Erie Times-News political endorsements: Throw out the filters

In his Sunday so-called public editor’s column defending the Erie Times-News’s archaic practice of publishing political endorsements just before elections, Kevin Cuneo – on the op-ed, not the editorial page – opined, among other things, that “During the past five weeks, the Erie Times-News Editorial Board interviewed 37 candidates running for a multitude of offices.

“Each candidate we interviewed,” Cuneo wrote, “was asked why voters should support him or her, and their responses were included in newspaper stories about the political races. Those stories appeared over a two-week period, and the endorsements are included on the newspaper's editorial pages.”

According to Cuneo, the purpose of the interviews, articles and editorials is to give voters a sound informational basis for casting their voting choices.

If that’s truly the reason why he and his cohorts at the Times-News engage in this fatally flawed process every election year, there’s a much better way of achieving their goal without rendering prejudicial and hollow endorsements.

All they have to do is publish verbatim the questions they ask and the candidates’ responses in those interviews without filtering them through the subjective lenses of reporters and editorial writers.

That way readers may interpret the questions and answers themselves, getting a much better and truer picture of what the candidates say their positions on various issues are and for what they stand, rather than allow the news and editorial folk to interpret - or misinterpret - their platforms and agenda for them.

The Times-News would still control the interview process by selecting the questions. But at least the responses would be the candidates' own, not some polemicist's truncated and twisted interpretation of them.

But it’s a sure bet, to put it in lingo Cuneo best understands, the Times-News would never adopt such a process. It's too rational. Plus, it would rob its would-be empire-builders of their cherished prerogative to dictate choices for the vox populi, and diminish their undue political influence and power over the electoral and policy making process, as well as over policymakers themselves.

Cuneo's response to this proposition is predictable: "That would take up too much space in the newspaper!" Compared to what? The interminable columns of drivel it now publishes.