As you can tell from our pages over the last few weeks, we are at the height of election season as candidates from the White House down to city hall make their pitches to voters.
In total, our newspaper has covered 34 candidates running for municipal seats in Sedona, Cottonwood, Camp Verde and Clarkdale, providing question-and-answer interviews for voters to consider before they began making choices on their ballots, beginning with early voting on July 3 and culminating on election day on Tuesday, July 30.
As journalists, it’s interesting to see how attitudes shift when tensions run high.
The majority of candidates are overjoyed that they get to speak to voters through our pages with front-page placement of their photos and interviews, which enable them to get their messages across in their own words, yet a tiny minority of the candidates for office have been, well, less than kind, to our newspapers over the years when they don’t like a past story or an editorial.
It’s always curious when elected officials or candidates for office go on social media to call our publications “yellow journalism” or say to their base that we can’t be trusted, but are happy to respond for a story or speak to us about an election campaign.
Yet, as we are the biggest media outlet covering local issues, they need our fair coverage, our advertising space and our front pages to reach voters and possibly win election. In an ideal world, officials would say in private what they say in public, but we live in a world where the next election always comes too soon.
We certainly don’t take any of this campaigning personally.
While a campaign for office may be the biggest goal of a candidate’s public life, again, we’re covering 34 candidates running in four cities, and big elections like these happen every two years; we simply don’t have the time or interest to take slights from politicos personally.
It’s the nature of the political game to simultaneously hate the paper for reporting on a candidate’s bad actions and love the paper for reporting on that candidate’s good actions when they do something positive. We don’t take that personally, either. We cover candidates fairly because that is our charge: To present to voters and residents the opinions and views of the candidates themselves.
No matter who wins in July, or faces a runoff and wins in November, we’re more than happy to work with them after they are sworn in as elected officials to better our communities.
That just comes with the territory of being a newspaper, being simultaneously a friend to all and friend to none.
We’re a better ally than an opponent, which I personally wish more politicians and political groups would realize.
The good and successful groups and officials do, and that’s what makes them successful, because if they can disagree with us or our coverage but realize the benefits of working with the media, they’re also the type to work well with their colleagues on the dais and with members of the public to achieve their political goals. Those who fight their newspapers or media outlets will likely be butting heads with their equals on their legislative bodies and won’t be able to get statutes or laws passed.
The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the stars, but in yourselves.
Likewise, when we do investigative stories into organizations, government agencies or groups, the investigation is not a personal affair. When we’re investigating a story, it’s not because a reporter has an axe to grind, but because we’ve be told things by people in the know and we’re responding to their requests to dig deeper and see what’s really going on. We’re only interested in the news and the facts of a story. That’s why we ask for documents, interview players and contact as many sources involved as possible to hear their side.
Even when we report on someone that the players claim is a “bad actor” in a story, we reach out to hear their side of an issue. “No comment” is the worst thing a source can do when a reporter comes calling for a story, because it means the other side of an issue is all readers know. So if you see our newspaper on your caller ID, it’s in your best interest to answer, be honest and tell your side.
Remember, we’re not the ones setting or changing policy, we’re just presenting what we know in an overarching package so those who do set policy or shape an organization know what we know and the public knows.
Executive directors, managers, politicians and boards, good and bad, come and go, but the news always is and our mission is to report it. Newspapers and media outlets outlast and outlive political action committees, “concerned citizens” groups and social movements because we’re covering the news of a community, not individual issues or actors.
Communities are not black and white; rather, we live entirely in the gray, and as journalists, we must navigate that ambiguity. As long as readers trust us to do so, we’ll be here for you to read.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
