Serving Barnwell County and it's neighbors since 1852
Remember The Waltons on TV? It was a long-running yarn following the lives of a struggling, Depression-era, God-loving family in the mountains of Virginia. It might have been a bit too syrupy for some, but we thought it was a nice break from some of the crime shows of the 1970s.
Surfing the channels recently, I came across an episode that centered on John-Boy, the oldest of seven children of John and Olivia Walton. John-Boy had started a little newspaper to report the happenings, good and bad, of his community, and he vowed to be fair but truthful.
Well, wouldn’t you know it, his brother Ben was arrested, along with other teenage boys, for breaking into a house to play cards. No one was home, and the home was not damaged. They just wanted a place to play cards out of sight of their parents.
Still, breaking and entering was against the law, punishable sometimes by a little time in the pokey.
True to his word, John-Boy wrote a story about the arrests of Ben and his friends and planned it for the front page. But his mother, a strait-laced, no-nonsense woman, berated him, appalled that he would disgrace the family by exposing his own brother as a minor criminal.
Olivia would not let up, preaching on and on about John-Boy’s going against his family. Over a barrel, John-Boy agreed to meet his mother halfway: He would run the story but place it on the back page.
His mother, however, was not satisfied; the family would still be disgraced. And then John Walton, the daddy, spoke up. We always taught our children to tell the truth, didn’t we? he said to his wife. Well, John-Boy needs to tell the truth about Ben’s breaking the law.
John-Boy planned to stick to his compromise and position the story on the back page, but then Ben stepped in. While helping John-Boy with the printing, he insisted that the story was front-page news, just as his brother said. So the story went front page.
Now, dear readers, other than the part about Ben’s insisting the story was front-page news—that would never happen—I can pretty well assure you that a similar situation has raised its ugly head at practically every newspaper that publishes this column.
Someone, perhaps someone prominent, has approached these editors about killing a story about an arrest or a public fight or the whatever-was-bad-news incident involving the complainant or a family member or friend. And if the editors are ethical, they said something like this: “I’m sorry, but if we don’t report this story, others rightfully could expect the same treatment.”
That might sound a bit too virtuous for you to believe, but that’s the ethical thing to do. I’m not saying it has never happened, that an editor has never granted a favor and killed a story that should have been reported. But it shouldn’t happen. John-Boy was right. The story should be published.
Even if it involves the editor’s brother.
