Newspaper strives for fairness among candidates

Frontiersman editorial board

Does your local newspaper show bias? Of course, it does. On any given issue, the newspaper, and everyone who works in its offices have biases and opinions. The newspaper's opinion appears in the space you're reading right now. This editorial represents the opinion of this newspaper. When an individual employee of the newspaper has an opinion, it will appear in an editorial column. It will display the writer's name and, most likely, a photo.

The opinion pages are also a place for readers to express their opinions -- whether they are the same as the newspaper's opinion or not. It's a place for the free exchange of ideas. To that end, the Frontiersman makes every attempt to maintain fairness and balance on its opinion pages. We require all letter and Spectrum writers to provide their name and a phone number for confirmation. We print confirmed letters and Spectrums in the order they were received, with a few exceptions. Election time is one of the most challenging times for us. The first-come-first-served rule is suspended during political campaigns so that the large influx of election-related letters and Spectrums can be printed before the pre-election cut-off. Today is that cut-off, and we've made every effort to print as many letters and opinions as possible. Some haven't made it into print for a variety of reasons.

In terms of fairness to the candidates, the Frontiersman has not endorsed any candidate in any race. It's not our policy to do so. Many Frontiersman employees do vote, so it shouldn't be surprising that many of us have opinions about candidates and ballot issues. We also have a strong belief that our primary role in the overall body of the newspaper is to provide accurate and complete information that empowers our readers to make better decisions for our community.

On Monday, two people contacted the newsroom at Frontiersman and voiced concern about potential bias on the newspaper's behalf. In one instance, a current candidate's representative felt his candidate had been treated unfairly on our opinion pages, and in the other instance, a local political figure felt that we might be holding a Spectrum piece he'd submitted. In each case, the Frontiersman has followed its guidelines in the effort to maintain fairness and balance. It's impossible to achieve perfect balance on an issue-by-issue basis, but we are committed to achieving that goal over the long haul, and we are confident that we do that. Some people have said that Frontiersman spends an inordinate amount of space covering conservative representatives, and that it shows a liberal bias. It's important to remember that nearly all the Valley's representatives are conservatives, and they're the ones making the news. Our goal is to cover issues and the people who are working on them -- whatever those issues are, and whoever those people are.