"Left-leaning" or "nonpartisan"?

Why would a Times article call the American Enterprise Institute "conservative-leaning," but not refer in the same article to the politics of the Mike Mansfield Foundation? Why do stories refer to the Brookings Institution variously as "centrist," "conservative" and "nonpartisan"?

Some readers have an answer to the inconsistent application of labels: They think it shows bias, saying it suggests that the reporter believes that one is mainstream and thus needs no label, while the other needs to be identified as somewhere relative to that norm.

The question was most recently raised on the April 23 article about a CIA report to Congress alleging ties between North Korea and Syria. Reader Norman Nathan of Los Angeles noted, "The article identifies the AEI as 'right-leaning' but it does not identify the Mike Mansfield Foundation as a 'left-leaning organization.' And the story gives no context as to the reasoning." In a follow-up phone call Nathan said he thought it showed liberal bias, and that furthermore, "I would have thought there would be a policy, a standard, consistent way of identifying foundations."

The April 23 article on North Korea-Syria ties reported that "disclosure of the relationship to the committees is likely to bring criticism from conservative lawmakers" who already believe that the U.S. has been too gentle with the government in Pyongyang. The story went on: "Danielle Pletka, a vice president of the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute think tank, said the congressional briefings were simply a step the administration needed to take to move forward." Here's the reference to the foundation: "'You'll have some outcry, but I doubt there are enough people on Capitol Hill even paying attention to oppose it,' said Gordon Flake, who follows the issue as executive director of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation and is a critic of such a pact."

This particular story was by Paul Richter, who says he agrees with the readers.

Washington and his presidenc(ies)

Dozens of readers have taken issue with this line in a review of HBO's "John Adams" that appeared Saturday in Calendar:

George Washington ... so quickly tired of the infighting among his Cabinet and vagaries of public opinion that he stepped down from the presidency after a single term.

He served two terms, readers pointed out.

A correction is due to be published in the print edition tomorrow (one should be appearing on the online story today). The writer, Mary McNamara, responds to readers on Show Tracker. (Her mea culpa is also pasted in below.)

How many fans were there?

Kyle Schlueter of Goyang City, South Korea, asks, "When the L.A. Times reports attendance for a baseball game, does it report the actual attendance, or simply the number of tickets the team sold?"

Schlueter cited the story on the Dodgers first game of the season, which said the team's win was "in front of 56,000 fans at Dodger Stadium." The report on the Angels' opener referred to "a crowd of 49,596." (That same story reported the Twins' home opener in 1993 "drew 51,617.")

It makes sense that a season opener is sold out or close to it, but what of a soccer story on Guatemala's defeating Mexico that referred to the "crowd of 19,368"? Or the soccer story that referred to 78,500 in attendance? As Schlueter concludes in his e-mail, "If The Times is reporting the number of tickets the team sold, it seems a little deceiving to use phrases such as 'in front of' and 'the crowd of.'"

Robber in a USC sweatshirt

Matt Swanson of Los Angeles sent this question about a March 19 story:

"It was chilling to read that two students were robbed at gunpoint recently while studying in USC classrooms. While you reported in detail what the suspects were wearing, for some reason you neglected to mention their race, which I think would be significant to know since the perpetrators are at large. Given the demographics of the area surrounding USC, I'm wondering if there is some policy at the L.A. Times that prevents identifying suspects' race."

Physical descriptions in the print version of the article included  references to "a man in a red-orange hooded sweatshirt" for the first armed robbery; in the second, the story described "a man ...wearing a black cloth mask as well as a red-hooded sweatshirt with a yellow Trojan emblem on the front."

The story concluded, "LAPD Deputy Chief Kenneth Garner said investigators believe the same person may be responsible, although there were discrepancies in the witness descriptions. One victim described the robber as 18 to 20. The other victim said he was between 20 and 30."

latimes.com and the L.A. Times

Beverly Price of Encinitas writes, "I frequently go online to find an article I read in order to e-mail a link or cite it in a website/blog. I have a difficult time finding the article because it's not listed under the headline given it in the paper. Sometimes I can't find the article at all. Does the L.A. Times want to be totally irrelevant to the Internet?"

In fact, online headlines differ from those in print for just the opposite reason, and the way they're written is just one factor in why latimes.com readership has increased dramatically in recent months. But Price's note touches on another question -- how well (or not) the search function works at latimes.com -- and those are two of several questions we get regularly from readers frustrated or curious about The Times online.

Meredith Artley, Executive Editor, Interactive, gives some answers.

