The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
A few years back, I received a phone call about a piece I had written on a controversy brewing in Denare Beach. At the time, folks were fighting a village council plan to rezone a parcel of land, including a children's park, to permit housing construction. From the second I picked up the phone, I could sense the caller was upset. The woman on the other end immediately told me I needed to run a correction. Here's a paraphrased version of the rest of our conversation: 'What's wrong with the article?' I asked. 'You quoted this guy who said hardly anybody uses the park,' she replied. 'That is what he said.' 'But that's not true. I see kids playing there all the time. Lots of them!' 'Yes, and there were other people quoted in the article who agree that the park is busy.' 'How can both sides be right?' 'They can't.' 'Aren't you only supposed to print the facts?' 'Of course. And the fact here is that some people think the park gets lots of use and some people think it gets very little use.' See, short of setting up 24-hour video surveillance, there is no way to definitively know whether the park is busy. In fact, even if you took that extraordinary step, not everyone is going to agree on what constitutes 'busy' and what constitutes 'not busy.' So what we're left with in this world of subjective reality are the observations of people who live near the park _ some of whom say it's busy and some of whom say it's not. Despite its reputation for being built around indisputable fact and nothing but, journalism unavoidably carries a 'he said, she said' component. The Denare Beach park (which incidentally was saved) is but one example of many. Of course in a lot of cases, the allegations people make can be readily authenticated or debunked. If Jack angrily calls me to say that the City of Flin Flon has hiked his taxes by $1 million, it's pretty easy to track down the appropriate records to see whether he's telling the truth. There, in black and white, will be documentation that Jack, simmering in indignation, exaggerated his tax bill just a teensy, weensy bit. But if Jack calls to tell me that three months ago the bank gave him a $10 bill instead of a $20 bill, all I can do is phone the bank, which will either confirm or deny his claim. If the bank says no, Jack received the $20 bill he was supposed to get, then I will never know who was telling the truth. All I will know is 'he said, she said.' When you deal with 'he said, she said' so often in your professional life, you really start to fathom how little we humans know for certain. It also makes you appreciate how we all live in our own little worlds, interpreting the same events in drastically different ways. I really noticed this phenomenon as the now-defunct copper smelter entered its final years. Older residents tended to look up at all that smoke and see economic prosperity. Younger residents looked up and saw a whole bunch of bad stuff destined for their lungs and environment. From a journalist perspective, both sides made valid points, but neither is factually right or factually wrong. The only fact is that they view the same reality with differing perceptions. Local Angle runs Fridays.
