Mattie Weiss on NPR's "Talk of the Nation"""

National Public Radio (NPR)
Talk of the Nation 2:00 AM EST NPR
October 25, 2004 Monday
Political endorsements
ANCHORS: NEAL CONAN


Listen to the audio from "The Impact of Political Endorsements" (forward your audio player to 23:11)

---------------------------------------------------------
[excerpt:]


CONAN: Let's talk to Mattie. Mattie's joining us from Minneapolis.

MATTIE (Caller): Hi. This is Mattie. I'm with the League of Pissed Off
Voters, and we're a group of young people, 18- to 35-year-olds. We're all
over the country, and we've been building endorsement slates. We've got
about 50 of them up online so far, and with these endorsement slates of
progressive candidates, strategic progressive candidates, we've been
building local progressive youth voter blocs in every city. But we've got
people on the ground, so we're getting them out in nightclubs and on the
street corners, and we're trying to build voter blocs that can actually
swing elections for a progressive candidate.

CONAN: So you're hoping people will pay attention to your endorsements?

MATTIE: Yes.

CONAN: And how did you go about deciding who's progressive and who isn't?

MATTIE: Well, we did research on all the candidates. Here in Minneapolis
we've got--we're actually doing one in Minneapolis and St. Paul, and we've
got about 40 to 50 different races, and so we interviewed the vast majority
of the candidates across the board--Independents, Republicans and
Democrats--and then did a lot of, you know, online research, and based on
that--and our concerns about education, the war in Iraq, health care, gay
rights, we made endorsements. Mostly the Democratic candidates, but in a
couple races it's Greens, where we think that that won't--where we think
that's a strategic endorsement.

CONAN: And do you have any way to know whether anybody is actually paying attention?

MATTIE: We sure do. We've actually been signing up people to be part of the
voter bloc to commit to voting the slate, and we've got a goal here in the
Twin Cities of about 2,000. We're about halfway there and there's, you know,
50 other cities doing this as well.

CONAN: OK.

MATTIE: And this is just the first--you know, we're hoping to swing some
local elections and then build from here. This is just the first race that
we're weighing in on.

CONAN: Mattie, thanks very much and good luck.

MATTIE: Thank you.

CONAN: Bye-bye.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[whole program:]

National Public Radio (NPR)

Talk of the Nation 2:00 AM EST NPR

October 25, 2004 Monday

Political endorsements

ANCHORS: NEAL CONAN

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.

According to Editor & Publisher, the magazine of the newspaper industry,
this weekend was a good one for John Kerry. He picked up 24 new endorsements
from newspapers that had supported President Bush four years ago, and now
Kerry leads Bush in the endorsement tally 125-to-96, or if you look at it by
circulation, 16 million to 10 million. So? Are you impressed? Do you base
your vote in any way on your newspaper's endorsement for president? But how
about when it comes to other offices, city council, school board? Do you
read the endorsements? Do you follow them?

Later in the program, how and when country music came to embrace
conservative causes. But first, we'd like to know your thoughts about
endorsements, whether they're from newspapers or from celebrities or from
your next-door neighbor, for that matter? Whose recommendation do you pay
attention to? Our number here in Washington is (800) 989-8255. That's (800)
989-TALK. Our e-mail address is totn@npr.org.

Joining us here in Studio 3A is Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for
Excellence in Journalism. Thanks for coming in, Tom.

Mr. TOM ROSENSTIEL (Project for Excellence in Journalism): My pleasure,
Neal.

CONAN: So do these newspaper endorsements make any difference? Well, we're
talking about president for the moment.

Mr. ROSENSTIEL: Well, the research shows that actually the bigger the
office, the less impact the endorsement has in terms of changing people's
minds. And I think that on endorsements for president, the point of them is
more often to lay out a set of arguments for voters to consider. The real
intent of endorsements, particularly for president, in the minds of many
editorial page editors, is to get people to consider the argument. It's the
quality of the argument that matters. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer this
year came very close to deciding not to endorse at all the president and
then changed its mind at the last minute and said, `Instead, let's roll out
our endorsement over five days. Each day will be a different issue. The
point is to get people to think about these issues. And on the fifth day,
the last day, we'll tell them where we come down then in terms of a
candidate. But the point was we want you to think about these issues, not,
you know, vote because we tell you to.'

