An exciting development in The Daily’s Web site has been the introduction of a feature at the end of each article that enables readers to post comments. In the past, if readers wanted to respond to an article, they had to submit a letter to the editor, with no guarantee that this letter would be selected for publication, and the understanding that the letter would be edited both for clarity and for content. The Web site’s new feature allows readers to respond to articles immediately and without any kind of screening process, resulting in an unmediated and sometimes contentious dialogue that can be an excellent means of directing accusations against The Daily.

In my experience working at The Daily, nothing has been as consistently inflammatory and capable of sparking numerous op-eds and letters to the editor than coverage of speakers or events relating to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Sometimes it felt as though the Opinions page would never need to worry about copy again, so inundated would the editors be with indignant submissions.

While this year’s editors so far have not received quite the deluge of emails that coverage of a controversial Middle Eastern speaker sometimes sparks, there have still been enough responses to Tuesday’s article, “Editor: U.S. media favors Israel,” that it seems worth addressing just how The Daily goes about choosing what to cover, and to clear up some concerns and questions of bias that have been raised by readers.

At its essence, The Daily’s policy is to cover speaker events that either feature prominent figures that many students have heard of, have a high anticipated attendance or are sponsored by a large campus group. Admittedly, this policy is somewhat vague and subject to editorial discretion. The main constraint on The Daily’s coverage of speaker events, however, is its very limited number of reporters. I remember all too well from my days as a news editor how it was nearly impossible to find a writer to attend a speaker event on a weeknight, particularly during midterm season (which, we all know, covers a period falling roughly between Week Two and Dead Week).

In general, it is the nightly news editor’s responsibility to attend the event and write the article if he or she fails to assign the job to someone else. In practice, however, this isn’t always possible — the news editor’s primary responsibility is to ensure that there is a news section in the paper the next morning, so his efforts must first and foremost go toward this. The result is that sometimes, regrettably, speakers or events don’t get covered. The takeaway point here is that more people should write for The Daily.

Monday night’s talk by Rami Khouri, editor-at-large of the Lebanese Star, was a significantly-sized event attended by around 80 people. The subsequent article that has sparked debate online and in print was an impartial account of some of what was said both in the talk and the question-and-answer session. I can see no evidence of editorializing in the article itself. For those angered by the one-sidedness, please remember not to shoot the messenger. The Daily’s duty is to report the facts of what happened, and as far as I can see, it did so. An editor even tried, though unsuccessfully, to get in touch with Hillel on Monday night to get its perspective on the talk.

There are also those who charge that The Daily’s alleged bias comes through not so much in Tuesday’s article itself as in its decision to cover that event while not covering similar events by Israeli or Jewish speakers. The Daily receives the opposite critique from the other side when it covers (as it does) similar events by Israeli or Jewish speakers. This dissatisfaction is simply a consequence of the nature of the divide on the Israeli/Palestinian issue, it seems. From what I have seen in my four-plus years at The Daily, the paper does not give more coverage to one side than the other — and if it somehow does, this is certainly not a conscious decision. Rather, it is merely a result of the paper’s limited resources.

The Daily aims to highlight the ongoing deates regarding the sensitive and, for many students, personal issues involved in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict (and related Middle Eastern concerns) by running multiple articles throughout the year that cover both sides’ viewpoints. Ideally, balance is achieved in this manner. While it is still too early to be able to judge if this equilibrium will ultimately result this year, hopefully readers can give the paper the benefit of the doubt.

Whitney Sado is a first-year law student. As public editor of The Daily, she writes biweekly columns assessing The Daily’s performance. Though she speaks for the reader, her opinions are her own. She can be reached at wsado@stanford.edu.