When you beat up a paper day in and day out, it’s only fair to note when it does something right.

So I’d like to take this opportunity to show you how an editor at the Los Angeles Times took a fairly biased story, and made it less biased.

This lesson is made possible by the fact that the paper has working links to two versions of a story regarding yesterday’s Ninth Circuit decision on the Oregon assisted suicide law. The first version came out yesterday afternoon, and was titled U.S. Court OKs Oregon Suicide Law. The story breathlessly opened with this paragraph:

A federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled today that Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft dramatically exceeded his authority by attempting to sanction doctors who prescribe lethal drugs under Oregon’s assisted suicide law.

Sometime between 3:27 p.m. yesterday (when the original version was published) and this morning (when a second version of the story was published on the front page), an editor apparently did some work on the story. The result is a much better story. The lead paragraph of the newer version tones things down a little, removing the irritating word “dramatically”:

Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft lost a major round Wednesday in his attempt to block Oregon’s assisted-suicide law, as a federal appeals court panel ruled that his efforts exceeded his authority.

The story as it appears in the print edition is improved in other ways as well. The original version called the author of the opinion, Richard Tallman, a “conservative” without further explanation:

Tallman, a conservative, repeatedly flayed Ashcroft’s actions and his interpretations of federal law and criticized him for failing to consult with Oregon officials before acting, despite an express promise by a member of his staff to do so.

When I read this version of the story, this language annoyed me. The phrase “flayed Ashcroft’s actions” seemed unnecessarily gleeful. Also, there appeared to be a partisan attempt to bolster the credibility of a decision by portraying its author as a “conservative” — a word that conjures up images of Republican appointees like Antonin Scalia. I believed that this was a little misleading, given that Tallman is more of a moderate-to-conservative judge. Moreover he was appointed by President Clinton — a fact the story entirely failed to mention.

It didn’t seem worth a blog post, but it was still mildly irritating.

The version of the story that appeared today does a much better and less partisan job of describing Tallman:

The 9th Circuit is known for its liberal opinions and has frequently been reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court on high-profile issues.

But in this case Tallman, a former federal prosecutor appointed to the court by President Clinton, is generally considered one of the appeals court’s more conservative members.

Even this characterization of Tallman is open to some dispute. As I mentioned above, Tallman is generally thought to be “moderate” to “moderately conservative.” On Hugh Hewitt’s radio show yesterday, Chapman University Law School Professor John Eastman disputed Erwin Chemerinsky’s characterization of Tallman as “conservative.” A piece at Law.com (reprinted here) calls Tallman a “moderate.” And the San Francisco Chronicle has described Tallman as “moderate to conservative.”

Also, I’m not sure why it’s important to tell readers that Tallman is a former federal prosecutor, but not important to mention that he is also a former criminal defense lawyer (as the Times disclosed in this article from last year).

But readers are at least told that Tallman is a Clinton appointee. And he is characterized as conservative within the context of a largely liberal court, which adequately conveys the sense that he is a moderate conservative.

And there is no sense that the paper is reveling in the decision’s having “flayed” the actions taken by Ashcroft. No such language appears in the newer version of the article.

Does this post mean I’m going soft on the Times? Nah. This upcoming week I’m going to whack them good. I’m going to get something off my chest that’s been bugging me for a while, and I’m not going to pull any punches.

But fair is fair, and credit should be given where credit is due. The editor who worked on this story made it better. That is worth noting and praising.