CONAN: Does it make a difference if a newspaper does something really
unusual? For instance, The Detroit News this year--I think they've endorsed
Republicans every year since the memory of modern man--has decided not to
endorse anybody. They're sitting it out. I think The New Orleans
Times-Picayune is doing the same thing. When it does something unusual, does
that make readers perk up, take notice?

Mr. ROSENSTIEL: Yeah. And usually, that's an attempt at a statement also to
say, you know, `We're a Republican newspaper on our editorial page board and
have been, you know, since Julius Caesar was running, and we just can't
bring ourselves to endorse a guy in our party this time around.' That's a
statement unto itself. I worked for a newspaper when I was a young man that
endorsed John Anderson in the 1980 race.

CONAN: An Independent candidate.

Mr. ROSENSTIEL: An Independent candidate, and the message was, `We can't
support what either of the two major party candidates are doing.' Oh, and by
the way, the newspaper got a lot of publicity for that. And that's another
reason the newspapers do unusual things.

CONAN: Political forums have improved a lot since Caesar's day, I have to
say. Joining us now from his office in Portland, Maine, is John Porter. He's
the editorial page editor for the Portland Press Herald. And it's good of
you to be with us today.

Mr. JOHN PORTER (Portland Press Herald): Good afternoon.

CONAN: Your paper has endorsed Senator Kerry. You did so a couple of weeks
ago. And you followed that with an editorial explaining how the editorial
board arrived at your decision. Tell us what you said.

Mr. PORTER: Well, we went through this process the same way that we go
through every editorial position. Now some newspapers do have special
procedures around the presidential endorsement. I think often publishers
like to covet that for themselves. But we ran this decision through the same
process that we do for every position the newspaper takes, which is to have
it considered by the five people on our editorial board--the publisher, the
editor, myself and the two editorial writers who work here with me. And that
process produced the editorial in favor of John Kerry.

CONAN: Now the endorsement for president is one of just 20--of more than 20
your paper will make this political year.

Mr. PORTER: That's right. Our last one runs tomorrow.

CONAN: Now do endorsements for local office hold more sway, do you think?

Mr. PORTER: You know, I heard Tom's comments earlier. I couldn't agree more.
You know, I don't know how many of us have ever--we have all been in a
voting booth, and we've looked down the ballot, right, and there's the
register of probate race, and you're not sure what the register of probate
does. You certainly don't recognize any of these people. You may not even
know if any of them have a criminal record. And if the only thing you've
ever heard on the register of probate race is our endorsement of somebody in
that race, then it's going to have a big impact. We're not competing with as
many sources of information when you start working your way down the ballot.

CONAN: And some of those candidates aren't even identified as one party or
another.

Mr. PORTER: That's true. In our city elections, for instance, they're
non-partisan, so their party affiliations are not listed.

CONAN: I wonder, do you get lobbied? And I'm asking at two levels. One of
which is at the candidate level, do the candidates lobby you for your
endorsement? And people you run into at the grocery store, do they lobby you
one way or the other?

Mr. PORTER: The grocery store people less so; although they will stop and
they want to talk about it. I mean, there's been a remarkably high level of
interest this time around, just walking in the community. This is a fairly
small community. Most of the people I know know what I do here at the paper.
And I'm impressed with the level of interest this time around in the
campaign. We bring the candidates in. We're a little unusual in that we
always bring both candidates in together, or if there are three or four
running for the office, anyone who gets on the ballot, we bring them all in
together. We're not always able to attract--I don't think we've ever
attracted one of the presidential candidates to come see us, but we do that
for every other office we endorse, and including governor and US senator.
And there's a fair amount of--well, you know, they do their lobbying there,
and they also debate one another when they're with us.

CONAN: After all of this deliberation, would you like to think that you
actually sway people's votes?

