True Journalism Not in Athens

Recently I read and op-ed piece in The Athens News. Now I’m not a professor nor a pedigreed journalist but I’ll start with this from www.dictionary.com about an “op-ed 1970, page of a newspaper opposite the editorial page, usually devoted to personal opinion columns. The thing itself pioneered by the Pulitzers in the New York “World.”

So if an op-ed “opinion” is intended to be opposite the editorial reserved for the editor, what might be up with editor Terry Smith of The Athens News? It appears he makes a habit of putting forth his strong personal opinion to his reader and makes some stinging accusations like this found in a piece recently written ”The Liberty Council’s coalition includes the Buckeye Firearms Association (a hard conservative political group that disguises itself as a gun-rights outfit), “9/12 projects” in Central Ohio and Columbus (groups inspired by Fox News flamethrower Glenn Beck), tea parties in Dayton and Cincinnati, and other “liberty” groups.”

So I’d like to take a look at “true Journalism” and I conducted what I feel is more research than Mr. Terry Smith, who attest in a Bio “I have taught courses (usually news-writing) at the Scripps School of Journalism on a contract/adjunct basis.” This would be E.W. Scripps School of  Journalism at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. http://scrippsjschool.org/faculty/faculty_details.php?oak=smitht2

In an article by Yvonne Perry, a professional writer in Nashville, Tennessee, she states “When biases are put away, then true freedom of speech and freedom of press will return and a true democracy will exist.” Read her article here: http://writersinthesky.com/pdf/Article-True-Journalism.pdf

In my research I went to a well known source Wikipedia at http://wiki.answers.com for the answer on what an editor does:

“A newspaper editor goes over the spelling and punctuation of an article, in most cases chooses what articles go in the newspaper, make sure that the articles are all facts and not just a conclusion reached by the writer and to make sure the newspaper doesn’t get sued. Sometimes there can be other smaller jobs included depending on the newspaper.”

In the piece below, it becomes even more apparent that Mr. Smith is more concerned with “influence” than being an objective editor.

The following is an except from a Ohio University blog post by one of their students.

The link is here: http://blogs.thepost.ohiou.edu/?p=375

Terry has attacked the Tea Party movement as well in his editorial found here: http://www.athensnews.com/component/content/article/7-editors-blog/30350-a-tea-party-through-the-looking-glass

In April, 2009 Terry writes concerning guns:

“We ran a story the a few weeks ago about an increase in gun sales in the area. The sources we spoke to attributed the spike in gun sales to consumer worries that “Obama’s going to take our guns” and heightened paranoia about an increase in recession-related crime.

The second reason is valid enough. Has anyone else had nightmares lately about the world, knocked to pieces by the economic crisis, devolving into Mad Max-like chaos?

As for “Obama taking our guns,” however, while there’s no doubt that a lot of people think this is true, we need to look at why. In the weeks leading up to the November election, the NRA spent big wads of cash in an effort to make rural Americans believe that Obama “will take your guns.” The ads were everywhere. And while they didn’t ultimately achieve their primary purpose, defeating Barack Obama at the polls, they evidently did succeed in another way. They scared people into buying more guns and ammo.

Meanwhile, I’m willing to wager that every Athens Countian who owns a gun now will still own that gun after four years, or God willing, eight years of an Obama presidency.”

Here is the link:http://www.athensnews.com/component/content/article/7-editors-blog/24855-editors-notes-do-nothing-approach-crises-go-social