Truth and Journalism

Truth is defined as, "The true or actual state of a matter" on Dictionary.com.  As far as I'm concerned, that's a pretty difficult phrase to understand.  The literal meaning of the words isn't hard to decipher, but when you actually begin to decide what that means, that's when there's a problem.  In class, we discussed whether truth is really something that a journalist even is able to publish.  We talked about whether or not something is true if we don't have all the information about the event at the time of publishing.  Truth is a tricky subject all around, not in the least because what is true to one person may be false to another.  Does that mean that an opinion can be true, even if it has opposition?  As journalists, we are told not to involve opinion in our articles and research, but is it even possible to get rid of every bit of bias?  And if it is, does that alter the truth?  Does the context of the event or the context of the writer's opinion add to the truth or detract from it?  The more questions you ask, the easier it is to see that a dictionary definition of truth cannot grasp exactly what truth is. 

Truth is what we, as journalists, much search for.  That means that we always have to ask ourselves what the truth is.  Truth is different in journalism.  To tell events in a true, fair fashion means providing relevant context while still knowing when context tampers with the ability of the reader to form an opinion.  That's our job.  To provide information in order to let readers decide what they think about a story.  That mission requires the truth, which is why there is so much talk about "spin" and bias.  People want to know the absolute truth about an event.  The fact is, truth is hard to share.  We all have our own views and they directly influence our writing and researching of a story.  The best we can do is share what we know to be true about a story at any given time.  We write about what is actually a hard fact about a case, and then we have to make a judgment call about how much context is necessary to help the story make sense.  Just like the swimsuit at the beach conversation that we had in class, context can make or break the truth to a reader.  So I would say that a lot of the truth lies in context.

Truth is not an opinion.  Truth is not something that you can decide arbitrarily and without thought.  You have to ponder it, detach an event from yourself, and give the plain facts.  You lay those facts out on the table and piece them together, picking out as much bias as you can.  Then you fill the gaps in between with context.  That's the only way we can get at the truth, is to look at is as something to be figured out and put together.  There really is a formula for discovering truth, in my opinion.  It isn't always obvious or blatant, and if we are being fair to the public, as journalists we must commit ourselves to reporting truth only with the utmost care and thought.