With the Donald Trump impeachment hearings on the TV and all over the news, there is plenty of time to do other things. But let me talk about something possibly related to the news on the impeachment of President Trump: the media and who to believe. There was a brouhaha over the weekend at the student-run Daily Northwestern, in Evanston, Illinois. The editorial staff at the paper ran an editorial apologizing for the harm they supposedly caused when the paper ran/tweeted photos of people protesting a speech by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Apparently, some of the people in these photos felt they were harmed by the publication of the photos. On Sunday, the paper apologized, saying in part:
“We recognize that we contributed to the harm students experienced, and we wanted to apologize for and address the mistakes that we made that night – along with how we plan to move forward.”
“We feel that covering traumatic events requires a different response than many other stories. While our goal is to document history and spread information, nothing is more important than ensuring that our fellow students feel safe – and in situations like this, that they are benefitting from our coverage rather than being actively harmed by it.”
A couple of comments. First, with respect to those protestors who apparently felt they were harmed by their pictures being published by the newspapers: If you don’t want to be identified as protesting, don’t protest. I write a lot of letters to the editor. I don’t ask that my name be withheld. I’m happy to be identified with what I write. I don’t recall Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. (or Martin Luther, for that matter),1 hiding their identities. And they had real reason to be worried about what might happen to them. But they did it anyway.
Second, based on the editorial, it appears that the Daily Northwestern may, in the future, be tailoring its coverage of events to make sure its readers “feel safe.” Which raises the question as to whether one will be able to believe what the newspaper reports about those events. If it is deemed more important to make sure their fellow students “feel safe” than to “document history and spread information,” how will people know whether what they are reading is what happened or what makes somebody feel good – or safe?
I realize the Daily Northwestern is run by students. They are just kids. I don’t want to criticize them too much. But you wonder to what extent what happened in this student-run newspaper is happening in newspapers, or other media, run by adults. Are they more concerned about telling what happened or about telling their readers what they want to hear or confirming what they already think is true? Will it be all the news that’s fit to print or all the news that fits? If democracy dies in the darkness, will the light shine on all the facts or just those sympathetic to the people buying the paper? And who decides what is fair and balanced? Is it what makes people safe and happy or is it all the facts, even if it what challenges what people already believe?
If you aren’t sure the press is reporting all of the story, you ultimately can’t believe any of the story. Because you don’t know what they left out – or why. And unfortunately, that seems to be true of more and more of the media today.
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1 After all, Martin Luther signed his name on the 95 Theses he nailed to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg.
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