Journalists need to provide balanced coverage

By Lethbridge Herald on April 27, 2023.

Editor:

You can’t make these things up and if it wasn’t so serious it would be funny.

The Herald, front page news: “Premier limits questions with election looming.” Then all the “talking heads” go on to say how terrible this is. 

I have watched hundreds of political press conferences and all politicians limit the questions in some way.                                                                Then NDP leader Notley gets on her high horse and has a press conference to say “I will be holding a news conference tomorrow … I will take media questions… as I have done for 15 years.”

In this same news conference NDP leader Notley refuses to answer questions from reporters that she apparently does not like or like their questions. One reporter is actually escorted away by her security. How come this incident didn’t make it to the front page of the Lethbridge Herald? 

Then on April 19, on the front page of the Herald article, our premier Danielle Smith is challenged regarding the UCP commitment to expansion of cardiac care.

 In this article Shannon Phillips expounds on how her leader Notley has never shied away from taking questions from the media. What a couple of hypocrites! Why did this Herald reporter not challenge Phillips on these comments?

To the readers of the Lethbridge Herald, if you think this letter is about how hypocritical the NDP are and how they twist most things to their advantage, you would be wrong. Although, I do believe they do.

This letter is directed to the Lethbridge Herald and what I see as fair and balanced reporting, or lack of. 

The Lethbridge Herald has been my news source for as long as I have read newspapers and I am pretty old. 

I don’t do social media or very little TV news regarding local activity. You, the reporters from the Herald, are my local news source and I expect fair and balanced reporting. That is what I have paid for, for over 50 years. 

If reporting is presenting facts, then it is easy to check, I do it all the time. If someone is simply spouting off about something, then it is fair to challenge them on their comment and you should.

Barrie Orich

Lethbridge