This job of mine can carry with it some interesting scenarios, and sometimes it causes one to pause before moving forward on something.
Last week I saw the movie ‘The Post’ at the movie theater in Outlook. Directed by the virtually-untouchable Steven Spielberg, it stars Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep and tells the story of what happened after the infamous Pentagon Papers were leaked to the press back in the early 1970’s; papers which detailed the White House’s long involvement in the Vietnam conflict going back several presidencies.
Essentially, the movie was about how far the press was willing to go to get a story out to the American public that deserved to know the truth about its government. Do they risk going to court? Do they risk falling stock prices? Do they risk bankruptcy or closure?
It was a great film, and I’d be lying if I said I left the theater and didn’t immediately start making comparisons to what we do here at The Outlook. Granted, we’re definitely *not* The Washington Post or New York Times, but we’re also not exactly worlds apart, either. We’re a news source too, and we sometimes find ourselves wondering how far we should take a certain news piece, what should be said, what should be handled delicately, that sort of thing.
In fact, you could say that being a smaller, community-minded newspaper brings its own unique set of challenges not faced by your bigger and broader publications in larger areas. After all, we’re writing about the very people who make up this little chunk of our world here in rural Saskatchewan; our neighbors, friends and sometimes even our own family members.
When that happens, there’s an even bigger desire or a need to handle things delicately, and the whole job can present itself as something of a balancing act. Especially when the news you deliver sometimes isn’t so good, or when it’s downright sad and tragic.
When I find myself being presented with an event that runs the gamut of gut-reaction-type human emotion – whether it’s a car accident, a fire, a robbery, an assault, or any of those kind of things that we in the media biz label as ‘hard news’ – that’s when I’m typically presented with that ‘balancing act’ scenario. It’s our job to lay out the facts, but sometimes the facts aren’t so pretty. We want to provide the public with a clear, well-rounded telling of what happened, but sometimes the people involved are people that we know, and perhaps know them well.
There’s something of a built-in default setting in your psyche to just go into ‘news mode’ and present the story with what you know or what you can gather, but then there’s this little voice in the back of your mind going, “Are you SURE you wanna share everything?”
Take life around these parts for the past eight months or so, for example. Our local waters could’ve basically been tried as serial killers last summer with the number of sad and horribly tragic drownings that occurred in either the South Saskatchewan River or Lake Diefenbaker. My own brother could’ve easily been another victim last July. Something tells me that I wouldn’t have been the assigned writer on that particular article if the worst had happened.
Or maybe take the more recent events around Outlook as another example. At the beginning of February, Brian Anholt’s truck was involved in a rollover just south of town on Highway 45. By the time emergency crews got to the scene, Brian was found to already be gone. Scores of local people knew Brian (aka ‘Tubbsy’ to those who knew him best) and we ran a report of what had happened (sans name) along with a photo of the general scene provided by the RCMP. Not long after I posted the article, I got a message saying how insensitive The Outlook was being by posting it not long after Brian’s family had gotten the news. I know this person had a fair point because I understand where she was coming from, but I guess it all goes back to that balancing act.
And sometimes, particularly when you’re a reporter in a rural area, there’s also a need to set things straight and get the facts out there in the collective ether before things get twisted and the coffee row chatter becomes the adopted gospel in some circles. That’s not me offering some lame excuse for reporting some rather grisly things at times, that’s simply offering some perspective on what things can be like on my side of the newspaper.
The news can be great around here, but it can also be sad and horrible.
If you struggle reading it sometimes, just know that sometimes we struggle in writing it.
For this week, that’s been the Ruttle Report.
