Responsible journalism

An old American adage holds that journalism exists to “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.” Whether it’s uncritically accepting the Bush Administration’s false rationales for rushing to war or turning away in the face of corporate scandal, we regret to say that too many in our field have forsaken this principle. Well aware of journalism’s declining integrity, we at the S&B work hard to play an active, adversarial role.

In recent weeks, we have taken heat for this approach. For instance, some have criticized our investigative piece on SGA election practices as biased. This may come as a surprise, but we disagree with this assessment. On a general level, it’s our job as responsible journalists to side with the powerless and check abuse by government. It’s our job to ask the hard questions even when it makes people uncomfortable.

Beyond fulfilling our adversarial role, we are also obligated to report factual information to the public and let them draw their own conclusions from it. Thus, it would be wrong for us to ignore when an SGA candidate’s grievances are thrown out on a technicality or to not report connections between members on election board.

Our staff does not always agree on how principles of journalism should apply in any given situation. For instance, last week some staff members, and other students, objected to the decision to print letters to the editor directly addressing a student’s Plan. Most of the dissent questioned the validity of taking someone’s informal rant on Plans, a forum closed off to non-Grinnellians, and transferring it to a formal forum in the S&B, which all have access to. Dissenters also feared we had set a dangerous precedent for all Plan wars to now become acceptable discourse on the opinion page.

After giving the matter some thought, most staff members can at least agree that the letters printed last week are far from something to worry about. They both addressed campus diversity and racism in a thoughtful and comprehensive way. It would have been irresponsible to dismiss these letters out of hand just because they reference Plans. For some the threat of slippery slope still presents a concern. Most, however, have reached the conclusion that it is impossible to have a free-standing criteria for evaluating letters.

Each letter is unique and must be evaluated on its own merits. Unless a letter is clearly inappropriate (e.g. potentially libelous or a blatant advertisement), we will strongly consider it for print. In cases where it is unclear whether a letter should be published, we will err on the side of promoting dialogue over silencing opinions. After all, without input from our readers, we could easily become the complacent entities we challenge.