To the editor:

Where is the fairness in the recent article showing our school board candidates’ answers to various questions put to them??? Or are you trying to ‘quietly’ say you favor Rendon?

In both versions – in the actual newspaper and in the Facebook version, you always put Rendon’s answers first. The accepted process is to alternate the order of replies so that it does not look like the paper is favoring one candidate over the other.

And the version on Facebook is even worse. Not only were the replies never alternated, the design, not boldfacing the candidate names at the start of each answer, and having Rendon’s reply always first, makes it look like she is the only one that replied to the questions. Candidate Mikel-Mulder’s answers are all sort of buried way down towards the bottom of each set of replies. Not made to stand out at all! This makes it look like only Rendon gave replies. It would have been much fairer to 1 – alternate the replies; 2 – Boldface the names; 3 – leave an empty line between the bottom of the reply from the first candidate and the start of the other candidate’s reply.

And to top it off, the Facebook version shows a large photo of Rendon, but just a tiny one of Mikel-Mulder. When a person opens up the FB article, this makes it look like there is only one candidate, Rendon.

All of this makes it look like the Journal is favoring Rendon without actually coming out and saying so. Because the article is a NEWS article, there should be no hint of bias! If you want to give an editorial opinion, that belongs on the editorial page, not disguised as a news story.

Teddi Tri

Hastings