columnist Mary Laney wrote about "angry and frustrated" Wilmette parents who'd formed Citizens for Blue Ribbon Schools to take on the powers that be. These parents told her that test scores have been slipping since 2000, and they complained about the reading and math programs. Laney sympathized. Her column told of a time when she'd been unable to help her own son with his sixth-grade math because she didn't understand it; recalling this "iconoclastic moment," as she put it, filled her with "compassion" for the Blue Ribbon parents. Laney's column was full of numbers. Superintendent of schools Max McGee promptly wrote Huntley a five-page letter arguing that most of them were misleading or wrong. Laney had blasted the District 39 leadership in a column last August, and McGee replied then too. McGee says the earlier letter never ran and that Huntley told him the new one was too long to consider. What does this have to do with Huntley's yard? Partisans of the District 39 incumbents reasoned like this: The Sun-Times publishes Laney at Huntley's pleasure, and therefore she'd been writing what he wanted her to write. And his bias was clear -- on his lawn stood two posters supporting the Blue Ribbon slate. Photos of the Huntley lawn swept Wilmette by e-mail, accompanied by a note from incumbent board member Judy Schnecke. She called Laney's latest column "her second hit piece" and commented, "For an editorial page editor to pay a freelance writer, not once but twice, to produce a piece of fiction not supported by any facts, so close to an election, and clearly try to influence the outcome of the election, crosses an ethical line. If this is the kind of activity in which these candidates will engage in order to win the election, what might they do to our schools if they actually get elected?" Schnecke's allies wrote Sun-Times editor John Barron denouncing Laney's column. Someone who described himself as a 1940s graduate of the University of Missouri journalism school -- "where journalism ethics was taught with passion" -- called the column "despicable and totally one-sided," and added, "Here comes the 'clincher': Your readers deserve to know that [Huntley] has posted campaign signs for Laney's cohorts . . . on his front lawn." Another Wilmette resident wrote Barron -- and publisher John Cruickshank -- wondering, "Do the Huntleys have any contact or relationship with the Blue Ribbon Committee? Of course, this all has to be coincidence." When Schnecke's note reached Laney, she e-mailed back: "I have never been asked to write anything by anyone at the Sun-Times, nor anyone affiliated with anyone at the Sun-Times. For you to send a letter accusing me of being a paid 'hit piece' writer is pure libel. You should send an email to each and every person you sent your initial smear to correcting your dangerous assumptions." Laney's bravado notwithstanding, the signs promptly disappeared from Huntley's lawn. And Huntley told McGee that if he resubmitted a shorter rebuttal, the Sun-Times would publish it. McGee did, and on March 24 the Sun-Times did. I wondered why those signs had gone up in the first place. "My wife posted the signs," Huntley explained. "For the years when I was metro editor and in charge of news coverage of the Chicago area, she never involved herself in anything political. Once I got into the opinion business and was no longer responsible in any way for news coverage, my wife -- very much her own person with her own interests in the world -- and I decided that she now had a right to express her own opinions as well. She took the signs down when she saw they had become an issue for me." Linda Huntley may have been expressing her personal opinion, but it's their lawn. And Huntley's wrong if he thinks he has no responsibility for news coverage. An op-ed column that's a paper's first and last word on a subject is de facto news as well as opinion. Send tips, tirades, and comments to hottype@chicagoreader.com |
 |  |