Truth is a tricky beast.
It really shouldn’t be.
The Daily Bruin news department has one overlying
responsibility: to report the truth.
But truth is elusive. It runs away, zigs and zags, and often
buries itself deep into bureaucracy and political correctness. The
sound bite ““ which often constitutes the human element of
many news reports ““ is usually a strangled version of the
truth.
People’s view on whether the media actually tells the
truth has taken a beating in the past year. Reporters for the
country’s most reputable newspapers were exposed as having
fabricated stories, and photographers were caught manipulating
images.
The public has a right to be angry about these incidents. It has
a right to argue that some media overly sensationalize stories to
sell more papers or achieve higher ratings. But far and wide, these
missteps are the exception rather than the rule.
The public also has another important right: the right to know.
At UCLA, livelihoods of the many are largely entrusted in the hands
of the few, and they must be held accountable. The public trusts
that The Bruin, along with all journalists, will actively seek the
truth and stop at nothing short of it.
In many cases, locating the truth requires excavation.
There’s a lot of digging involved, and we’ll discover
bits and fragments we try to piece together so we can extract the
truth.
But exposing truth isn’t just an abstract ideal, nor does
it have to be as grand as prompting the president of the United
States to resign from office. Oftentimes, the most influential
stories lie in the smaller truths, like a Kazaa user clearing a
hard drive to avoid federal incarceration, or how Westwood waffles
between being a true college town and being a strip mall.
Sometimes the truth will be partisan, or praise one thing over
another, but that doesn’t mean we conspire to make it so. We
strive for consistent and fair coverage so that when an issue is
honestly lopsided, people won’t think we skewed it that
way.
We’ll make mistakes, and once in a while, we’ll make
a big mistake. But we’re not going to cover it up or hide
from it; we want to learn from it. Thus, we fully expect readers to
call us out when they believe we’ve messed up.
But we are also students learning the craft of journalism in
between classes, working to pay rent, and any other activity
imaginable that could be associated with the typical college
student. So, we’ll need your patience sometimes, but
we’re always working to make sure that isn’t a common
request.
Finding truth can be a struggle. In a community containing
thousands of students, faculty, administrators and workers, there
are a lot of truths out there for us to find.
Though we have our work cut out for us, I assure you that we
over here at the Daily Bruin News section are up to the challenge.
We’ll do everything we can to ensure that you know the full
truth behind what goes on at UCLA. But we can’t do it
alone.
Sometimes we need readers to tell us if there’s some truth
out there that needs to be known, because we can’t be
everywhere at once.
If this is the case, drop by and let us know. Even better, apply
to report for The Bruin. We’re pretty easy to find;
there’s only one castle-shaped building on campus, and
I’m pretty sure that’s the truth.
Salonga is truthfully the 2003-2004 news editor, and can be
reached at rsalonga@media.ucla.edu.