I've been informed that several officials of the Association have expressed concern over the appearance of bias in the last issue of the Newsletter. Presumably, this concern arose over the fact that the issue, appearing just before the May meeting when a vote was scheduled on the Limited Voting Rights Proposal, contained a letter to the Editor and a Point of View essay, both advocating some form of permanent membership for noncertified graduates of our Institutes.
It was recommended that, in the future, each issue of the Newsletter be “balanced” in its content — that, for example, a letter advocating one side of an important issue not be published until another letter advocating the opposite side could be published along with it.
The concern about bias and the suggested remedies warrant a statement about the editorial policy of the Newsletter and an explanation of why the proposed procedures to insure “balance” would be not only be impractical but also undesirable. The Newsletter is dependent for much of its content on unsolicited submittals. Its policy is that, since a primary function of the Newsletter is to encourage and facilitate communication between members and administration and among members, themselves, any letter or opinion piece that is pertinent, articulate, and constructive will be published as soon as space permits.
Whenever possible, both sides of an issue are presented, as in the December 1981 issue, where a summary was published of arguments, pro and con, regarding nonmedical training.
However, to withhold publication of a letter or opinion until a countervailing view can be obtained would entail delaying such communications for five to eight months or more (there is already a minimum of two months lag between copy received and publication.) In many instances, the timeliness and news value of such communications would be lost. Moreover, such constraints would make it impossible to maintain the relatively steady appearance of such features as “Letters to the Editor” and “Point of View” in each issue and would result in unacceptable wide fluctuations in the length of Newsletter issues. News and newsworthy issues simply do not occur in “balanced” chunks.
I doubt that our members are so unsophisticated and easily swayed by what they read at the moment, that they are unable to remember and weigh arguments from one issue to another. Even so, the Newsletter of December 1981 contained a lengthy letter opposing any extensions of membership rights without any accompanying opposing view. No complaints of “unbalanced” presentations were forthcoming at that time. Perhaps what is considered “balance” often depends on whose ox is being gored.