Mr. PORTER: Well, you know, we set out in our endorsement of John Kerry--we
said, `What can we say that hasn't been said before?' And one of the things
that we ran right up against is there probably isn't much to say that hasn't
been said before in this race. I mean, there's been a lot of discussion
about these candidates in the media over the last--oh, gosh--has it been...

CONAN: Feels like forever, doesn't it?

Mr. PORTER: Yes, it does. I think it's been since March 8th. And we did
decide that we were going to try to be a little different. We wrote an
editorial that focused on the case for John Kerry, not the case against
George Bush, not setting aside our misgivings about John Kerry, because we
had more misgivings about George Bush, but we focused on here's why we think
John Kerry should be president, and we started out on the premise that both
of these people have strong resumes, they both have strong leadership
skills. Although they differ in their leadership styles. So they both are
qualified to be president, so let's move beyond that and talk about the
issues. And so that gave us, I think, a little bit of a different spin on
what we've been hearing, because it's been a very negative campaign, but at
the same time, I can't sit here and say, `Gee, you know, that was, you know,
all stuff that our readers had never heard before.'

And so I'm not sure how much influence we really have. I mean, our goal is
to really get people talking and to really get them to start looking at the
issues and understanding the issues better, not so much to tell them how to
vote...

CONAN: Well...

Mr. PORTER: ...because I'm not even sure that we really have that power,
especially given how much information is out there.

CONAN: On the other hand, if it's not going to change anybody's votes, why
bother?

Mr. PORTER: Well, I think it's important as a newspaper that we meet the
same standard that we hold our readers to. You know, we ask our readers--by
virtue of buying a newspaper, by reading the newspaper, we ask that they be
engaged citizens. That's a lot of what a newspaper is all about. And I think
it's important as a newspaper for us institutionally to hold ourselves to
the same standard. Look, there are decisions that have to be made, and this
newspaper is giving you its best thinking about this decision. You should
apply your best thinking. But I think it's important to lead by example and
say, `We're making the hard decisions about this important issue. Now it's
your turn.'

Mr. ROSENSTIEL: I think there's another thing that goes along with that, and
that is in the age of bloggers and talk show hosts and the sort of everybody
has their own opinion, a local newspaper is one of the last deliberative
institutions. This is not a single person making a decision. It's a group of
people who have to come to what is usually a compromise decision and then
set down the reasons that they, after deliberation, came to this. So the
process and the fact that it's a group grope, in effect, I think makes it
distinctive in a time when we don't do that anymore and we don't rely on
institutions usually to think.

CONAN: John Porter, thanks very much.

Mr. PORTER: Thank you.

CONAN: And in these divisive times, I think we can all agree on one thing.
Go, Sea Dogs.

Mr. PORTER: Or Red Sox.

CONAN: Well, let's leave that alone. John Porter is the editorial page
editor for the Portland Press Herald, and he spoke with us from his office
in Portland, Maine.

And, Tom Rosenstiel, I wonder, readers learn presumably a lot about the
candidates when they look at these endorsements. They also learn something
about the newspaper they get every morning.

Mr. ROSENSTIEL: Exactly. I mean, they're talking about the values of the
paper, how they go about the process. This is part of what a newspaper does
to brand itself in the community. This is the way we do things. This is the
values we have about the way we make decisions. The process of
decision-making in the end is probably more important than the decision
itself.

CONAN: Let's get some listeners involved in the conversation. Whose
endorsement means something to you? Is it the newspaper? Is it the next-door
neighbor, your father-in-law? Give us a call, (800) 989-8255, (800)
989-TALK. The e-mail address is totn@npr.org.

And we'll begin with Leon, who calls in from Baltimore.

LEON (Caller): Hi, guys.

CONAN: Hi.

LEON: I used to read my newspaper and look for endorsements, you know, when
I was a younger guy, and as I got older and began to work, I realized that
the endorsements--if my union endorsed somebody, that was more important to
me because my union was working for my economic stability, you know, to
increase my economics or make my economics better. So nowadays, and actually
for the last probably 14 years, I've just been going by endorsements from my
union. And that's my comment and I'll hear what you guys have to say off the
phone. Thanks.

