Yesterday was very inspiring in the blog-about-truth-in-journalism department. It began with some unusually unpleasant letters to the Daily Universe http://universe.byu.edu/opinion.
The opinion page for 2/17/11 caused me to ponder, with some concern, the tendency of some BYU students to (and I quote my American Heritage professor, Dr. Kimball) "be so focused on the perfect that they miss the good."
I also attended a lecture by Dr. Shane Reese, who used statistics to "bridge the gaps in knowledge created by science," allowing science to operate amidst "uncertainty." This seemed to link back nicely to the video that we watched in class on Tuesday.
http://www.youtube.com/user/browncoat4077#p/a/f/0/ZH28G0_vTpg
Anyway, all of this reminded me of journalism. A journalist does not know all of the facts because they are constantly developing and changing. However, unlike these unfortunate letter writers, a journalist has to accept that, without knowing everything, she must use the "good" she does have. Like Dr. Reese's statistician example, she must operate amidst "uncertainty," using the scientific process of verification to "bridge the gaps between what we know and what we need to know."
No comments:
Post a Comment