Ethridge: Equally offensive to everyone

My wife Shari couldn't wait to share the Facebook post she saw a few weeks ago.

A friend of hers was defending our newspaper -- and, in effect, the editor -- to a group angry over some coverage. To paraphrase, this person wrote, "Believe it or not, as conservative as they are at the Courier & Press, a lot of people say they're way too liberal."

This came to mind on Monday morning as I opened up the weekend email at our letters@courierpress.com account and listened to voicemail left on my office phone.

The first letter, from a reader in Western Kentucky, took offense at an editorial cartoon that ran on Saturday, June 2. Penned by Steve Hall, whose work appears in USA TODAY among other newspapers, it showed a Muslim-looking man saying "Thanks for the distraction" to a group of anti-Trump protesters drawn as children.

"This cartoon is an affront to Muslims, who in vast numbers, reject Islamic extremism," said the letter writer. "It is also an affront to protesters who are providing resistance to a radical Republican agenda."

The first voicemail, from a reader in Newburgh, expressed dismay over an editorial cartoon that ran on Monday, June 5. Penned by Phil Hands, who is syndicated by the Tribune Content Agency via the Wisconsin State Journal, it showed a peddler's box touting the AHCA that included a side effects warning of "may include loss of coverage, high-risk pools and death. Do not take if you have a pre-existing condition."

The newspaper had crossed a line in its coverage of Donald Trump and his policies, the caller felt. It was enough, he said, to make him drop his subscription.

What was interesting, from my perspective, was the column that appeared beneath that cartoon. Written by Lee Hamilton, the Evansville native who gracefully served in the U.S. Congress, representing Indiana's Ninth District, for 34 years, it was headlined, "Trying to talk to the other side."

I began seeking out Hamilton's columns to run after being alerted of their availability by a reader who feels, rightly, that our politics have become way too polarized. He had been using Google to find the columns that run in multiple newspapers across the state and also are published by the Indiana University Center on Representative Government web site.

This column did not simply address the tide of pro- and anti-Trump citizens in our communities. It talked about how to get people more involved in government, so rather than complaining and protesting they are, on the front end, trying to make a difference.

In a longer version that ran on courierpress.com, Hamilton wrote, "Sure, politics is 'messy,' but not because it’s tainted or morally bankrupt. It’s messy because it often reflects deep-seated disagreements that are hard to resolve, with merit on both sides."

That's how I feel about the political cartoons we run every day and which, often enough, draw the most powerful responses from readers. Some closely resemble my beliefs; others are far from them. We only publish one a day, but others, from USA TODAY Network newspapers, are compiled and made available monthly at courierpress.com.

While we don't go out of our way to anger readers, we do believe we should share multiple viewpoints. That's why, most Tuesdays and Thursdays, we often run both a Cal Thomas conservative column and a Clarence Page (or at times a Leonard Pitts) liberal column. That's why we run letters to the editor that disagree with our editorials, and why we allow responses to letter writers provided they aren't framed as personal attacks.

We hear much more often that we're part of the "liberal media," which conservative cable network hosts drive at day-in and day-out. Yet, as we see in our email, calls and letters, there are plenty of progressive thinkers who put us in the tank with conservatives.

True, we run multiple news stories about President Trump, and many of them aren't flattering to the decisions he is making. But we can't hide from the news, or deny the value of reporting on investigations or unique foreign policy decisions.

It's an interesting time we live in, and it must be exciting to editorial cartoonists to capture history as it happens, whether their viewpoint be liberal or conservative.

Tim Ethridge is editor of the Courier & Press. Email him at tim.ethridge@courierpress.com or contact him via Twitter at @ECP_TimEthridge.