CONAN: OK. Leon, thanks very much for the call. Tom, union endorsements
generally mean a lot more than just even pieces of paper in member's hands,
too.

Mr. ROSENSTIEL: Yeah. And what's happened with the media, particularly, as
we've gone to a sort of more corporate, you know, clean, grayer kind of
media culture up until the last 20 years is that the connection between the
local newspaper and a citizen, you know, is a little more tenuous. A lot of
people don't read the newspaper every day. You know, newspapers tend to be
less, you know, clearly sort of partisan. They try to be all things to all
people. And I think that what people are looking for in endorsements are
anyone that they feel a strong connection to, and generally people feel less
of a connection to the newspaper. It doesn't mean, however, that they're not
interested in how the newspaper arrived at the decision. But again, the
decision itself may not hold much sway.

CONAN: Yeah. But a union endorsement can often come along with money for the
campaign, workers for the campaign phone banks, that sort of thing, so
it's...

Mr. ROSENSTIEL: And these are folks that you know who might have been
involved in that decision.

CONAN: Yeah. As for newspaper endorsements, isn't it a big plus for them
when the campaigns go ahead and advertise, you know, `endorsed by' the local
paper?

Mr. ROSENSTIEL: Well, yeah. There is some marketing that goes along with
that, but--and particularly in key swing states, things like that, but, you
know, I mean, in the end, given the sort of partisanship that people think
of when they think of the media today, there may be even less impact to the
fact that Senator Kerry has gotten 30 more endorsements overall...

CONAN: Yeah.

Mr. ROSENSTIEL: ...than President Bush.

CONAN: Why is it that there's this tradition of political endorsements for
newspapers? Most radio stations and television stations don't do that.

Mr. ROSENSTIEL: Well, there's one very simple reason, Neal, and that is that
the airwave are public and regulated by the FCC. And there's a long
tradition of TV stations and radio stations not wanting to run afoul of the
administration in power, you know, and there is some history here. The Nixon
administration was actually out to sort of penalize The Washington Post
Company during its administration.

CONAN: Which not only publishes a newspaper, but owns television stations.

Mr. ROSENSTIEL: But owns television stations, and there was threats against
the licenses of The Washington Post/Newsweek stations during that time. The
reality is that the FCC has, you know, almost gone out of the content
regulation business, but TV stations have also gone completely out of the
editorializing business. They don't even do editorials about sewer lines and
highway systems anymore. You know, it's very rare to see a station stick its
neck out on anything other than investigations into, you know, bacteria in
yogurt.

CONAN: We're talking with Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for
Excellence in Journalism. We're going to take a short break. If you'd like
to join our conversation about endorsements and whose matters to you, give
us a phone call. Our number is (800) 989-8255, (800) 989-TALK. The e-mail
address, totn@npr.org.

I'm Neal Conan. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

(Soundbite of music)

CONAN: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.

We're talking today about political endorsements, whether from newspapers,
celebrities, your next-door neighbor, and how effective they are. Our guest
is Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. Of
course, you're invited to join us. Whose endorsement matters to you? The
number is (800) 989-8255, (800) 989-TALK. You can also send us e-mail,
totn@npr.org.

And let's talk with James. James is calling from Dekalb, Illinois.

JAMES (Caller): Hello.

CONAN: Hi.

JAMES: Hi. Yeah. Well, when it comes to endorsements, I don't really tend to
listen to any of them, because I feel that things like when the radio and
stuff and all the newspapers try to tell me who they endorse, I don't really
try to follow it because the media is supposed to be unbiased. And I feel
like my local newspaper, the Rockford Register Star, and the Chicago
Sun-Times, which came out endorsing John Kerry--I will be more likely not to
read those newspapers, because I'll feel that they will more--you know, will
try to, you know, say the good stuff for Kerry and the bad stuff for Bush.

CONAN: So you take it as a sign that the editorial page policy spills over
onto the newspapers.

