Our goal: Provide hard facts on candidates

This election cycle has been exciting from the moment it began, with hotly contested races for several county offices and congressional midterms that could cause a political shift at the highest levels of government. 

There is a lot at stake. For the candidates, in particular, there is much to lose or gain as a result of Tuesday’s general election. It’s understandable that emotions run high. But it’s also important at times like these to make a clear distinction between the facts and campaign spin. 

In today’s edition of The Western News, one of the candidates for county office purchased advertising space to provide answers to some of the questions about his background that have arisen during the past several months. 

I’d like to take a few minutes to address some of his concerns about political coverage in The Western News.

The journalists in our newsroom have worked diligently to cover this election in a responsible manner, gathering as much information as possible, checking facts, re-checking facts and giving all candidates an equal opportunity to provide information and answer questions about the biggest issues facing our communities. 

It is our goal to provide factual, accurate and unbiased information about the candidates in order to give voters a chance to make informed decisions at the polls. We don’t endorse candidates or play favorites because we believe it’s each voter’s responsibility to make their own decisions regarding who best represents their interests. 

In an attempt to be as fair and transparent as possible, our reporters and editors have covered the races in a way that has given each candidate a large amount of space on our news pages to speak directly to the public, with their answers recorded and transcribed verbatim for our readers. 

We offered one such opportunity earlier this month to all of the candidates running for county office. The goal of these question-and-answer sessions was to focus our questions on the two biggest criticisms about each candidate and then allow the candidates to provide rebuttals in their own words. 

All of the candidates, with the exception of one, provided answers to the questions, which were crafted by our editor based on readers’ feedback. The candidate who did not respond to these questions now claims that he was treated unfairly, even though we gave him the same amount of time to answer the questions as his opponents had to answer them. 

This candidate has also taken issue with a previous report we published that revealed details about his employment background that he implies were detrimental to his campaign. 

Since then, the candidate has avoided multiple opportunities to offer his perspective on the issues surrounding his candidacy and other important issues facing the community. He also was presented with an opportunity to tell us if he believed any of the information in our report was inaccurate. If we were wrong, we would have written a correction. But at no point did the candidate bring up any specific inaccuracies. He just stopped talking to us. 

Prior to publishing the story about this candidate’s background, our reporter spent months gathering public records and interviewing many people who had worked closely with the candidate in the past. A lot of time was invested into researching and fact-checking the story. 

In addition, several other newspapers – including the Spokesman Review, the Tobacco Valley News and The Miner of Newport, Wash. – have looked at the same information about this candidate that we did and reported many of the same facts that we reported. 

The bottom line is that we stand behind our reporting. Our coverage of this election has revealed a lot of pertinent information about each of the local candidates. Now it’s up to you, the voters, to do the hard part and choose your next group of community leaders. 

-Matt Bunk is publisher of The Western News.