When Dan Gillmor talked about bias at the institute today, it reminded me of something that happened in Salt Lake City's two newspapers.
The Deseret News is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints while the Salt Lake Tribune was started by a man who was completely against the church. For more than 100 years they have competed to bring their slant of the news to the people of Utah.
A report came out explaining that Utah's population had grown and the newspapers chose different ways to report the news.
The Deseret News explained that in the past three years, more people had moved into the state than babies had been born here.
The Salt Lake Tribune explained that in the past 10 years, more people had been born into the state than had moved here.
Both papers told the truth--they got their facts right. But the LDS church is known for having adherents with large families so the Deseret News wanted the negatives associated with the population growth to seem like the fault of people outside the state for moving in. The Tribune wanted to blame the negatives associated with population growth on the church and its large families.
Just an example of reporting the facts, but the underlying bias of both papers was evident.
Ryan Peacock
Tooele High School
Tooele, Utah
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