Ever feel the deck is stacked against your POV? It’s not your imagination…here’s one recent hyper-local example.

Reading Votes received an anonymous tip that The Reading Post manipulates its homepage feed to promote letters supporting certain Pop Huddle/PAC-endorsed candidates.

Upon examination, the evidence clearly supports the accusations. Without a doubt, The Post handles content from certain candidates in a biased manner.

How do they do it? Simple. The Post changes the time a letter to the editor (LtE) is submitted so it appears that it’s no longer “recent” content at the top of the feed. LtEs they don’t favor are consigned to the dreaded “below the fold” area on the web site.

“Below the fold” means content that’s not immediately visible and which the reader must scroll down to see.  

Why does it matter? Because most readers only look at material above the fold. The venerable web user experience firm Nielsen Norman says users spend 57% of their time on the first screen.

While this is not exactly weapons-grade political warfare—it’s Web 1.0 strategy at best and reads as desperate, to be honest—it’s petty; it’s targeted; and we should investigate why this is happening.

The Evidence is Overwhelming

Reading Votes decided to investigate these claims and the bias is abundantly clear and irrefutable.

Since March 1, 2024, when the LtE Together for Reading Makes Their First Endorsements (a.k.a, PoP Huddle’s PAC) was published, every single LtE favoring Chris Haley, Dana Guarino, or Melissa Murphy has had its publication time deliberately changed to be pushed down below other articles or LtEs that day.

As an example, on March 3, the LtE Not a Worthy Candidate for the Select Board was modified at 4:42 pm to a posting time of 7:00 am, dumping it down further on the homepage that day.

The very next day, on March 4, the letter Why You Should Vote for My Dad was modified at 2:15 pm to show a publication time of 11:00 am; five minutes later at 2:21 pm, the LtE Dana Guarino: the BEST Person, The BEST Time, The BEST for Reading was modified to 11:00 am as well.

Fast forward to this election, and the very first article endorsing Melissa Murphy—Eight Town Meeting Minutes That Will Solidify Your Special Election Choice—was modified on May 1 at 1:38 pm to 6:00 am publication. Then on May 3, Vote for Melissa, a Mom for Select Board was modified at 12:36 pm to 7:00 am. On May 10, the letter Join Me in Voting for Melissa Murphy was modified at 12:22 pm to display a 6:00 am publication time.

Notably: Haley’s, Guarino’s, and Murphy’s opponents did not have their articles back-dated.

And this cannot be by coincidence. Every single time this happened, the article was moved to either 6:00, 7:00, or 11:00 am exactly, not off by any seconds.

Since the Reading Post doesn’t display publication times, you can inspect the publication details by right-clicking a page and selecting “View Page Source”. A bunch of code will come up, but you can see the published times and modified times.

Here’s an example:

Ethical concerns

So why does this matter? Well, The Post positions itself as a fair and balanced news source. It should disclose if it favors one political viewpoint over another.

Since it’s clearly biased, we have requested a response from the publication. We will share their response.

As well, we encourage our readers to write LtEs to The Post (editor@thereadingpost.com) on this matter. Let’s see how the “unbiased” paper of record treats the feedback.

Vote on Tuesday

Given all of the above, it’s even more important to vote for Melissa Murphy on Tuesday if you haven’t already voted. Voting is from 7:00 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the high school field house.

Murphy has faced slings and arrows with grace—ranging from tired accusations to political bias from The Reading Post. Why? Because she cares about making this town a great home for all constituents, not just certain special interest groups.

Let’s bring it home on Tuesday!

Sincerely,

Reading Votes