By Arthur Alpert

Frames of reference help us understand what we’re seeing until they freeze up, becoming blinders. I use partisanship as a prism for much of what happens at the Albuquerque Journal, but there’s a simpler explanation for many errors – poor journalistic practice.

Take the Journal’s Friday, Jan. 22, issue.

Editors chose to put a superficial Associated Press report on the Supreme Court decision loosening restrictions on campaign donations on the front page.

Washington Bureau reporters Mark Sherman and Jim Kuhnhenn did tell us the Court ruled, 5-4, with right wing justices prevailing, and surveyed many of the decision’s likely implications.

But their explanation of the majority’s judicial thinking was thin and they didn’t explain the dissenters’ reasoning at all. Nor did they explore fundamental questions, including whether corporate political contributions are “speech.”

The AP story sometimes equated corporation and unions. Still, it focused on the “concentration of corporate wealth” and told us Republicans cheered the decision while Democrats booed. So the authors weren’t biased, just amateur.

Incidentally, Journal editors (I presume) inserted a few paragraphs about New Mexico’s laws on political contributions. That’s praiseworthy – it makes sense to bring a national story home. They should do it more often.

It might be wiser, however, to put those local inserts in parentheses or run them as a sidebar.

Elsewhere on Friday, the Journal told us the Dow tumbled the previous day, couldn’t agree with itself why. President Obama’s chastisement of the big banks precipitated the fall on A4, but a jump in jobless claims was to blame on the Business Page.

Short-term moves in the indices are very hard to read.

Finally, the Journal’s continuing coverage of the legislative session included a story by Dan Boyd (A6) on a “loose-knit coalition of left-leaning lawmakers” who vowed to fight proposed cuts in Medicaid and public schools. The headline picked up on “Left-Leaning.”

I do wish political reporters would think vertically more often. What, after all, is this session about but apportioning the pain among New Mexicans on the upper, middle and lower rungs? But the horizontal frame of reference is hard to kick, so I accept Boyd’s characterization, his story on the “Working Families Caucus” and the headline.

I will be watching, however, for stories on legislators who would rather cut health and education than re-impose the Richardson income tax cuts on the wealthiest New Mexicans.

Watching for the Journal to describe them as, “Right-Leaning.”