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Last Updated: Aug 22, 2008 - 12:10:50 AM |
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I’ve used the quote before stating that the role of a newspaper is to “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.” American writer Finley Peter Dunne didn’t mean that in the way that pretty much everyone has taken it over the years. Dunne was not describing the responsibility of newspapers, he was cautioning against the power of newspapers.
Yeah, that was a long time ago. There’s not so much power these days.
Regardless, the role of the newspaper is not to do either - the role of a newspaper is to report the news. Whether the news is in the form of a crime story, a feature or anything else, our role is to report what we see without bias, without a hidden agenda and with complete honesty to the best of our ability. If it turns out that the comfortable are somehow afflicted by that, well, so be it. If it turns out that the afflicted are somehow comforted by it, I’ll consider that a perk.
To be honest, right or wrong, I do consider the latter half of that quote a responsibility. Newspaper have the ability to provide a voice and face to the problems in our nation. One such problem is poverty.
Americans are an independent sort - that is part of what makes us great. But we are also compassionate. It seems, however, that for some of our deeply ingrained societal ills, people prefer the concept of telling the aflicted to “pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.” To borrow a quote from Ric Gerard, sometimes there are no bootstraps. Sometimes we as a society must step in to help. In the simple act of offering a helping hand, we make our nation stronger and better than it was before. Yes, that is right - you offering your neighbor a helping hand strengthens our nation.
On page 8 of the print edition is an article by Ben Montgomery of the St. Petersburg Times newspaper in Florida. If you read nothing else in the newspaper this week, please read that article. Mr. Montgomery does an outstanding job of showing that indeed, sometimes there are no bootstraps.
Dallas Carter was, apparently, a good and decent man. He was poor and, despite what conventional wisdom has to say about the poor, he wasn’t lazy, wasn’t sitting back collecting welfare checks while watching cable TV on a big screen - he was poor, tired and at the end of his rope.
His worst decision was his last: Suicide by cop is horrific - particularly so for the officers forced to do their duty. They will live with Mr. Carter’s decision for the rest of their lives. That is an important but separate issue - of concern is what brought him to that point. Are there such people in our communities? Yes, we have poverty - we have neighbors struggling to decide if their remaining dollars will go into their gas tanks or put food on the table - an either-or situation. Most of these people can’t begin to afford the boots that society often believes can be used to pull themselves up with.
I know that I can do more. Ben Montgomery’s story about Dallas Carter very eloquently reminded me of that.
© Copyright 2008 by The East Iowa Herald
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