COMM 337: More viewpoints on truth (and a final exam hint)

If you start looking for the truth, I'm discovering, it turns out everybody's got an opinion on it. And their brother, their sister, their second cousin once removed and their cocker spaniel puppy, too. (Well, maybe that's not 100 percent true about the cocker spaniel puppy.) But I think it is important. And I think this issue of telling the truth can tie together several things we've touched on in COMM 337:

• How do Don Murray's recommended reporting techniques -- e.g. looking for surprise, his interview tips, etc. -- help us learn the truth as reporters?
  
• How do his techniques for telling a story -- finding the "line," explaining context, etc. -- help us communicate the truth to our readers?
  
• What do other working journalists, or former journalists like those on the HBO show “The Wire” profiled in The New Yorker, have to say about finding and telling the truth?
  
• How important is telling the truth to journalistic ethics? Where do you draw the line in an age of shrinking newspaper readership and declining audiences for "mainstream" (i.e. network style) TV news?

Here are some resources I found on the internet:

The current issue (Fall '07) of San José State University's alumni magazine, Washington Square Magazine, asked students and faculty there "What is truth?" Three definitions stood out:

Thomas Leddy, a professor in the Department of Philosophy, said the kind of thing you'd expect a philosopher to say. Abstract, hard to follow, but kinda well reasoned once you think about it a while:

Truth is a triune concept, all sides in constant, necessary, often fruitful, and often harmful conflict. One side expresses the one-to-one fit of elements between the candidate for truth (proposition, picture, etc.) and that to which it is said to be true. The second is best expressed by William James’ idea that truth is that which is good in the way of believing. The third is the quality of heightened reality we experience when we believe we have captured the essence of something (e.g., conceptually or through art). None of these is reducible to any of the others.

Much more practical were the defintions from business and journalism profs. Michael Solt, an associate dean in the Lucas Graduate School of Business, said:

A dictionary definition of truth includes concepts like honesty, integrity, accuracy and conformity with fact. Students, and especially business professionals, understand that long-term success is dependent on such truth. Recent accounting scandals show how short-term deviations from truthfulness do come to light with severe consequences. I am very impressed with how Silicon Valley professionals, including CEOs, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists, embody these concepts in their daily behavior. While reputation and credibility play a role, I get the sense they believe that “doing the right thing” is actually the best thing for their organizations.

There's plenty there for journalists as well as business people to wrestle with. Best of all (of course), I liked what Richard Craig, an associate professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications, defined truth and operationalized it:

Truth is the facts about a situation. Unfortunately, life can take something as seemingly simple as that and complicate it enormously. Do the details of an incident obscure its root causes? Do certain actions contradict previous behaviors or disguise possible consequences? For a journalist, truth is often something that must be unearthed. It’s frequently elusive and sometimes unpleasant, but it’s a reporter’s stock in trade. It emerges when a journalist genuinely works to produce a fair and complete account. It seems somehow appropriate—for journalists, truth is the result of an honest effort.