From the Chicagoist Public Editor...

By Margaret Lyons in News on Oct 21, 2004 3:10PM

The Trib came back swinging today after taking what seems to be a whole lotta junk for endorsing Bush. Except it was mostly weak, old-man swinging, somehow reminding us of what Monty Burns looks like when boxing. Yeah, it's punches but...come on.

Newsflash: The Tribune has a "reputation as a 'Republican newspaper,'" according to public editor Don Wycliff. Thanks, Don! We hadn't heard. We liked Eric Zorn's description that "the next time [the Trib] endorses a Democrat for president will be the first," so no one was exactly surprised that they came out in favor of Bush, except we guess for all the people who wrote in to bitch about it. But public editors are good for something, right? Just like ombudsmen? Meh.

We're not sure that the Tribune needed to justify its endorsement—wasn't the whole editorial a justification for it?—but we were glad to learn that the Tribune operates under a "manifesto." A mission statement, if you will. And that manifesto includes:

The Tribune believes in the traditional principles of limited government; maximum individual responsibility; and minimum restriction of personal liberty, opportunity and enterprise. It believes in free markets, free will and freedom of expression.

These principles, while traditionally conservative, are guidelines and not reflexive dogmas ….The Tribune are not blindly or uncritically partisan. No political party should take its support for granted.

If anyone can find the full text of this manifesto, let us know. Help brace Chicagoist's fall from its teetering soap-box after the jump...

Our gripe with this column isn't that the Tribune endorsed Bush, or even that its justifications for doing so were flimsy, but that this response from the public editor seemed really half-assed. Sure, we're kind of a Republican newspaper, it seemed to say, but that means it's extra-significant when we criticize Republicans. Which we did on three specific occasions. Chicagoist wonders if that means it's less significant when the paper praises or endorses Republicans.

We were also a little disappointed with the response to questions about the overall editorial slant—if there was a concern that "editorials over the last year that went out of their way to avoid blaming Bush personally for problems or failures of his administration, presumably so the paper wouldn't have to deal with that criticism in the inevitable Bush endorsement." We hadn't even thought of that, except now it seems really important. But the answer? "'I don't think in those terms,'" quoth editorial editor Bruce Dold. Forgive us for not being particularly satisfied with that. At least say "no."

Why bother endorsing at all? Because the Tribune is a "citizen" of its community, and uh…just cause. Truthfully, we don't mind newspapers endorsing candidates. We kind of like it because it raises, or more accurately has the potential to raise, the level of discourse, to add to the discussion, even and perhaps especially when we disagree with it. It's a newspaper, people, not a Bible, and it's our right and sometimes responsibility to disagree with what it says.

Here's the thing, though. We want, when appropriate, for our newspapers to justify their content, to correct errors, to stand by unpopular but accurate information, to support their editorial boards in the process of sound and reasoned writing. But we get nervous when the justification seems as breezy and unsatisfying as this one does. Maybe it's just us.