JAMES: Yeah, yeah. I feel like then their coverage will not be like equal
for, you know, all the candidates, and as a voter, I'm supposed to inform
myself, but, you know, if the media's sitting here giving me all this biased
information because they're endorsing candidates, you know, I'm going to be
less likely to read that newspaper because it will be so biased.

CONAN: You're--I'm just trying to--concerned--you're concerned about bias in
any direction because the other Chicago paper endorsed the other candidate,
for example, so would you switch papers or not read either of them?

JAMES: Yeah. You know, I've learned to more go towards like online and stuff
and try to find other sources of getting my information and things like
that.

CONAN: OK. Tom Rosenstiel--thanks for the call, James.

JAMES: Thanks.

Mr. ROSENSTIEL: I think that James may be putting his finger on a growing
concern. I mean, you know, we've got a wider sense that the press has
unconscious bias or unacknowledged bias. Surveys by Andy Kohut's Pew
Research Center show that more people perceive media bias than did a few
years ago and that there may even be some movement toward finding outlets
that you agree with, and so there's probably a greater risk, I think, for
newspapers and any other media that purports to be unbiased to do these
kinds of endorsements, because there's a stronger sense than there used to
be, clearly, that people are biased, whether they acknowledge it or not, in
the media and that this is a problem. I wouldn't be surprised if, in the
next cycle--frankly, I'm a little but surprised that in this cycle, we
didn't see some papers bow out of the endorsement game. But I think it
serves such a purpose on the local level that, you know, they're reluctant
to do it.

CONAN: There are some newspapers that--well, you think of Rupert Murdoch's
New York Post, for example. It doesn't just endorse. It campaigns.

Mr. ROSENSTIEL: Right. And that's, of course, what the tradition of
newspapers was in this country. Until, you know, the middle 19th century,
newspapers were run not for profit, but for partisanship. They were run by
parties, and their purpose was to get the faithful to act. They were a
communications, you know, tool for activism and, you know, not an
independent press that has evolved now. What we're seeing is pressure now
with all the new technology to go back to that. I think it's not going to
happen, but there's a growing sense among the public that that's what's
going on.

CONAN: Joining us now from his office in Grand Junction, Colorado, is Bob
Silbernagel, an editorial page editor of The Daily Sentinel. Thanks very
much for being with us.

Mr. BOB SILBERNAGEL (The Daily Sentinel): Thank you for having me.

CONAN: Your newspaper endorsed President Bush yesterday. Can you tell us how
you arrived at the decision?

Mr. SILBERNAGEL: Well, we have an editorial board. It's made up of myself,
our publisher, George Orbanek, and our managing editor, Dennis Herzog. And
in most cases, local races and stuff, we interview the candidates and then
discuss it and decide who to endorse. Obviously, we didn't interview George
Bush and John Kerry, but going through, you know, a long period of reading
about different issues related to them and watching--I think all of us
watched the debates, and it was a unanimous decision that we wanted to
endorse George Bush, as we did four years ago.

CONAN: Now Colorado is especially interesting this year for a couple of
reasons, one of which is the presidential race is surprisingly close. You've
got a very close senatorial race there, and there's a ballot initiative that
could change the way your state's nine electoral votes are allocated from a
winner-take-all to a proportional system.

Mr. SILBERNAGEL: Yes. You're exactly right on that.

CONAN: And how did the newspaper come down on the Senate race and on the
ballot initiative?

Mr. SILBERNAGEL: Well, the Senate race was actually a split vote in the
editorial board, but we did endorse the Republican, Peter Coors, and we came
out even before Amendment 36, the Electoral College one that you
mentioned--even before the supporters gathered enough signatures to get it
on the ballot, we wrote a couple of editorials opposing it, and we just
reiterated that opposition last week.

CONAN: OK. Now again, do you suspect that your recommendations have more
effect on local races than on these statewide or national?

Mr. SILBERNAGEL: I think without question, that's the case. I think there
are so many sources of information--television, radio, other large
publications and now the Internet--regarding the presidential race, that
people are making up their minds based on a variety of sources, but on a lot
of local issues and especially since Colorado is a state that has--it's
reasonably easy to get ballot measures on the ballot, and we have a number
of them every year, a lot of people do look to their local newspapers to
give them some advice or recommendations on local candidates and especially
complicated ballot measures.

