Journalists in The Denver Post newsroom spend their days in pursuit of the truth.
There’s no political filter or agenda belying their printed words, just a desire to inform the public.
It’s true that sometimes a news story leaves much to be desired. Larry Bailey recently told us he has been a longtime subscriber to The Post but feels there is a slant against Trump. “If you haven’t told the whole truth then you haven’t told the truth,” he said.
Bailey reached out to The Post when he learned this board was participating in a nationwide campaign among more than 200 editorial boards to publish editorials Thursday decrying Trump’s attack on the press.
He’s right — errors of omission do occur. Sometimes there’s simply not space to print all the news or time to get all the reporting done. And yes, sometimes stories or facts are bypassed due to the natural bias that everyone carries with them. Journalists are fallible, but the reporters and editors who work to bring you your news are not conspiring to misinform.
Consider our newsroom’s immigration coverage: the same reporters who write about moms taking asylum in churches so they aren’t uprooted from the lives they have built are also covering the criminals here illegally who commit murder or run elaborate drug rings. Both are stories that need to be told and are stories that have been told in these pages.
“It’s a mistake,” Bailey said of this editorial. “You’re really making Trump’s point.”
We certainly hope not, but we could see how editorial boards working together to present a message opposing Trump’s assault on the media could be construed as confirming the president’s fake news conspiracy theory.
This coordinated response, however, is limited to pushing back against Trump’s efforts to undermine the work of journalists across the nation. We are simply standing up for what we believe in as journalists.
We believe that an informed electorate is critical to Democracy; that the public has a right to know what elected officials, public figures and government bureaucracies are doing behind closed doors; that journalism is integral to the checks and balances of power; and that the public can trust the facts it reads in this newspaper and those facts coming from the mainstream media.
Trump is a difficult politician to cover. His tweets and factually inaccurate statements frequently put him at loggerheads with the media. In a vacuum void of his outlandish statements, some of Trump’s policies would earn more straightforward media coverage. It has become a destructive cycle where the media covers Trump’s words and instead of self-reflection following scathing media reports, Trump cries fake news.
It’s a dangerous cry coming from the White House.
And so we are taking this opportunity to assure our readers that The Denver Post newsroom and opinion pages are dedicated to bringing you all the facts. We are also encouraging our readers to point it out when we are missing the mark of telling “the whole truth.” We are listening and capable of self reflection.
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