Journalists and audiences need to understand line attributed to Thoreau: 'Never ignore a fact; it may flower into a truth'

By Al Cross, Director and Professor
Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, University of Kentucky

Most Americans can't discern professional journalism from provocative opinion-mongering, so it's important for journalists and their paymasters to explain the difference, and often. One way is to put tried-and-true journalism values into the modern context, as Editor John Nagy of The Pilot in Southern Pines, N.C., does in his latest column for the award-winning weekly newspaper.

Nagy's Ur-text is a speech that former Pilot owner Sam Ragan gave long ago, titled “The Role of a Newspaper.” Ragan laid the groundwork with lines from a previous owner, novelist and poet James Boyd: “Wherever there seems to be an occasion to use our influence for the public good, we will try to do it. And we will treat everybody alike.” Ragan recalled saying on NBC's "Today" show, “If you are on the side of humanity and the humane, you won’t go wrong.”

Nagy writes, "Much has changed in all the intervening years since Mr. Ragan delivered those words, but the sentiments and the power of those thoughts ring true, whether addressing local matters or global. We remain engaged today in a battle between information and misinformation, competing agendas that contort some facts, embellish others and ignore still others. . . . We live in an age, increasingly, where some resources that claim to uphold the mantle of journalism practice not objectivity so much as advocacy, a belief that the truth is what they deem it to be. These are people who see the world as black and white, rather than the gradations of gray that it really is."

Nagy again quotes Ragan: “The whole basis of our democratic society is that an informed people can be depended upon to make the right decisions about their lives. We would like to continue to believe this. We also believe, as did Thoreau, that one should ‘never ignore a fact; it may flower into a truth.’” (We can't find that Thoreau ever said this, but it's not bad advice.)

“If you are of a conservative mind and see this as an indictment of ‘wokeness’ — or if you are of a progressive leaning and read into these words an indictment of cancel culture — you are both right,” Nagy writes. “The objective truth does not fall neatly into one camp or another, Mr. Ragan told us all those years ago. If you are following someone who espouses otherwise, I have a copy of a speech I’m happy to share with you anytime.”

Isn't objectivity impossible? In most cases, yes, but objectivity in journalism isn't supposed to be about the outcome; it's about the method: testing all the available facts and reporting them accordingly. We think Sam Ragan, who was executive editor of the Raleigh News and Observer before buying The Pilot, knew that, too. It's a good standard for journalists to follow, and they need to keep explaining it on all platforms, to reach beyond current readers to potential ones.