SALT LAKE CITY – Joseph A. Cannon is nobody’s liberal. His resume reads as if it belongs to a delegate to the Republican National Convention, which, incidentally, he was in 2004.

He was an official for the Environmental Protection Agency under Ronald Reagan and chairman of the Utah Republican Party. As editor of The Deseret News, he published editorials condemning deficit spending, same-sex marriage and lenient alcohol laws.

So it was something of a head-scratcher, Cannon said, when his voice mail and e-mail started filling up with messages from people calling him a "liberal freak" for the sympathetic way his paper often writes about illegal immigrants.

"You have become a dangerous newspaper, one that I am on the verge of discontinuing," wrote one outraged reader.

The News’ push for a more liberal embrace of undocumented immigrants has led to a collision between its editorial mission and its conservative, mostly Mormon, readers. But if this issue seems to stray from the reliably conservative politics of The News, Utah’s second-largest paper behind The Salt Lake Tribune, that may be in part because it is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

"The church’s practice is to say, ‘Look, we’re not immigration agents. We care for the soul,"’ Cannon said in an interview from his office in downtown Salt Lake City.

Because any editorial that appears under the Deseret Media masthead carries the unofficial imprimatur of the church in many Mormons’ eyes, Deseret editors and executives could indeed help shape opinions in the heavily Mormon state Legislature, where lawmakers are debating a zero-tolerance illegal immigration law similar to the one passed in Arizona this year.

But those who find their positions on immigration criticized see journalistic bias, not Mormon values, at work.

"Obviously, they’re trying to sway public opinion in a big way," said Stephen Sandstrom, a Republican state representative who is sponsoring a bill that would create a set of strict immigration laws similar to Arizona’s. Sandstrom, a Mormon, said he was not deterred. "I do have people in e-mails saying, ‘You’d better not back down or I’ll know the church got to you. And I just assure them that the LDS church is not directing me one way or another on this."

Cannon acknowledged that changing minds would be difficult, but he said he hoped at the very least to challenge readers to reflect on immigration through the teachings of their religion.

"What are the two commandments? Love God and love your neighbor," he said. "These people are our neighbors – incontestably, by any definition, they are our neighbors."

© 2010 The New York Times Company