Being an informed reader

Tipping, of the Maine People’s Alliance, argues that the mainstream media often practices “false balance” by interviewing both sides of an issue and presenting them equally even when such treatment is unwarranted.

The partisan stalemate/partisan sparring headlines used to describe the end of the legislative session made it seem as if both Democrats and Republicans were to blame, Tipping said. In his mind, there was only one group that refused to extend the legislative session – House Republicans.

Advocacy groups have always said the press has not adequately covered their views, and they have produced press releases, handouts, leaflets and their own newspapers over the years to allow their thoughts to be heard. What’s different now is the ease with which these groups can create websites and share their content through social media. But that doesn’t make it journalism, and I have yet to see the general public accept the stories these sites offer.” – Todd Benoit, president of the Bangor Daily News

The headlines used by the Press Herald and Bangor Daily News were “kind of a pox on both houses,” he said.

“I think there’s a different kind of balance,” he said. “I think we do a lot to get to the truth. There’s a different kind of bias that comes into coverage from traditional outlets.”

Todd Benoit, president of the Bangor Daily News, responded to criticism from both the Beacon and the Wire, saying these types of groups have long complained about the mainstream media.

“Advocacy groups have always said the press has not adequately covered their views, and they have produced press releases, handouts, leaflets and their own newspapers over the years to allow their thoughts to be heard,” he said in an email. “What’s different now is the ease with which these groups can create websites and share their content through social media. But that doesn’t make it journalism, and I have yet to see the general public accept the stories these sites offer.”

David Farmer, a former journalist who served as communications director and deputy chief of staff to Democratic Gov. John Baldacci, said citizens need to be informed about what they are reading and understand that advocacy sites do not follow traditional journalistic norms.

He thinks there’s a place for the Maine Wire and the Maine Beacon, what he describes as “advocacy-style reporting.”

“All of us have to challenge ourselves to get information from multiple sources,” said Farmer, managing director at the Bernstein Shur Group. “We need to read a local paper, a national paper and we need to compare notes.”

On the other side of the political aisle, Aaron Chadbourne, a former policy advisor to LePage, said the loss of influence by the mainstream media mirrors the decline in power of other traditional institutions, including the two major political parties. Sites like Beacon and the Maine Wire are just a small part of the changing media landscape, he said. Politicians and others who work in government are looking to options such as Facebook Live – which allows live streaming of news events – to get their message out unfiltered.

Chadbourne finds another trend even more concerning. “People are now selecting to avoid conversations or ideas that make them uncomfortable,” he said. “That’s the more harmful thing to worry about.”

Other agenda-based sites have been less transparent

While the Beacon and Wire label their content, other politically motivated websites have been anonymous, a trend highlighted in a recent article on Politico.

The piece suggested that more “Baby Breitbarts” – a reference to the right-wing site once run by former Donald Trump advisor Stephen Bannon — may soon be popping up all over the country. The story revolves around the Tennessee Star, a conservative site that looks like a traditional news site and, until contacted by Politico, was anonymous.

The Politico story also mentioned a similar site much closer to home – the Maine Examiner. Launched by Maine Republican Party Executive Director Jason Savage, the site published several anonymous stories in 2017 that were highly critical of Democrat Ben Chin, who was running for mayor of Lewiston.

It wasn’t until Democrats asked for a state Ethics Commission investigation into possible campaign finance violations that Savage disclosed that he was behind the site – off the clock from his duties at the party – and started labeling the content so readers would know who is producing it.

Chin lost the election by 145 votes, prompting some to speculate that Savage had tipped the close election with his anonymous website, according to a December story in the Bangor Daily News.

A pro-Trump site that continues to be anonymous here in Maine is Maine First Media, which uses the slogan “Real News for Real Mainers.” The site runs some stories with bylines and some without, with headlines like “Open-border Leftists Plot to Invade Rural Maine with Muslim Refugees” and “AFL-CIO Officer Defends Illegals Over Mainers.”

Rep. Larry Lockman, R-Amherst, who writes bylined articles for the site, did not respond to a message left on his phone or an email asking about the depth of his involvement with the site. One of his recent stories was headlined “The Swamp Queen Strikes Back: Off With Their Heads.” in which he takes on House Speaker Sara Gideon, D-Freeport, for the way she conducted House business in the waning hours of the legislative session.

