Meet the Gatekeeper: Mark Melnicoe picks the campaign stories that get printed in the Sacramento Bee

Mark Melnicoe is national editor at The Sacramento Bee. According to Armando Acuna, Melnicoe helps choose which campaign stories get published.

That is not good news for Bee readers. Mark Melnicoe is the genius who admitted in December, 2007 that McClatchy wasn't covering Iraq's drop in violence, then, justified the non-coverage because he wasn't sure the decline was "permanent."  Here is what Gatekeeper Melnicoe said December 2, 2007:

Mark Melnicoe, the paper's national editor, is often the person picking the campaign stories. He is keenly aware of the election's heightened interest.

"Space and relative news value of stories vary by the day, and it's this combination that I grapple with constantly," said Melnicoe, who said he is striving for fairness and balance in the paper's campaign coverage.

"On the one hand, we want to be fair to both candidates (and in the end I'm confident we will be seen that way by fair-minded people)," he said in an e-mail. "But I would say that being fair does not necessarily mean an exact, to-the-inch balance of stories.

Do you need any more evidence Melnicoe cheated Bee readers out of important information? Remember, the surge had been implemented several months earlier, and the violence had started dropping in the fall. Bee readers had complained for months that the Bee was not covering the drop in violence. And as late as December, 2007, Melnicoe's position was the drop in violence wasn't newsworthy. 

"I've been looking for stories that quantify the drop in violence. ... It's nice to have relatively good news out of Iraq for a change," he says. "But you don't know what's going to happen. I think journalists are a little wary because we've been burned on Iraq before ... There have been lulls before, and it comes roaring back."

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