Troublesome snapshots of the campaign trail

Dave Keliher of Los Angeles spoke for a number of readers who have called and written over the past several weeks when on Feb. 20 he wrote, "Enough is enough is enough. On too many occasions when you run photos of Ms. Hillary and Mr. Barack the photos are not balanced. I expect more from you. If you don't know what I'm talking about, look at today's paper, Page A16. You have a wonderful picture of Obama, looking like Jesus parting the Red Sea -- pacific, at ease, in control.  (I know it was Moses, but that's not the point.) Now look at Hillary: strained, tense, constipated. What's up with that? I know life is unfair but I expect YOU to find a balance."

Then again are calls like this one from a reader who didn't leave a name: "I’m so tired of opening up the paper and it’s all positive about Clinton and you stick Obama on the back page. Every single day for about a week and a half -– I’m tired of it."

The whys and whens of (D) and (R)

The front-page article on Feb. 8 about the shooting at a city council meeting in Kirkwood, Mo., included a reference to the state governor that reader Roslyn Lothridge questioned.  "I would like to know why you felt it was necessary to write the following: 'Republican Gov. Matt Blunt called the tragedy a "senseless and horrific crime."' Yes it was a horrific crime, but what does Gov. Blunt's choice of his  political party have to do with the article? I noticed that you did not point out any one else's political party. What was your point in doing so?"

It’s not the first time a question has been raised on when and why party affiliations are made a part of the story. 

Editors think that providing the party affiliation of elected officials is useful for readers. As chief of copy desks Clark Stevens puts it, “Besides the basic information it provides, it gives us uniformity, consistency and, presumably, even-handedness.” But it’s less policy than practice, as Lothridge noted in her e-mail and as other stories show.

On "militants" and "terrorists"

The news is out of Damascus: The man blamed in attacks that killed hundreds of Americans and Israelis has been killed in a car bombing. And the news report refers to him a "militant."

Readers ask about the use of "terrorist" when it comes to news reports of suicide bombings and acts of violence. Stories out of Northern Ireland, Spain and the Middle East often bring impassioned e-mails and phone calls from readers arguing that the word should be applied to those individuals who carry out such attacks. (The question comes so often that it's posted under the FAQs on the right side of this page.)

Robert Thomas of Whittier asked it most recently. In an e-mail sent a week ago with the subject line "militant or terrorist," Thomas wrote: "As a longtime L.A. Times reader, I am puzzled as to The Times' use of these terms.  Is there an editorial policy on this topic, and if so, what is that policy?"

The words "terrorism" and "terrorist attack" are used for those acts of violence that specifically target civilians to achieve a political goal -- though when possible, editors prefer to use a precise description of what happened, such as "a suicide bombing," "a kidnapping," or "a rocket attack." As editors see it, many groups around the world sponsor or carry out terrorist acts; however, many of those groups also carry out actions that do not fit the definition -- attacks on military forces, for example, or they engage in peaceful activities at the same time. That is one reason editors prefer to inform by describing the action, and try to avoid applying to a group or a person a label that might be less than precise.

Is immigration status relevant?

As staff writer Tony Barboza put it, "It might be worthwhile to post something about when and why reporters include immigration status in stories, and why they often don't."

He and other reporters -- and the readers' representative office -- get the question whenever, it seems, a crime story is published about someone who "happens to have a Spanish last name,"  as Barboza puts it. Some readers ask whether the person is illegal and often believe that The Times is not reporting information that, in these readers' opinions, would provide insight into a correlation between crime and illegal immigrants.

No "holiday closings" box, and lessons on "lay" vs. "lie"

What they lacked in size (a small box; a three-letter word) they made up for in meaning. Editors in the California section neglected to tell readers what offices were closed on Monday, the federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr.; and a headline used "lay" instead of "lie."

Race, gender, religion: What's the relevance?

Several descriptives applied to candidates in recent campaign coverage have raised valid questions: What details are needed, and what is extraneous, in reporting on candidates? When does faith -- or race -- go from something reporters and editors try to strip out of the discourse, to a necessary fact?

Parade's interview with Benazir Bhutto

"Is Benazir Bhutto America's best hope against al-Qaeda?" read the headline on the cover of Parade magazine, an insert that goes out weekly with the Sunday L.A. Times. The cover photograph of Bhutto included the words, "I Am What the Terrorists Most Fear," a quotation that came from the interview by Gail Sheehy that was published Jan. 6.

Baseball affidavit

A front-page story today reported that former major league pitcher Jason Grimsley accused a number of baseball players of using steroids and performance-enhancing drugs, according to a federal affidavit that was unsealed Thursday. The Times article named the players in the affidavit, and went on to report that "the unsealed affidavit contradicts a story The Times published Oct. 1, 2006."

A correction ran as well.

Headline for a 'rock pioneer'

This post was originally published Dec. 18, and because of a technical problem was temporarily unavailable.

"Ike Turner, 1931 - 2007: Rock pioneer was known for abusing wife Tina Turner."

That headline brought more than a dozen complaints to the writer of the obituary (who didn't write the headline).