CONAN: Tom Rosenstiel.

Mr. ROSENSTIEL: Yeah. I have a question. On the races that you think voters
have a lot of information about, such as the presidential race, is it a
factor to take into consideration what the community tastes are, you know,
to take into account that you think most of your community is going to be
tilting Republican or Democrat, or is that something that you put aside and
say, `We're going to deal with this in a vacuum'?

Mr. SILBERNAGEL: When we make our editorial decisions?

Mr. ROSENSTIEL: Yeah.

Mr. SILBERNAGEL: In other words, do we try to reflect the community or...

Mr. ROSENSTIEL: Or is that a factor that you take into your deliberations?

Mr. SILBERNAGEL: No, it's not really. I mean, we have--not on the national
ones. To some extent, I think on the local ones, it may play more of a part,
but on the national ones, we just--it's more, what do we think is best for
the country and for our particular part of the country and, based on that,
who should we endorse?

CONAN: Well, thanks very much for being with us.

Mr. SILBERNAGEL: Thank you.

CONAN: Bob Silbernagel is editorial page editor of The Daily Sentinel in
Grand Junction, Colorado.

And, Tom Rosenstiel, let me ask you a question. Both of the editorial page
editors we've talked to mentioned the role of the publisher, i.e. the owner,
of the newspaper. They get a vote. In many cases, do they get an overriding
vote?

Mr. ROSENSTIEL: Well, they can, and there have been cases where the
publisher in presidential endorsements has overridden the majority of the
editorial board. In most cases--not all--the publisher runs the editorial
board of a newspaper, and the newspaper is the--the editorial pages are the
voice of the owners and not the voice of the newsroom. That's one of the
ways that you keep that separation. And in some newspapers, the editor of
the newspaper is not even on the editorial board and has no voice in the
editorials and the editorial voice of the opinion section of the newspaper.

CONAN: Yeah. We're seeing a controversy I think in Cleveland at the moment
where The Plain Dealer--at least according to reports, there's a split
between the editorial board and the publisher on the presidential
endorsement. And who knows how it's going to be resolved as of yet, so...

Mr. ROSENSTIEL: And sometimes, those are resolved with a no vote.

CONAN: Let's talk to Mattie. Mattie's joining us from Minneapolis.

MATTIE (Caller): Hi. This is Mattie. I'm with the League of Pissed Off
Voters, and we're a group of young people, 18- to 35-year-olds. We're all
over the country, and we've been building endorsement slates. We've got
about 50 of them up online so far, and with these endorsement slates of
progressive candidates, strategic progressive candidates, we've been
building local progressive youth voter blocs in every city. But we've got
people on the ground, so we're getting them out in nightclubs and on the
street corners, and we're trying to build voter blocs that can actually
swing elections for a progressive candidate.

CONAN: So you're hoping people will pay attention to your endorsements?

MATTIE: Yes.

CONAN: And how did you go about deciding who's progressive and who isn't?

MATTIE: Well, we did research on all the candidates. Here in Minneapolis
we've got--we're actually doing one in Minneapolis and St. Paul, and we've
got about 40 to 50 different races, and so we interviewed the vast majority
of the candidates across the board--Independents, Republicans and
Democrats--and then did a lot of, you know, online research, and based on
that--and our concerns about education, the war in Iraq, health care, gay
rights, we made endorsements. Mostly the Democratic candidates, but in a
couple races it's Greens, where we think that that won't--where we think
that's a strategic endorsement.

CONAN: And do you have any way to know whether anybody is actually paying
attention?

MATTIE: We sure do. We've actually been signing up people to be part of the
voter bloc to commit to voting the slate, and we've got a goal here in the
Twin Cities of about 2,000. We're about halfway there and there's, you know,
50 other cities doing this as well.

CONAN: OK.

MATTIE: And this is just the first--you know, we're hoping to swing some
local elections and then build from here. This is just the first race that
we're weighing in on.

CONAN: Matt