The Tricky Truth

I used to think that honesty was a virtue. Sometimes I'm not always sure.

Honesty/truthfulness/genuineness/veracity whatever...is pretty subjective when it comes right down to it. In journalism, especially scholastic journalism, that subjectivity gets even more complicated.

Children are told from a very early age to always tell the truth. Coincidentally, we learn at a very early age how to lie. In fact, there's a phase that's pretty much expected in every human's life that involves the very act of trying to deceive for a variety of reasons (in my particular case...s...it might have had something to do with having a younger sibling who could take the fall) but it's still very much expected that a "good" person always tells the "truth."

Broken down:
truth = good
lying = bad

So what happens when the truth isn't a good thing? Not the very nature of truth, but the idea that the truth is something unnecessary to behold? Maybe we can't handle the truth?

This is a complicated question that many students grapple with every day. I won't even bore you with the trite explanations of white lies versus lying for the greater good or contrarily with the intent to deceive. I think that when we speak of truth in journalism, it's important to look at truth as the puzzle that it is. Each story is a piece of the puzzle--one is no more significant than the other--which comes together to form a picture (which can then be looked at from countless perspectives). Facts are facts. Truth is something else entirely. Students should be made aware of these differences so they are not limited to looking at only one piece of the truth, but many pieces together. Even then, there are choices that need to be made about the picture they want to show. This is where true journalistic integrity is learned.