Should public officials have op-ed access? Pro: fleshing out the debate.

Some editors are reluctant to offer public officials an opportunity to advocate their views on the op-ed page. They argue that officials have ample opportunity tO explain their views and proposals through news coverage, news releases, and newsletters. Save the space for analysts and critics who have a tougher time getting their views out, they say.

Judging from the newspapers I read, they're wrong.

Sure, sometimes a newspaper will devote considerable space to an Official's explanation of a proposal, but more likely we'll give the official a couple of quotes, then a summary that represents our reporters view of what the idea is and what prompts it, and then responses of people who disagree with it.

There's nothing odd about that--it's how news coverage works--but it hardly provides a forum for saying anything beyond the basics. Look at your newspaper and see if you disagree.

That's why I often invite public officials and other politicians to write op-ed pieces about issues they're involved in. I'm interested in what (or whether) they think, and I believe readers are, too--well, some readers, anyway. This adds to the richness of the debate on our pages. And when folks criticize the officials, at least they know what they're criticizing.

We also make available a space of up to five hundred words to people we criticize in an editorial or, in some cases, in a news story. (I decide what cases, but I'm pretty generous about it.) We run it at the bottom of the editorial stack under the heading, "Feedback."

In recent weeks, we've had responses from a doctor who said he did not murder his wife, as an Observer story and the victim's father suggested; an admiral who said the Navy wasn't stupid, as we had concluded in an editorial, to propose a landing practice field near a wildlife sanctuary on a migratory bird flyway in eastern North Carolina; the head of a local humane society saying her organization was not scatterbrained about money, as our news stories suggested and an editorial said,

If the writer's argument is nonsensical, readers are quick to say so, We want to promote informed public debate, and we think Feedback contributes to that effort.

We don't consider this a "right of reply," by the way. We decide whether the respondent will get the five hundred-word space or just the one hundred fifty words available in a letter to the editor. It depends on how much we think there is to say on the topic and whether the writer says it well. I make that decision, but if the piece is well-written and substantive, I'm usually inclined to use it.

Ed Williams is editor of the editorial pages of the Charlotte Observe. E-mail [e-mail]

CON: Avoid the slick obfuscators

Just as I was preparing to opine against allowing public officials regular space on the editorial pages, I received a guest column--one that I may use--from my congressman.

Representative Zach Wamp wanted space to explain why he's sponsoring legislation to bar discrimination by employers and medical insurance companies on the basis of an individual's genetic profile. That's a field rich with potential for discriminatory practices against people Who happen to possess genes associated with cosily diseases. His column was a timely reminder about the vice of absolutes.

Never mind. Timely exceptions to the contrary; I still believe that editorial pages should not routinely allow editorial rebuttals and regular columns by public officials. We have never provided such a forum at The Chattanooga Times, and I plan to stick to that practice.

We do allow, and prominently display, letters to the editor and scorching rebuttals from aggrieved officials. We also allow them occasional columns to make a case for new policies and initiatives.

Still, I would argue against routinely allowing public officials a regular share of our turf--which was the focus of a rather extended debate on the NCEW listserv last fall--for at least three reasons.

1. I believe such an exchange tends to personalize, and institutionalize, differences in opinion. That would undermine our own power to influence readers by making our page's differences with public officials' policies seem simply an either/or proposition, rather than a reflection of a more substantive philosophical difference.

2. I think public officials have a megaphone of their own and tend to use it quite effectively (often with the blind help of our news reporters).

3. I think of our editorial/op-ed space as a place for debate by the general public, rather than as an extension of an official's public platform.

As to the first point, I'm well aware of the common rejoinder: If our argument doesn't seem more profound (or more sensible, practical, Visionary, etc.) on its face, it doesn't deserve to stand without a rebuttal. If it does, it won't be hurt by, and could well benefit from, the comparison.

That's true to a point, but almost beside the point. As the editor of a page which, as the result of a newspaper merger, stands daily opposite a conservative page, I regularly see that Counterpoint inaction.

Still, I find it plays most strongly to people who already have prejudged an issue and are looking for reinforcement. Why give it to them? In any case, much of what we get from public officials is not written by them, but for them--by P.R. practitioners slick in obfuscation and straw issues and recycled from press releases, old speeches, and public relations strategies.

We don't want to encourage that kind of debate. We'd rather use the op-ed space that we don't give to syndicated columnists for readers, independent analysts, and others Who most ably elucidate state and local issues. The more people Who get such a turn, the better.

Harry Austin, an NCEW board member, is editorial page editor of the Chattanooga Times Free Press. E-mail [e-mail]