Headline Distortion

I sent this note to the paper in the morning, and was glad to see Mike Williams pick up on the same problem this afternoon:

If I remember correctly from my week on the Front Page meetings, your staff is often constrained by the standard fare of biased wire service stories, but you do choose the headlines.

So I question your headline choice in the story today of a military aide who was hired by Al Gore's office in 1999 and was retained briefly by Vice President Cheney's office during the transition of staffs in 2001. Any objective headline writer would have penned Ex-aide to Gore accused in spy case. So isn't it interesting in the paper "committed to accuracy" to read Ex-aide to Cheney accused in spy case?

You also control article placement, so don't you find it interesting that you would run a story on Tom Delay's indictment on the front page two days in a row, but run the story on the failure of the first grand jury to indict Delay on page 6?

Mr. Vaden, you have your hands full.

Regards - Scott Pierce
Politics