• That Hoese’s political advertisements were consistently placed in the three newspapers in poor locations, indicating a bias against Hoese;
• That a letter to the editor on behalf of Hoese was improperly edited and that a news story misquoted a Hoese supporter;
• That an editorial in the November 1, 1984, issue of the newspapers criticized a Hoese campaign brochure without giving the Hoese supporters an opportunity to reply to the criticism; and
• The newspapers refused to print a letter to the editor on behalf of Hoese which rebutted a claim made by the McDonald campaign committee in its advertising.

District 35B is so laid out that, according to the parties, the only cost-effective local political advertising is in a newspaper. Four newspapers serve the district. Three of them, the three involved here, are owned by James D. Berreth, the publisher, who resides in Watertown. Each of the three newspapers has its own editor. The Carver County News is located at Watertown; the Waconia Patriot at Waconia; and the Norwood Times at Norwood.

Present for the grievant were Marcy Waritz, Chairperson of the DFL Committee, Henry Helgen, and Barb Hoese. Present on behalf of the three newspapers was Rod S. Shilkrot, who was editor of the Waconia Patriot at the time of the events involved here.

1. Ad placement: The Hoese committee claims that its ads were consistently placed in disadvantageous locations in these newspapers, suggestive of a bias against Hoese. Specifically, the grievant claims that McDonald’s ads were usually placed close to the front pages of the newspapers, while the Hoese ads were relegated to the back pages.

The three editors have made a careful review of the issues of their newspapers involved and have compiled a summary of the McDonald and Hoese ads that were published and the location of each ad. It appears, first of all, that the McDonald campaign did considerably more advertising than the Hoese campaign. In some issues of the newspapers there were no Hoese ads. Whether forward placement of ads is better than placement in the back pages, as Hoese argues, is uncertain.

Assuming that forward placement is better for readership purposes – and research is inconclusive on this – a careful review of the record shows that there were a total of 19 issues of the three newspapers in which ads were published for both candidates. In nine of these issues, the Hoese ads were placed before the McDonald ads; in eight issues, the McDonald ads were placed before the Hoese ads; and in two issues the ads of both candidates were in the middle of the newspapers. We do note that the McDonald ads appear to have received more forward placement in the Carver County News. The News Council, however, can find no bias favoring the McDonald campaign in the placement of the ads, nor can it be said there is any consistent pattern of ad placement favorable to either candidate.

We might add that the Hoese ads were usually submitted to the Carver County Herald at Chaska (not a paper owned by Berreth) and prepared there. These ads would then be given to Berreth’s three newspapers under a shared-exchange arrangement. While, for example, the Waconia Patriot would receive notice of the ad insertions and the sizes of the ads, this information did not always arrive in a timely manner and, in some instances, depending on the weekly page composition schedule at the Waconia office, might unintentionally affect placement of the ads. McDonald ads, on the other hand, were submitted in Watertown and prepared in Waconia at the Patriot.

The grievance of biased ad placement is denied.

2. Improperly edited letter: Joel Kamerud submitted a four-paragraph letter to the editor on behalf of Hoese, referring to the candidate’s effective skills as a communicator, which was printed in several papers. The Carver County News published a one-paragraph letter from Joel Kamerud which was simply a generalized endorsement of Hoese. The two letters are completely different and clearly the one-paragraph letter cannot be an “edited” version of the first letter; indeed, one wonders if Joel Kamerud, who did not submit testimony, may have written two different letters or if some mix-up in letters occurred. The newspapers state they did no editing.In any event, the News Council lacks sufficient information to make a judgment on this grievance.

Grievant claims that the chairperson of the Hoese Campaign Committee was misquoted in a news article about the campaign. The writer of the news article testified the quote used was as written in his notes and that he believes it fairly reflects what was said. Here again, the News Council, on this record, declines to make a judgment.

The News Council declines to resolve the factual disputes on the Joel Kamerud letter and the alleged misquote, and these grievances are dismissed.

Editorial: Before the election campaign started, the Berreth newspapers were concerned about their “vulnerability” to any claims of bias because of a longtime friendship between the publisher Berreth, and candidate McDonald. Consequently, the publisher and editors established a policy that the three newspapers would not endorse a candidate for the District 35B seat.

The newspapers state they made every effort to report the election campaign fairly, and it is significant that, with the exception of the one alleged misquote, there is no claim by the Hoese committee that the news coverage was not fair. However, in the November 1, 1984 issue of the newspapers, the last issue before the election, an editorial appeared criticizing a promotional brochure that had just been distributed by the Hoese supporters. The brochure quoted from an editor’s column critical of McDonald that had appeared in the Waconia Patriot four years earlier. It was, of course, unfair for the Hoese committee to use a four-year-old quote of a former editor to suggest that such was the position of the newspapers in 1984. The newspapers, quite properly, responded with an editorial to correct this mistaken impression. The editorial, we might add, even while making the correction, did not make an endorsement, but only clarified the newspapers’ own position.

The grievance on the editorial is denied.

Refusal to print letter: On October 25, 1984, the McDonald supporters published an advertisement in which it was stated that McDonald had high ratings from the Farmers Union. The Hoese supporters obtained a letter from Willis Eken of the Farmers Union stating that McDonald, in fact, had a very low rating from the Farmers Union. The Hoese supporters asked that this letter be published in the November 1, 1984, issue of the newspapers as a letter to the editor. This request was refused as an attempt to raise a new issue at the last minute.

It would seem that the Hoese committee could have responded to the statement of Farmers Union support in the McDonald political ad with an ad of its own. It chose, however, to attempt a response in the letters to the editor column. The News Council believes that the Eken letter should have been published. It did not raise a new issue at the last minute but only responded to an issue that the McDonald committee had raised on October 25, and the issue of Farmers Union support was one of substance. We think better practice would have been to publish the Eken letter.

The grievance on the Eken letter is sustained.

Concurring: Ashmore, Casey, Chucker, Earley, Falkman, Graven, King, Persons, Ryan, Selby, Simonett

Partial Dissent: Ziegenhagen joined by Peek and Sundin – We dissent from the majority decision as it relates to the Carver County News. In that newspaper, there appears a clear and consistent pattern of front-of-the-paper placement of ads for K. J. McDonald and the IR party, and a clear pattern of back-of-the-paper placement for Hoese, the DFL candidate. Only on weeks when Hoese bought no ads did McDonald’s ads appear toward the back of the papers.

Most egregious was the favorable placement of K. J. McDonald’s ad along with one for the IR Party on the front page of the voter’s guide, perhaps the most important edition of the newspaper for those running in the election. In that section, Hoese’s ad appeared on page 2 and additional IR and McDonald ads appeared on page 3. Local candidates in districts such as those served by the Carver County News must depend almost entirely on the community newspaper to reach their voters. It is the only mass media available at a cost candidates can afford and still meet the spending limits set by law. For that reason, publishers should enact procedures that give oversight to fairness in not only political campaign reporting but also in readers’ access to the paper and to advertising placement. This extra effort enhances a newspaper’s acceptance in its community as a fair and impartial medium, one vital to the practice of democracy.