Shawn McIntosh, Public editor
The health care debate isn’t just filling up the airwaves with pundits and the town hall meetings with concerned citizens.
It’s also filling up my inbox.
Communication to the public editor ebbs and flows from week to week. It jumps when editors make changes to the newspaper. And it spikes whenever proofreaders miss a stupid mistake, like one recent article that said a Civil War battle occurred in 1983.
Lately there’s been a steady increase in the number of calls and e-mails that include questions about various health care proposals, concern and criticism about media coverage, and suggestions for stories the newspaper should tackle.
The comments include a wide range of opinion, from both supporters and opponents of the current health care proposals. They also include a few consistent themes I’ve shared with newsroom editors:
Readers on all sides of the debate resent being painted with a broad brush. They say they are not racists, …
