AFTER you strip away the chest-thumping about democracy, communications and bridge-building, what we in the news media do for a living is simply tell folks what happened while they were working, sleeping or out at the movies. News media tell folks
what happenedNow all of us in the business must think seriously about the death of Princess Diana.
Her brother, Charles Spencer, speaking on CNN from South Africa, said, "I always knew the press would kill her, but I never realized they would have such a direct hand in her death."
I've never covered a princess, but I've written about how many people have died. Let me tell you two stories.
Years ago, a big truck hauling dirt down Likelike Highway lost its brakes. The driver knew he was in trouble, so he took the Kamehameha IV Road cut-off to avoid a blocked intersection. But at the intersection of Kam IV and School Street, the run-away truck hurled itself into a station wagon filled with moms and kids.
The truck continued through the intersection, knocking down part of a dry cleaner's shop and hitting two people waiting for a bus.
In all five died, including infants, mothers, bystanders and the truck driver.
At the scene I talked to eyewitnesses, heard people tell of the driver's screams. Blood from one of the victims covered a building's wall.
An editor that night told me to get pictures of the dead. Somehow I couldn't bring myself to intrude on a family that had lost its mother and baby daughter.
I never regretted missing that part of the story, but later that week I seriously questioned whether that sort of journalism would be my life's work.
Here's another story.
Writing obituaries is one of the jobs of begining reporters. And one of the most difficult assignments was taking the death notices from the military.
The Vietnam War was killing Hawaii servicemen at a sickening rate. The military notified the parents or survivors of the loss of a son.
Then they sent a press release about the same time to the papers. We would call the surviving father or mother to find out more about the dead soldier.
Painful as it must have been, no one ever refused to talk. Some interviews would last for more than a hour as a son's or husband's life was recalled and summed up.
I don't recall an interview that ended without tears and thank you's from both subject and interviewer.
Asking for a picture, if we hadn't gotten one from the military, wasn't a problem. Thinking about the story didn't make me want to quit the business.
I knew my newspaper was doing the right thing, helping explain the Vietnam War, helping the living and taking due note of the dead.
The desire for privacy, the abuses of celebrity journalism, the outrages by the news media that exist to profit from the paparazzi stalkers all make it easy to restrict the press.
At the same time, it is important to bear witness to the day. When we get up or go home or come from the movies, we must be able to know what happened.
Along with the facts, we also must also have a true record. We must have the history.
Along the way there will also be the gossip, the smears and the salacious.
Without the true record, the rumors will win.