Bearing Witness

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You Are There

“It’s more fashionable to denigrate than praise the media these days. In the 24/7 howl of partisan pontification, and the scarcely less-constant death knell din surrounding the press, a basic truth gets lost: that to be a journalist is to bear witness.

“The rest is no more than ornamentation.

“To bear witness means being there—and that’s not free. No search engine gives you the smell of a crime, the tremor in the air, the eyes that smolder, or the cadence of a scream.

“No news aggregator tells of the ravaged city exhaling in the dusk, nor summons the defiant cries that rise into the night. No miracle of technology renders the lip-drying taste of fear. No algorithm captures the hush of dignity, nor evokes the adrenalin rush of courage coalescing, nor traces the fresh raw line of a welt.”

—Roger Cohen, columnist, The New York Times:
“A Journalist’s Actual Responsibility,” July 5, 2009 URL

(Thanks to alert WORDster Tom Romano)

Editor’s Note: If Haiti happens and no one is there, does it make a sound?

BLOCKED ON FACEBOOK! Hey! Yesterday I tried to post Pete Smithsuth’s good news story from The Utah Statesman about 8: The Mormon Proposition’s premiere @ Sundance, but I was blocked because some FB users apparently have complained that Pete’s story “contains some abusive content.” Whaa?!! The movie, documenting the LDS Church’s bankrolling of the Prop 8 campaign that banned same-sex marriage in California, is moving and powerful. But is a student news story about its premiere “abusive”?!?

The heck with FB's sensibilities. See Pete’s story, “Filmmakers challenge Mormon church at Sundance,” The Utah Statesman, here.