About three weeks ago I was writing an article for a local, school magazine. Wanting advice, I decided to ask someone I greatly admire to read it, who also happens to have an extraordinary understanding of words. By this I mean their meanings, their connotations, and so on.

What this one person showed me was that there was a difference between telling the truth and directly affecting someone’s life.

That was just how I realized how complex journalism really is. What is the balance between being honest and divulging perhaps too much about someone’s privacy? “They said that in an interview!” someone said to me, “If they said it in the interview, that means it’s ok to publish it, right? They were conscious it was being taped.” But were they? When you’re being asked question after question, are you focusing on actually answering them, or on measuring every word?

Personally, I believe it’s the first reason. The temptation for the jouranlist, of course, is great, particularly with the juiciest material. But every other quote could be seriously compromising the public’s perception of a certain person. Journalism is walking down a tight rope, and sometimes we just have to make a choice between what’s best for the readers or what’s best for the main characters in the piece.

[LATER] The choice is hard, and now I feel I have left my thoughts without a conclusion. The reality is that if we missed out all of the crude bits in testimonies, stories would be disfigured and tergiversated. Censorship would result. Life isn’t butterflies and rainbows; even butterflies have a brown side to contrast the shiny turquoise one, and the rainbow has darker colours as well.

Much does depend, though, on the actual topic and the content of the interview. And thus the choice remains; and thus we cannot be liberated from the tight rope we walk, in which we must carefully calculate and choose where the next foot will step.