What are you looking for?

By Benjamin Chase
From the Mound

“But I don’t want some pretty face
To tell me pretty lies
All I want is someone to believe”
“Honesty” – Billy Joel

A song that’s older than I am (just barely), “Honesty” was released in April 1979 as the third single from Joel’s “52nd Street” album. The song has always been a critical favorite of Joel’s due to the songwriting that bleeds the end of each verse into the chorus in a seemingly multi-measure vocal hold.

Lyrically, the song continues to resonate, and it’s been sampled and even fully covered by everyone from Elton John to Beyoncé.

If you’re looking for a great late-70s/early-80s “white guy ‘fro” look, find the song’s official video on YouTube. You’ll enjoy a good chuckle.

The song laments the lack of honesty, even in the closest of relationships, and in interviews over the years, Joel has expressed that “Honesty” was a quick write for him because it focused on the fact that we all seem to expect dishonesty in our romantic relationships, and the words seemed to flow when he attempted to write a counter-ballad to those assumptions.

This week was a tough one to be a Huron journalist.

Certainly, some will think it’s because the paper got “scooped” on a hit piece that appeared on a popular Facebook gossip page, and then the response to that post led both commercial television stations in the state to run a story that used that poorly-researched Facebook post as a primary source.

To be honest, that whole post wasn’t what made things tough. It certainly did lead to some strong questions on humanity’s ability to read through bovine feces, though.

The exact message that was pulled nearly word-for-word for the Facebook post was one that I received, with no name associated, to my email, imploring me to do an investigation into the actions of the school because of their financial difficulties. I sent back a note to the writer that I would be happy to publish their assertions as an opinion letter, but I needed a name to associate with the piece to be published, and to let them know that I would be including some informational references for readers to find previously-reported school board minutes that were strategically altered in the post, just to give context. I never heard back, but apparently, that same message was also sent to the Facebook gossip page, and they happily went with it “as is.”

The interesting part is that so many of the commenters who played off to be incredibly concerned about the future of the school system also regurgitated tremendously inaccurate information. I also noted that not one person could reference a school board meeting that they had attended to inform their opinion.

Now, I get that often those who do want to know information about the city commission, county commission or Huron school board get that information through the Plainsman’s coverage rather than attending in person. I do take pride in ensuring our coverage of those meetings provides information of import to the populace. The full details of those meetings are also published in our legal section of the paper, as well, so the nitty-gritty numbers can be reviewed for anyone who is interested.

However, based on the attendance of each of those three meetings, the point at which a heavy majority take interest in what their own elected officials are doing is when there is something salacious or scandalous to garner plenty of social media interaction by posting on Facebook or Tik Tok or MySpace or wherever it is that the kids gossip nowadays.

To alter a phrase I heard from a college football coach (to make it print-worthy), many in social media comment sections were “showing their backsides” with ill-informed and flat-out incorrect comments on a horrifically researched piece of pseudo-journalism.

No, that’s not what made it tough. You see, there are two of us in the newsroom who put together all of the pages that you read in every edition. That means we do what we can with the materials given for things like weather, press releases, and crosswords.

Unlike the places that were willing to publish the incorrect article on the school district, when we make a mistake, we offer a correction, a redaction, or a way to make things right. Today’s paper has an example of that, as the crossword from Wednesday is being re-run due to a placement error that caused a small portion of the puzzle to not be on the page in Wednesday’s edition.

That was our mistake – more specifically, my mistake – and reprinting was in the plans once it was pointed out. However, over the 24 hours after the paper arrived in mailboxes throughout the Heartland area, staff at the paper were yelled at, demeaned, and cursed at because a complimentary, non-required item was not correctly included in the newsprint.

It certainly points to the dichotomy received over the last six months. One email thanking the staff for keeping the paper going and for making sure information is being published to inform the public. The next email expresses frustration that a favorite comic strip isn’t included any longer or that the crossword or other printed puzzles aren’t hard enough or have a mistake. Take a wild guess which phone call has the most fervor behind it?

It leads to a good question…if the information that newspapers take pride in ensuring is correct and fully vetted before publishing is tossed aside for the more dramatic and clickbait pieces and the non-news items within the paper can upset so strongly, what truly is the purpose of a local newspaper?

Is it to inform and educate on local issues while holding taxpayer-funded entities and publicly-elected officials accountable? Or is it to provide a cheaper alternative to a puzzle or comic book than what Walmart offers?

Perhaps it’s time to reflect and utilize a little bit of Billy Joel’s perspective of being counter-cultural of those who expect falsehoods from “journalism” entities and rather support those who provide researched, sourced news.