It is difficult for newspaper editors and reporters to maintain journalistic objectivity when covering a city's urban structure and development because of their traditional civic involvement and because of a civic ideology shared with urban experts and chamber of commerce boosters. News values and editorial policy are often implicit varieties of civic propaganda. The subjective metaphor is most evident in the presentation, protection, and defense of the central business district as the place for civic worship of sacred icons, relics, and ceremonies. City planning news policy combines media and civic self-interest wrapped in the ethos of social responsibility and public interest. The civic ideology affects definitions and interpretations of urban problems and sets the news agenda throughout the newspaper. Journalists tend to justify their subjective involvement (if they admit to it) as a means of promoting civic identity and consensus; but in fact it leads to the reporting of some debatable events as nonpolitical, for the common good, and closed to debate. As civic custodians of civic symbols, civic pride, and a city's reputation, the participant-observer press often blends its fate mutually with that of the community. (Author/GT)