Tag: journalism

Journalists are expected to tell the truth insofar as the truth can be discerned. But truth can be elusive. Merriam Webster defines truth in part as “a transcendent fundamental or spiritual reality. [A] judgment, proposition, or idea that is true or accepted as true. [T]he body of true statements and propositions.”

Recently, the Moscow-Pullman Daily News and the Lewiston Tribune announced there would be a sharing system in place for certain stories – especially from the Idaho Legislature – with the Idaho Press at Nampa to get information to many people in a rapid and cost-effective way. While this may be news to some subscribers, those of us who follow the industry know this is an emerging trend that has some positive benefits.

They say we dream more vividly as we grow older. That is certainly true for me. And I remember my dreams now in ways I never did when younger. And because I spent most of my life in newsrooms, that is where dreams take me. Soon enough, the newsrooms I remember will live only in dreams. And an institution so important to American democracy will be all but gone. Not a dream, but a nightmare.

We have the right to say whatever we want, right? Isn’t that what the First Amendment says? Not necessarily. While the First Amendment says Congress shall make no law abridging the right of free speech, there is no such restriction on the U.S. Supreme Court.

A Washington State University Ph.D. student, Bryan Christopher Kohberger, 28, was arrested Dec. 30 at his parents’ home in the Pennsylvania Poconos. Aggressive reporting that cites sources close to the investigation tells us police focused on Kohberger before Christmas as they closed in on a Hyundai Elantra that had been photographed near the crime scene and simultaneously traced DNA evidence to Kohberger family members.

Election Day is a week away. As is typical, we are drowning in election information – and misinformation – as the we near the finish line of campaigns that began the day after the 2020 national election.

It was because of his junior high arch enemy that Steven A. Smith found his way into journalism.