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Show Trite but true; it seems we're slow catching on insight either. I do know this. I want to find out. There's way too much of the smelly stuff being spread around by professional .. and layman alike. Accuracy Ac-curacy is a must. It's the foundation of interaction between all factions of any successful society. Being sucked into becoming a sucker for all types and sources of information is something repulsive, there's sure a lot of it locally and nationally, on a personal and professional basis. What's the bottom line? My mom lives here in town and she's promised me that she'll read what I write. She used to spank me awfully hard for not telling the truth; she still might. If you hear any loud screams from the Record office, you'll know what happened. One point should be made, occasionally oc-casionally the truth hurts, but only for a moment. If it is indeed the truth, it helps in the long-run. Oh, by the way, welcome back Jim Brady! By Mike Cannon Record Reporter I might as well introduce my first column by kicking around the oldest and most-overused word in journalism, truth. While it may seem trite, it certainly cer-tainly is true that when it comes to accuracy, supposedly rational people often miss-the-boat. Why is it that people often grasp at the first wisp of information floating by and cling to it like a baby to it's bottle? Indeed we are also suckers in a different dif-ferent sense. The frightening aspect of grabbing hold of every tidbit of information available lies not so much in what the information does to us, but in what fluttering-tongued humans delight in doing with the information, and in how it affects others. If Massey-Ferguson could invent a manure . spreader that was half as effective at distributing fertilizer as people are at spreading verbal fodder fod-der (often referred to as bologna and other smeiiy stuff), they could corner the market. The media is often as guilty as anyone of perpetrating and passing along this stuff, though we should be some of the first to see through it. Conversely, a true professional in the field provides a great service to the public by reporting accurate and substantiated information, with the intent of serving someone or something outside of his or her own ego. Recent television news specials provide some of the most graphic examples of what I'm talking about. Coverage of the presidential assassination attempt was plagued with inaccuracies and redundancy. From first reports that the president had not been hit, to a moment of silence for a dead Jim Brady, the immediacy of electronic media had reporters guessing and second guessing all day. Why the confusion? Heck if I know. I've only worked at a newspaper for two weeks. My two college journalism classes in college didn't provide much |