Blue eyes and evolution

Science stories are well-read but they don't often bring as many questions and comments as the one that ran Dec. 11. That story reported on a study that found, "The pace of human evolution has been increasing at a stunning rate since our ancestors began spreading through Europe, Asia and Africa 40,000 years ago." Not only was evolution a spark for some readers to write, but so was the last line, which quoted University of Wisconsin-Madison anthropologist John Hawks, who led the study: "Nobody 10,000 years ago had blue eyes. Why is it that blue-eyed people had a 5% advantage in reproducing compared to non-blue-eyed people? I have no idea."

Science writer Karen Kaplan responds to the readers.

Strike story: Writers react

This e-mail from Melinda Hsu Taylor of Los Angeles represented several dozen that came in to the L.A. Times in response to a Dec. 12 story on the writers' strike: "I object to the vague, prejudicial and unsupported claims that 'the Writers Guild of America is under new and mounting pressure from its ranks to get back to the bargaining table'... and 'a number of union members are unhappy... .'  Only one WGA member (Craig Mazin) was actually quoted by name. Meanwhile, thousands of picketers are showing up at the studios every day."

Illegal immigrants and health care

The Times' Nov. 27 story on a study that found that illegal immigrants in Los Angeles County used fewer health services than U.S.-born Latinos garnered the same sort of response that comes for most stories about illegal immigration: Impassioned notes from people with viewpoints on all points of the political spectrum. Some 30 readers sent questions on the piece.

One of them, Kay Brown of South Pasadena, took The Times to task for seeking comment from a group she says is "anti-immigrant." Writes Brown: "I am offended that a totally anti-immigrant organization, Federation for American Immigration Reform, is being used without extensively qualifying this source. I hope the federation is not used just because they are easy to find. Reporters and editors are easily fooled into thinking the federation's point of view will help 'balance'  immigration issues."

Other readers questioned the study itself. Robert Hemedes of Los Angeles echoed others when he said the study was flawed because "it relies on a phone call survey where people will lie or undercount the number of times they use hospital services. The most accurate information can be collected from hospitals themselves. The collected results will most likely contradict what the phone survey missed."

Reporter Mary Engel, who covers health care, responds.

Honors awarded

"Despite intense pain and unchecked loss of blood," his Medal of Honor citation reads, "he pinned down the enemy with accurate rifle fire while a friendly squad captured the enemy gun by skirting the
minefield and rushing in from the flank."

That was part of Monday's obituary for Silvestre Herrera who was, as the story continued, "a Mexican-born World War II Medal of Honor recipient who captured eight German soldiers after single-handedly  assaulting a machine-gun nest and continued fighting after losing both of his feet in a minefield during a second solo assault on another enemy position."

The headline said that he had "won" that medal, though, and several readers spoke up.

Covering candidates

Nancy Cook of San Pedro writes: "I'd like more info about Biden, Edwards and Richardson, PLEASE! Clinton, Obama and Giuliani are at the top of the polls because they are the only ones people ever hear about."

Readers seeking more coverage of certain candidates might have missed stories that The Times has published -- for instance, in this case, there have been front-page pieces on Edwards, Richardson and Biden as as well coverage in a number of other news articles -- but readers are right that more coverage is given to those who are front-runners in any race.

It's one of the concerns raised often during campaigns. So often, in fact, that it's a part of the FAQs on this page (see right rail).

Bill numbers

Of last week's editorial on fuel economy standards, Christian Breiding of Glendale writes: "When The Times publishes an editorial which refers to pending federal or state legislation, it would be helpful if the piece named the legislation by its official name and resolution number." On state and national news stories as well, readers often suggest the same thing.

The Times has a style on how to render bill numbers ("AB 123," for instance, no hyphen) but not on whether to use them. It's been done over the years on an irregular basis, depending on various editors' preferences.

Most of the editors responding suggested that in the future, stories online should include more information -- including data about how individual legislators voted.

Internet immigration hoax

Probably five times a week, the readers' representative office gets a question like this one received recently from Harvey Akeson of Tucson:

"Please help me, an e-mail is making the rounds stating the information is from the L.A. Times.  It may or may not be true.  Can you verify?   Thanks."

Such inquiries have come in for more than a year -- most by e-mail, some by telephone. From the beginning, the notes have shown signs of having been forwarded to many others, who then forward them to many others, before one of the recipients decides to check with the alleged source.

The answer is: The L.A. Times never ran such a story.

What 'he said' really means

After a recent story, a source called to complain about the language "he said" at the end of a quotation, noting that he had never actually talked to the writer of the story but had communicated only by e-mail. Do the words "he said" or "she said" imply a face-to-face meeting, a telephone conversation or an exchange of e-mails? Is there a difference?

Following is an e-mail conversation among a number of staffers presented with this question.