KRANZ WATCH

Once again, we see David Kranz, the dean of South Dakota political reporters, up to his usual shenanigans. Lately, he's been trying to portray Stephanie Herseth as a "moderate" Democrat, while omitting any reference to Larry Diedrich's moderation. I noted this bias technique in an earlier post.

Today, Kranz has a piece headlined "Close House contest forecast." Excerpt:

Most political observers attach the "conservative" tag to Diedrich's politics. Republicans, including Diedrich, quickly label Herseth a liberal. They get some disagreement, though.

"I would classify her as a moderate Democrat," Richardson said. "She might be considered liberal in some social hot button issues like abortion, but she is well-grounded in what South Dakotans consider social-economic issues like the rural economy."

Schotten said she will run this race as a moderate and has probably shunned the "outsider" label that stalked her in 2002, because she left a Washington law firm and moved back to the state to work.

Burns agrees that Diedrich is a conservative in respect to fiscal issues and is a neoconservative on issues such as abortion.

"I haven't heard him express opinions on issues like school prayer, the death penalty, gun ownership, gay and lesbian issues. I tend to associate him with being fiscally conservative," he said.

He sees efforts to classify Herseth as a liberal in the state because of her pro-choice position on abortion, but Burns said she would be regarded more of a moderate by national standards.

Her position on abortion isn't necessarily a negative in this state, he said. "Past elections have shown that candidates can win here and not have the endorsement of Right-to-Life."

Aside from leaving me wondering what the hell it means to be a "neoconservative on issues such as abortion" Kranz has engaged in the classic "quote-someone-who-agrees-with-me" bias technique. As Bob Kohn, author of Journalistic Fraud, writes:

Distorting a story with opinion--by including someone else's speculation or directly injecting one's own view into a story--is another basic technique of disguising a newspaper's political viewpoint in the form of a straight news story.

Opinions may be employed for influencing public opinion in the following basic ways:

1. Quoting someone who agrees with you
2. Directly injecting your opinion
3. Omitting the opposing opinion
4. Faking fairnes and balance

The point is, Kranz has cherry-picked experts who say that Stephanie Herseth is a moderate, and by implication that Larry Diedrich is not a moderate. Then Kranz attributes that opinion to "most political observers." Why doesn't Kranz quote those who disagree with the statement that Herseth is a moderate? Instead, the only people he quotes are those who disagree with the statement that Herseth is a liberal.

Now I'm off to watch "First Monday" which has Diedrich and Herseth squaring off for the first time.