REACHING FOR A HEADLINE

Being employed as a newspaper editor meant I had to be scrupulous about avoiding the slightest appearance of partisanship in public. Too many people assume bias on any pretext and extend that to an assumption you cannot hear their position fairly. In reality, these are the ones who want you to be actively in their group rather than neutral in reporting both sides.

Admittedly, I’ve long felt a tension between avoiding any appearance of having a position and upholding moral values. Can you be objective without any sense of what’s true or how it all fits together?

For many of us, there are unwritten rules about what’s acceptable and what’s not, and the code I followed came largely from the Kansas City Times, where your community participation is limited largely to your church. I wonder how it would have handled my joining a denomination known for its social justice witness – one where I could gently encourage others in the congregation to activism, even if I could not act with them.

Early on, as a cub reporter, I learned you cannot wear a candidate’s button or apply the bumper sticker, even if you can distance yourself in critical thinking. Some fine journalists refrain from even voting in elections, which in turn raises some questions about democratic responsibility in the aftermath.

Retirement, though, is allowing me to slowly move away from that, and this is the first time in my quarter-century-plus in the Granite State I’m attending presidential primary events – on both sides of the political divide, at that.

It’s been eye-opening.

My wife, on the other hand, is an old-pro at these things and often explains nuances to me, the one with the degree in political science. (OK, my focus was on political theory and policy analysis rather than the nitty-gritty of campaigning, elections, and legislative maneuvers.) And one daughter, seasoned in the behind-the-scenes work of running a candidate for office, has convinced me of the importance of organization, planning, and staff discipline.

It’s still early in the fray – a wonderful opportunity to observe, actually. And it’s as much fun to watch the crowd, large or small, as it is the candidate or staff. They cover the range.

One thing I notice, though, is the working press and the video crews. CNN, C-SPAN, and, I’m guessing, MSNBC News have a trio of cameras side by side staffed by college-fresh crews just about everywhere. Just in case? Who knows. The metro reporters, in their suits and loose ties (if that), are looking for the telling detail, likely for a wrap-up later, while the frumpier local papers just want a story for the next edition, daily or weekly.

And that’s had me wondering just how I would cover the typical event. Most of these appearances, after all, are pretty standard repetition of policy positions easily available online. There’s nothing new there – and thus no news.

Well, the Q-and-A portion in what many bill as a town meeting can be interesting, if the questioners are actually from the public and not just campaign plants.

We got a flash of that yesterday at Dover City Hall when Hillary Clinton was heckled by a juvenile but orchestrated ban-fracking group. From everything we saw, she responded admirably, calmly, professionally – and got a loud, standing ovation in response. Not that you’d know that part from the headlines or news stories.

The strident outburst seized the coverage and nearly hijacked the event. But it was also allowed to remain, standing silently, with its banner, in one corner of the hall. Did it advance its cause?

I doubt it. We come to these appearances to hear positions, not to dictate their answers. We want honesty, not pandering.

As we heard Ohio Governor John Kasich say earlier in the week, in front of a much smaller gathering, New Hampshire voters serve as an X-ray machine, looking at both a candidate’s outer and inner qualities. He’s right. It’s not a responsibility we take easily. Just consider standing more than an hour in a long line snaking through the steamy summer confines of a city hall corridor before standing another hour-and-a-half through the event itself, as the audience did for Hillary.

I’d urge the protesters, by the way, to take their banner and voices to stand outside the Republican hopefuls’ events and see where that goes.

In the meantime, I’m reminded of the gap between what is often experienced in a situation like this and what we read of it in the news story. What I experienced and what I read aren’t the same. And, no, I wouldn’t accept a campaign sticker – I was there to watch and listen.

As for that public responsibility? We’d hoped to get up to Laconia later in the afternoon, where the Donald was to appear at a rally – no Q-and-A, I presume. But we agreed, we’d had enough for one day. You can absorb only so much at a time. And, as I search for that coverage this morning, apparently there was nothing newsworthy to report there.