Mike Fancher / Times executive editor
Our goal is to report fully and fairly on gay-marriage issue

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Those were among the questions asked in The Seattle Times newsroom conference room 10 years ago as staff members prepared to cover an emotionally charged debate about homosexuality. Two citizen groups were attempting to qualify initiatives regarding homosexuality for the ballot in Washington, but both eventually failed.

A decade later these questions, and many more, confront us again. The issue of same-sex marriages has become a political firestorm that isn't likely to burn out soon, possibly not before a national debate about amending the Constitution.

In recent days, the highest court in Massachusetts has said it will order the issuance of marriage licenses to applicants of the same sex in May. City officials in San Francisco have issued thousands of such licenses, and a county in New Mexico and a city in New York followed suit. Last week President Bush called for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, an idea his Democratic rivals immediately denounced.

The battle is joined.

Ten years ago I pledged to readers that our job was to report fully on the gay-rights initiatives, however favorably or unfavorably we, as individuals, might feel about them. That pledge holds for the issue of gay marriage.

Here are some conclusions I reached a decade ago that seem applicable today:

• It is understandable that individual staff members may feel that an issue is so central to their personal beliefs that they cannot attempt to be neutral in doing their job. Someone feeling that way would have no choice but to withdraw from any role in the newspaper's coverage.

• The responsibility of the newspaper to be neutral is paramount. It may not be right for an individual staff member to remain neutral, but the newspaper's obligation is to serve the interests of the community with reporting that is complete, fair, balanced and accurate. Those who participate in the coverage must leave value judgments to readers.

• Our best efforts to be neutral will be criticized as biased, requiring that we listen openly and honestly to that criticism, whichever corner voices it.

• Self-scrutiny doesn't mean we will shrink from asking hard questions or from scrutinizing rhetoric.
 
Those conclusions reflect the basic journalistic underpinnings at The Times or any good newspaper. But they need to be stated and reinforced because a public debate on issues so personal can be deeply emotional and divisive.

No one in the Times newsroom knows that better than Mike Stanton, executive news editor, who heads our standing committee on ethics and standards. He's also on the front line in deciding whether our work meets our standards and readers' expectations.

"When people feel extremely strongly about an issue, whether it's gay marriage, the war in Iraq or the Arab-Israeli conflict, they often feel they are on the side of all that is right and good, and they can't understand how any rational or moral person could disagree with them. But we hear from rational and moral people on all sides of every issue," he says.

"Some people who think there can be no argument for any position but their own throw out questions like, 'Would you have stayed neutral about the Holocaust? Are you neutral on child abuse?'

"But those are questions where the public conscience is resolved, where there is no serious debate. Whether partisans of one position like it or not, the public conscience is very much unresolved on these other issues, and there is very serious debate," Stanton says.

"I tend to have more faith in the people, flawed as we are. They don't need us to tell them in the news columns what they should do. Given honest and fair information, they usually come to a reasonable conclusion.

"Our job is to give our readers the fair, thorough and honest information they need to make the decision on their own."

We're having some terrific conversations about the task ahead, but we need to hear from you. Please let us know what questions you have and what you hope to see in our coverage.

If you have a comment on news coverage, write to Michael R. Fancher, P.O. Box 70, Seattle, WA 98111, call 206-464-3310 or send e-mail to mfancher@seattletimes.com. More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists

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