It’s sometimes hard to figure out the difference between what is believed and what is believable. It’s common to believe what we saw, then add, “That was unbelievable!”
In the late 1940s, my dad and his friend, Dave Lutes, were walking to work at the Dayton Daily News. They passed the Montgomery County Courthouse just as Orville Wright was coming down the stone stairs, missed a step, and tumbled to the bottom.
Dave was the news photographer and caught the moment on his Speed Graphic.
When they developed the film, they knew it was a front page shot. The editor thought otherwise, saying there was no need to embarrass one of America’s more important men, the inventor of the airplane – or to investigate the reason he fell.
“No. There were only five witnesses to the twelve-second, hundred and twenty-foot flight at Kitty Hawk, and newspapers didn’t believe it even happened. The two of you saw Mr. Wright fall. If we print that picture, thousands of people will speculate on why he fell. Sick? Old? Leave it be.”
That editor’s reasoning, disputed for years, convinced some people that they were deprived of fair and honest news. They got huffy and threatening. It didn’t matter that the nation was about to go to war again, it mattered that they didn’t see someone famous fall on his head.
It’s people’s right to dismiss, rip up, misunderstand, misquote, and read between the lines, but they can’t unread what they already read. Which is why word and picture choices carry a story.
So… how does an editor make decisions? It’s easy to dislike a person’s politics when we dislike the person. Politicians are not expected, or elected, to hold onto principles. Politics is about listening to alternatives, then negotiating. We learn as toddlers that if we want something, we have to give something. If we want a cookie, we have to stop crying. If we want to be held, we have to stop crying. If we want to go outside and run with the four-year-olds, we have to stop crying. Easy lesson, quickly learned.
Journalism, on the other hand, despite draping itself in shiny freedom and bare-knuckled necessity and elegant democracy, is where opinions reign. Journalism is arrogance. Journalism doesn’t have to obey any rules, including the newsroom bible, AP Stylebook and Libel Manual. No one needs a license to be a journalist or an editor, and anyone who deliberately prints errors deserves what they get.
The first newspaper in the United States, Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick (1690) was shut down after one issue because the colonial governor didn’t like its alternative bent. That indicated that politicians are the parent and newspapers are the puppy. At least until the Constitution was signed.
Reporters are “allowed” entry to government meetings and access to government papers, and “allowed” to protect sources. Newspapers are also “allowed” to put up with misguided and frequently hostile readers by simply being ugly but not libelous.
Because a newspaper has that wiggly, slippery, untrappable 1st amendment, the one that covers free speech and freedom of the press, a newspaper can easily get brazen and careless.
Not careless with the law, careless with the reader. The person an editor works for is the reader, not the writer. Not the one who builds the work, but the one who assesses the work.
There was a time when newspapers made a lot of money because people had learned to read and wanted to. They preferred reading about shortcomings more than achievements. Once advertising started paying the print bill, readers could also find out where to buy a davenport. Advertising made newspapers indispensable.
Somehow, small disagreements, or simple habits, became topics fit for print. Are newspapers really so entitled that they find it necessary to display what they decide is a cheap and popular way to influence thought?
Yes. We do it every day. Not on an internet level, but on a hometown newspaper level.
A newspaper is expected to be fierce, fragile, brutal and fair, like the people it reflects.
But why are we so sure that all we hold dear really is? That’s what’s unbelievable.