One of the standard MRC categories of bias is bias by placement. In Monday’s Washington Post Metro section, an article profiling students traveling to Washington for the annual March for Life was placed on page B-4. But a 17-year-old activist who wanted to make sure she could vote for Barack Obama in Maryland was on B-1. (This is in my Virginia edition. In Virginia and now in Maryland, 17-year-olds can vote in primaries if they’ll turn 18 before the general election.)
Post editors can surely claim that the Maryland-teen story on presidential politics is both more local and more contemporary than out-of-town teens attending an annual march. They also must have liked the angle that the angry father of the Obama-loving teen wrote a letter to The Washington Post, which sparked the whole campaign for 17-year-old voting rights in Maryland. The strangest part of the story by Daniel deVise is the lack of labels for any activist in this story on the liberal side, especially leftist Democratic state legislator Jamie Raskin (son of Marcus Raskin, one of the founders of the far-left Institute for Policy Studies).
The story on young pro-lifers was headlined "ANTIABORTION CONFERENCE: Movement Gets a Youthful Infusion." Reporter Pamela Constable didn’t use the word "conservative" to describe the activists in her story, so there was some balance there between the two stories. (She did refer to their preference for Mike Huckabee, who’s "more conservative" on abortion than other candidates.) Constable’s story also featured no attack quotes from abortion advocates. The story was promoted on the front page under the headline "Antiabortion Fight’s Youth Movement," with students meeting at Catholic University as part of a "new generation of activists taking up the antiabortion cause." Why do these editors seem anti-hyphen?
But as someone who’s monitored the Post on this front for years, let’s say this. Grading on their curve, this is an A. It’s a preview story on the March for Life, which is rarely done by the Post (often you’ll just see a traffic map). Constable’s story is free of snark or verbal shudders. It’s illustrated by two sizable black-and-white pictures of students, one illustrating students taking a nap after a long bus trip. On this Monday, for a change, it seems like someone with a pro-life bone in their body (or a real commitment to covering both sides of the fence) was working inside the Post building on 15th Street.
PS: The website adds a sour note: the pro-life story is nowhere to be found on the home page of the Metro section at washingtonpost.com this morning.