In an attempt to reach the site’s owners, Pine Tree Watch also sent a message to the “contact us” email on the site. It came back with a reply from someone who said they might answer some questions via email, but would not grant a phone interview or address any questions related to the identity of who runs the site.

In 2010, Mainers encountered The Cutler Files website, an anonymous site that attacked independent gubernatorial candidate Eliot Cutler. It wasn’t until after the election – in which Cutler finished a surprising second to LePage – that an ethics investigation into possible campaign finance violations revealed that Democrat Dennis Bailey and Thom Rhoades, husband of Democratic primary candidate Rosa Scarcelli, were behind the site.

The Politico story reports that the men behind the Tennessee Star, Steve Gill, a conservative commentator, and Michael Patrick Leahy, who writes for Breitbart, say they want to expand into other states or regions and have registered domain names such as newenglandstar.com, theohiostar.com and thewisconsinstar.com.

News with a view

Until the mid-1940s, it was common in Maine and elsewhere for newspapers to have an expressed political party bias, said Maine State Historian Earle Shettleworth. At that time, it was one of the reasons there were multiple publications serving the same community.

“Literally right up through the mid-20th century, it was pretty commonplace for newspapers to have a declared party affiliation,” he said.

As a boy growing up in Portland in the 1950s, Shettleworth said he remembers one of the local papers serving as a party organ for the GOP. And James G. Blaine – 1884 Republican presidential candidate, U.S. House Speaker and politician whose home now serves as the Maine governor’s mansion – ran the Kennebec Journal in Augusta in service to his party.

But after World War II, competition for news from radio and television meant fewer newspapers could survive. As the once-political papers folded and merged, newspapers gradually adopted the concept of balanced coverage to serve all readers, Shettleworth said.

“There emerged a view that if we’re one paper we have to serve the entire populace, the entire community,” he said.

Staffing, consolidation concerns

As newspapers continue to compete with television, websites and social media, experts say they worry about the lack of reporting resources at mainstream outlets, consolidated ownership, and the trend of multiple newspapers running the same news story, which means fewer perspectives on the same event.

They have far fewer reporting resources. That has to have an effect. There has been a growing reporting void in the state.” – University of Maine professor Michael Socolow

University of Maine at Orono associate journalism professor Michael Socolow, a media historian, said while it’s difficult to judge the impact of the advocacy websites because there’s little data to show their reach, he is concerned about cutbacks at the Portland Press Herald and Bangor Daily News.

“They have far fewer reporting resources,” he said. “That has to have an effect. There has been a growing reporting void in the state.”

Neither Benoit, of the Bangor Daily News, nor Schechtman, of the MaineToday papers, addressed criticism about staff cuts at their publications and whether cuts have affected their ability to cover local news. In October, the Bangor Daily News announced it was cutting staff by five in a bid to become “a more efficient, more effective news organization.”

Melcher, the political science professor, said his concern is about the deterioration of local news coverage – something readers can’t get from national outlets.

“That’s the bigger problem,” Melcher said. “Many more local things aren’t getting examined.”

Nationally, the Nieman Journalism Lab notes that newsroom jobs have dropped significantly, from a high of 56,900 in 1990 to 24,000 now.

Farmer said with the Press Herald, Sun Journal, Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel all owned by the same company, it means only one reporter is often covering a particular news event. And since the Bangor Daily News and Maine Public, the state’s PBS affiliate, share content, the same is often true for them.

Additional pressure comes from attacks by politicians, Socolow said.

“Politicians are attacking the media at an unprecedented level,” he said. “That’s making the job of a journalist far more difficult than it used to be.”

Melcher said advocacy sites like Maine Wire and Maine Beacon may continue to put pressure on the mainstream media, but readers who visit their sites likely know they aren’t getting an objective view of events. And while some, like Dutson, worry about an erosion of democracy without a common baseline for understanding events, Melcher said he’s more worried about what’s lost when people don’t trust journalists.

“I think we’re losing something in the lack of faith in the mainstream media,” he said.