I am not a lawyer, politician, economist, scientist, doctor, farmer, engineer, or otherwise certified expert in any field. But I am a reporter of their doings. Does that make me a liar?<\/p>\n
In my student newsroom, the office of the Hill News, we like to stick to the facts as they are stated by our sources. I simply don\u2019t like to print a lone, unattributed statement and on those rare occasions that I do, it\u2019s because it\u2019s a detail so onerously disseminated that even questioning it would be unethical. The radio seems to push that line a little further. \u201cAre we comfortable with the wording, \u2018most boaters weren\u2019t even aware\u2019?\u201d I had to ask this morning.<\/p>\n
This week was tough for me. Not because anything particularly bad happened, but nothing particularly good happened. But to be honest, what\u2019s really going on is an internal conflict about the value and goal of good journalism. There will always be some bad journalism to hold up and say, \u201cThis is what we are not.\u201d That\u2019s how I feel as a consumer. As a journalist consuming news for eight hours a day and constantly considering the typical he-said-she-said, conflict-based reporting, balance is starting to feel like a burden. I mean, couldn\u2019t there be truth down there somewhere?<\/p>\n
On the other hand, truth is rarely an objective reality. I\u2019ll use my story on rural broadband as an example. It was convenient that Congressman Bill Owens had fought for that measly $6 million, an undoubtedly essential aspect of the story. When the story goes live, though, the headline denotes GOP budget cuts without explaining their rationale. I didn\u2019t venture down that rabbit hole because it would have boiled down to worldviews that are indecipherable in any timely sense. I can use the Croghan Dam as another example. Is the dam old and crumbling? Without a doubt. But would it hold in another flood? Only the dam knows. I\u2019m not a dam or an engineer \u2013 my father and grandfather are the dam experts \u2013 so I can only report what each side said<\/em> of their reality. Right?<\/p>\n