Darkness dies in sunshine, but only if we let it
You can’t have a cause anymore without having a month, week, or day.
This week includes World Salt Awareness Week, World Panic Day, Global Recycling Day, Neurodiversity Celebration Week, National Poultry Day, International Day of Happiness, National Ravioli Day, World Oral Health Day, Comic Relief Red Nose Day, International Day of Forests, National French Bread Day, and World Poetry Day to name a few.
It also is Sunshine Week — not just because it includes the first day of spring, when sunlight starts exceeding 12 hours a day, but also to shine a light on openness.
What sets democracy apart is our belief in pluralism — the idea that society contains multiple groups, beliefs, and perspectives and that different voices are heard and respected.
The concept can be carried to an extreme when efforts to encourage diversity, equity, and inclusion become overzealous.
It also can be problematic if there’s insistence on only one view, like President Trump’s refusal to allow reporters access unless they call the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”
Democracy is about making sure citizens have enough information to make reasoned choices, which often are compromises. There still are some who are 100% for or 100% against wind farms, but for most, the answer lies in between.
Wind farms reduce reliance on diminishing supplies of fossil fuel. They provide welcome income to farmers who have turbines on their land. They contribute large payments in lieu of taxes to local governments.
They also impact natural beauty of rural areas, benefit some more than others, aren’t viable without subsidies, and seem to have emerged only after questionable legal finagling.
The biggest issue may be what’s going to happen to turbines when they’ve reached the end of their productive life.
Without full and complete information, society often acts without considering long-term implications. Many oil and gas wells, for example, no longer produce but continue to pose perils as abandoned holes.
Covering every side — not just one or two — is what newspapers try to do. Yet complaints we receive tend to come from people who want only one side discussed.
This past week, we were criticized for covering a new business because we included that the business it replaced had grown weary of something we also have grown weary of — continuing animosity involving food trucks.
We also were criticized for a story about how the once intense rivalry between Marion and Hillsboro teams has lessened, primarily because of league realignment.
What angered a school official was the 40th paragraph of a 47-paragraph story. A Hillsboro student was quoted as saying the rivalry wasn’t that important anymore because Marion, which lost 61-27 in the teams’ most recent meeting, no longer was that challenging of an opponent.
Ignoring 46 other paragraphs, which recounted opinions of half a dozen others who fondly recalled the rivalry, the official condemned us for including what amounted to the sole dissenting voice in the story.
“It is upsetting that this paper does not highlight the great and positive things our school and community does,” the school official wrote, ignoring two weeks of effusive coverage given at the same time to a play the school was putting on. “It is sad to see how the Record is only concerned about making Marion look bad and forgets all the good taking place as well!”
The note goes on to include a veiled threat that coaches might no longer provide information to “a paper who could care less about the good our students do.”
A similar refrain popped up in criticism we received about a side reference in the 27th paragraph of a 32-paragraph editorial about a trend here and elsewhere of cities using legal loopholes and social media to try to replace, undermine, or intimidate independent journalism.
The most telling comment in a length rebuttal of 26 words in the 1,357-words editorial was that people running a new video blog about the city wanted to allow stories to be presented without anyone having an opportunity to include anything other than exactly what those telling the story wanted.
Democracy doesn’t function if the only facts disseminated are what some people consider positive. It isn’t even clear what constitutes positive or negative.
Is it negative to report that someone’s car hit a deer or positive to let the community know that we might want to offer a bit of sympathy for the bad luck that befell a driver?
Should we condemn a person being sued for unpaid medical bills or consider giving that person emotional support because a medical tragedy struck?
Should we close our eyes to the horrors of an accident or open them to the lessons it might offer about keeping ourselves and loved ones safe?
Facts are neutral. It’s what those learning them do with them that makes them positive or negative. Often, they can be both — but only if all aspects are told.
Some argue this doesn’t apply in small towns, where nearly everyone knows nearly everyone else. But small towns are notorious for rumors. Is it better to arrive at conclusions based on rumors or facts?
Sunshine Week celebrates openness that allows all facts to be presented, not just the pronouncements of some or the drumbeats of social media echo chambers.
It opposes such things as encrypting police transmissions so no one can easily verify whether the only crimes the sheriff’s department has investigated in the past month are two reports of minor vandalism that the department has released during that time. We still haven’t seen an official offense report about what happened two weeks ago when nine starving dogs, mainly pit-bull mixes, and a baby were removed from a Florence home.
Attempts to control the flow of information and make it more “positive” reveal lack of faith in democracy and create situations in which sinister motives often are inferred after hidden facts are discovered.
Allowing all facts to be exposed to sunshine shouldn’t be feared if people have nothing to hide. Democracy may be an untidy form of government, but sunshine is what makes it work.
— ERIC MEYER