We The People
Hi everybody, and welcome to The Parkville Luminary’s version of People magazine.
This week, our news gatherers traveled far and wide – from Washington D.C. to Oshkosh, Wisconsin to the truly far-out locale of Tracy, Missouri – in order to report on the doings of our friends, neighbors and local Luminaries.
On the land and on the sea, on the local stage at the Platte County Pavilion or on the world’s stage on Capitol Hill, wherever a Parkvillian is partaking in all of the splendors life has to offer or contributing to the common good, The Parkville Luminary will be there, shedding light.
On page one, readers learn who took top awards at the Platte County Fair, accompanied by one of the cutest pictures in the history of any fair, anywhere. You’ll note that the girls are all smiling brightly, soaking up the limelight, waving to everyone in the audience, reveling in their diva moment while the boys look…well…a tad befuddled. Art imitates life and the apple does not fall from the trees: on Tuesday nights in Southern Platte County we call that same picture the Board of Aldermen.
The controversy still rages in regards to press freedoms in the United States. To our right, Paul McMasters, who is the director of the First Amendment Institute and a editorialist for the National Newspaper Association, levels his sights on the argument.
Look, I’m not going to pretend that I’m William Allen White here (even though The Luminary used just about the same business model he used at the Emporia Gazette). I’m not going to pretend I’m Joseph Pulitzer or that I have all of the answers regarding the proper way to conduct journalism at all times.
I am going to point out that Ben Bradlee, the editor at the Washington Post during the Watergate affair, was extremely hesitant about using an anonymous source then. All of the crazed whining by reporters out there about how the “right” to keep sources anonymous is the number one weapon in the journalism arsenal is wrong. As Bradlee pointed out then, it is the job of the journalist to get people to talk ON the record. The number one job of the journalist is to report and disseminate that information to the masses.
The problem the press, and therefore the citizenry, faces today is secrecy. The sources sometimes don’t have any guts. They want to manipulate the press by hiding behind the shroud of anonymity. They want to strike from the shadows. Sure, there are occasions where people may feel the need to keep quiet because their life, or a loved one’s life is in danger, but for the most part, many anonymous sources are just plain cowards.
The popular newspaper satire, The Onion, offered a cutting “news in brief” piece this week entitled “Anonymous Source: ‘I’m a Cowardly Snitch,’ which read:
“New York - An unidentified lawyer and lobbyist revealed Monday that a “sniveling yellow streak” led him to anonymously divulge U.S. State Department misconduct. “I am a blubbering cream puff with no guts whatsoever,” said the source, 44, who wished to remain anonymous. “People should know what officials are doing, but I’m a big baby, and I can’t risk my job or reputation by revealing my identity.”
Leave it to the fake press to say what the real press doesn’t have the guts to say.
There are plenty of people, including people that this little newspaper published in Parkville, talk to each week “off the record.” Being off the record is a courtesy that, quite frankly, keeps most journalists and publishers from being relegated to the outskirts of society. There are times where people are willing to talk, willing to go on the record if asked, but rightfully worry about the context of their remarks or just want to say the perfect thing. Reporters know this, and sometimes, a quote isn’t really needed. Like anything else in life, you consider the source, you look into it, and you move on. The Luminary has never quoted an anonymous source, and unless someone’s life is in danger, never will.
When the large part of society demands more from the major press outlets besides what Lindsey Lohan was wearing last week, when they demand to know what is going on in their government, when they start to wonder who is calling the shots over their lives and when they start to care about judicial outrageousness, then cases like Judith Miller’s will become rare.
For now, the press should do what it is they have always done when painted into the corner – grab their pens and start to seriously report. This is a battle that we are all supposed to win.