May each of you, dear readers, be blessed during this holiday season. May your cup runneth over with love for others and for yourselves.

I did not want to weigh you down with heavy reading this Christmas Day. So while I was debating whether to even write a column, my guardian angel whispered, “Why don’t you tell them what an ombudsman would like to find under his tree today.”

Good idea, G.A. So here are gifts I would have like to have for myself and my colleagues. Note these are all non-material gifts, but they are among the ones that help to make us men and women of good will.

Let the gifts for journalists include:

• The ability to listen to understand rather than to respond. Too frequently we fail to hear what the other person is really saying when we immediately start trying to prepare a defense.
• Less delay in getting corrections into the paper. The more we delay in getting a correction into the paper, the more we lose credibility, one of our most precious possessions.
• Less reluctance in returning phone calls and answering letters. We should remember that an angry caller is apt to grow more angry the more we put her or him off.
• Slowing down enough to pay attention to the red flags that go up when we are handling a difficult assignment. Most of the major errors I have made in the business were made after I ignored warning flags run up by my guardian angel.
• A hesitancy to label subjects of our stories, and if we label one, whether it be as liberal or conservative, we should, in fairness, label all. Labels can be imprecise. I once asked some of my colleagues to define “the radical religious right.” There was no consensus. One colleague’s definition would have fit me to a T.
• The ability to recognize that all of us have biases and that it is especially important that we in this business must confront our own when we are attempting to be fair.
• The ability to recognize that there is a difference between skepticism (frequently a virtue in journalism) and cynicism (often a vice for journalists).
• A willingness to delay publication of an article if we have any doubts as to its accuracy and fairness. Being first is not always best, even in this business.
• An awareness that exercising a free-press right is not always the right thing to do. There is no law saying we cannot publish the names of rape victims. But I doubt if there are many who would say it would be right for us to do so.
• A duty to be close enough to the communities we cover that we can know of their hopes, their dreams, their goals. Aloofness can be a dangerous thing.
• A recognition that religion plays a vital role in the lives of many — I would hope most — of our readers, and that major religious events should not be cast aside as unimportant.
• A recognition that our readers have a right to expect us to be compassionate, fair, understanding, respectful, tolerant, accurate.
• A recognition that it is our job to scrutinize, not “to hang” someone; that we should be sincere, not mean-spirited; that we examine honestly, not be “peeping toms”; that we remember that we are invited guests in the homes of our readers and that we should not needlessly offend them, because there are many times we cannot avoid doing so.
• That we be ever mindful of three great ethical principles of this profession: 1. To seek the truth and to report it as fully as possible; 2. to act independently; 3. to minimize harm.
• That we accept the fact that when we signed on the ship of journalism we were consenting to be servants of the truth and of the public and that we must act like servants.

And there are a few gifts I would wish for some who read the pages of The Star-Telegram. But I fear that those who need them most do not read this column. These gifts would include:

• A big dose of tolerance for those who differ from them or who think differently from them. The most discouraging part of this job is listening to the hatred, the irrational anger and fear, the intolerance of a few.
• A recognition that you, like us, have biases, and that such biases can distort reality. You would be surprised how many callers who complain to me about the “liberal media” are not aware that we publish columns by such conservative columnists as George Will, William Buckley and Cal Thomas.
• Acceptance of the fact that if we published a paper that met with your complete agreement that it would be so bland that it would fail quickly.
• Acceptance of the fact that there is a difference in reporting on something and endorsing or promoting it.
• Acceptance that it is part of the tradition of American journalism for journalists to take up the case of the underdog, to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable (Jesus certainly did this), to see to it that the rights of the minority are not trampled by the tyranny of the majority (that is why we have The Bill of Rights).
• A hesitancy to label journalists as being non-relilgious. A 1992 survey of American journalists by Indiana University professors David Weaver and G. Cleveland Wilhoit found that the religious backgrounds of the journalists “reflect the overall population fairly closely.”
• To remember that our Founding Fathers expected the press to present unpopular opinions, to present differing viewpoints, to stir up public debate. “That’s what the First Amendment is all about: to bother people,” Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy said in March 1992.
• Patience for us imperfect creatures who strive without success each day to put out a perfect newspaper.
• Recognition that we would be failing you if we did nothing to challenge your perceptions, to provide you the opportunity to examine differing viewpoints, to stimulate your thinking.

We all need to be mindful that it is the duty of the press to inform, to challenge, to investigate, to entertain. In doing so, we will anger some. We will be the targets of hatred.

As the noted spiritual author Thomas Merton once wrote: “If you want to help others, you’ve got to make up your mind to write things that some men will condemn.”

Peace to all of you of good will.

See the Columns Archive.

• previous article » Washington Post’s Joann Byrd challenges “good practice”
• The Chimera… « next article