The Newspaper's Courage

As a journalist by training, I have long been of the mind that if something controversial happens in a community and it is somewhat well-known, that makes it fair game for news coverage. There are ethical guidelines for reporting the news, but people deserve to know what’s happening around them and formulate their own opinions of the developments. Transparency fosters change and improvement.

I still believe that as a general principle, but an old editorial that I recently discovered changed my perspective a bit. I found the piece, “The Newspaper’s Courage,” during my occasional, random searches of old newspapers at the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America website. It was published in The Alliance Herald, a semi-weekly newspaper published in Box Butte County, Nebraska, for two decades in the early 1900s.

I’m reprinting it here in its entirety because it’s worth consideration:

Once in a while somebody gets the idea that the reason the local paper does not report every scandal that comes to public knowledge is because the publisher is afraid. That’s not the reason.

The reputable newspaper, especially in a small town where everyone is a neighbor to everyone else, takes no delight in giving publicity to those things that have brought disgrace to some family or heartache to some wife or mother.

It is much more pleasant to report the good things that happen, to tell about the incidents that tend to make life more endurable, and that uplift rather than tear down, that bring joy instead of sorrow, pride instead of heartache.

So if you don't always find in The Herald the delectable bit of gossip that would doubtless make "good reading," and if you are inclined to blame the editor because he "doesn't print all the news," consider that some home has had enough worry over unfortunate happenings, and that the gossips and scandal mongers of the community can and will gladly and ghoulishly give sufficient publicity to the details to satisfy the lowest tastes.

Incidentally, it might be remarked here that the most complaint of censored news comes from people who have now or have had in their lives some things they are very glad were not given newspaper publicity.

There come times, of course, when it is the definite business of the local newspaper to speak right out in meeting, to tell what happened, to give open publicity to conditions that are a reproach to a community and for which the light of publicity seems the only cure.

Tolerance is not a lack of courage.

That reasoned analysis is most definitely not an opinion shared in the 21st century, where people seem to relish every opportunity to turn perceived sleights in their communities into worldwide controversies via the Internet.

Say what you will about outdated newspapers, but in their heyday, editors served a valuable community purpose. They heard a lot more stories than they reported, weeded through loads of garbage in the form of outraged, often incoherent letters to the editor, and fielded frequent angry calls from bitter sources eager to knock chips off their enemies’ shoulders. Sometimes they got it wrong and should have been more transparent, perhaps even more courageous.

But at least they exercised news judgment and didn’t try to “cancel” people in the community just because someone demanded it.