"Do you promise to find the truth, the whole truth, as well as everything that isn't the truth?" the editor asked his just-being-sworn-in reporter, whose one hand rested on the Bible, with the other raised to the square.
"So help me God," the reporter replied, solemnly.
The Dackerville Press had been around for 103 years, having celebrated its 100th anniversary the year President Trump came to office. Now, it was being reorganized. Now it was being rededicated.
To truth. This was a day when the nation's president told people the press could not be trusted. And so, some readers of the Press had chided it for being too liberal, for not being fair towards Trump.
Max Stevens, the editor, hadn't liked those accusations. They set a burr underneath him. To him, the press was to be as impartial as a judge and jury. That people didn't see his paper as being that way rubbed him wrong. Not that he felt his paper impartial, but he seethed and determined to take steps so no one should question the impartiality.
Nor, its tenacity for going after the truth, begone that this might only give them yet more inclination to assail the paper for being partial.
The next reporter came up. "Do you promise to find the truth, the whole truth, as well as everything that isn't the truth. And, to report the full of what you find, and to expose all falsehoods?" he asked the reporter. Candace Jones, the reporter, promised to do so, and the next reporter stepped up.
"Do you swear to be honest, do you swear to be fair, do you swear be unbiased, do you swear not to yield to those who accuse you of being biased, as they try to intimidate you and shame you into favoring them?"
"Max, you know I am going to do everything I can. Yes, I so swear."
Stevens was entertaining a dangerous future for the paper. In a day when newspapers were folding, he was doubling the number of reporters. They would work in teams of two, each being charged with questioning what the other might find, double-checking it. Though both were charged with looking at both sides of the issue, one was to be particularly charged with finding and not missing things on one side of the issue, and the other with especially looking out for the other side of the matter. Co-bylines. When it came time to write, they were to be unified.
With all the charges that the president was not being treated fairly, the Dackerville Press was not going to leave those stories to the national press. If the national press was seen as biased, Stevens wanted his reporters to take the wire reports and combine them, double-checking their facts, and going beyond what the national media were saying. "Fox News is reporting this. CNN is reporting this. We ventured a call to the White House and finally got through to a spokesperson, and this is what they said. We then got through to Nancy Pelosi's office and this is what she said."
The Dackerville Press -- one hundred and three years it had been around. Today, though, it was taking on a new name. Max hadn't told his reporters yet. He let them start to walk away, they thinking the meeting was over, before he stopped them in their tracks. "Hey, hey, wait. Come back. I did fail to tell you one thing. We're going to rename the paper. It just seems we should mark our changes with a new name. When tomorrow's paper rolls off the press, it will be the Dackersville Media. That's a reflection of our times. People refer to us as the media as the media these days, so that's what we'll call it. Back in the day, they called everything "the press." But these days, "media" is more common.
And, so was reborn the Dackerville Press, and so was born the Dackerville Media.
(Index -- Stories, My stories)
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