A Republican hidden in plain sight

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Quite often this office hears readers say The Times’ news coverage shows bias. Usually ‘liberal’ precedes the word ‘bias’; sometimes readers see a conservative slant.

The most helpful comments are those that give specifics on what led to that reaction. A few readers on Wednesday pointed to one reference to show where they thought a news article showed opinion.

The story was about a man who’d been living on the lam since 1972, and started this way:

‘Jason Vonstraussenburg worked at UC Santa Barbara for 14 years, a skilled technician who could whip together repairs on complicated pieces of lab equipment when scientists needed them in a hurry.
At 61, he was a genial colleague, a homeowner, an avid metal sculptor, a father, a husband and a registered Republican.
He was everything, police said, except Jason Vonstraussenburg.’

Chris Johnson of San Francisco sent reporter Steve Chawkins an e-mail: ‘I can think of no possible reason why you would include in your article the fact that Jason Vonstraussenburg was a registered Republican. Can you honestly say that if he was a registered Democrat, you would have included that fact in your article?’

Here’s how Chawkins responded: ‘I included the detail of his voter registration as another reflection of how grounded Crona had become in the community. Had he been a Democrat, I would have noted it the same way. One would think a fugitive would avoid the public record when he could, and voter registration is one of the easiest records to check. I could have called him, simply, a registered voter. But that would have raised the obvious question and, for some, even triggered thoughts that I had buried his affiliation out of loyalty to the GOP.’

Johnson got back to The Times to say in response to the inclusion of party: ‘I still don’t understand why he just didn’t refer to Vonstraussenberg as a registered voter. If party affiliation is not mentioned in the article, no one can claim Chawkins is being loyal or disloyal to any party.’