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Too Much Truth? Keep your nose clean so you can torture politicians. By Susan Zakin "Yesterday's news tomorrow" was the motto on a T-shirt we wore in journalism school. I've stayed true to this principle, and last week was no exception. While the rest of the world watched George W. Bush place his hand on a Bible in a miasma of fog and drizzle that could easily be mistaken for the revved up fumes of the nation's oil refineries, I was trapped in an economy-class seat winging my way to Baltimore. I arrived in Washington a day or so later, in time to soak up the atmosphere of the inauguration, described in The Washington Post by one observer as Big Hair and Bigger Diamonds. I was in the nation's capital not to party-hearty with Ricky Martin and his bon-bon (I'm not the right gender, anyway) but to attend a week's worth of interminable things called "workshops." Having kept the world of corporate journalism--or corporate anything--at arm's length for most of my adult life (while frantically attempting to live off its backwash) I had never attended anything remotely like a workshop. The best description I can think of is a solid block of blandness, like one of those new margarines that don't melt. We did all sorts of activites, like "Show and Tell" in kindergarten. We role-played. (Aargh!!!!) We elicited. We huddled. We learned the definition of a "case study." (A story with all the good stuff taken out.) I was making a fool of myself so I could travel to an exotic place where journalists don't have a tradition of press freedom. My job is to teach them to uncover the truth, try to be fair, and talk to people of all social classes, not just government officials. In other words, to get all sides of a story. On the way home, I had an attack of journalistic ethics, culminating in an undeniable urge to confess. Don't get me wrong. There is such a thing as too much truth. For instance, in the 1970s, men used to think that it was OK to sleep with your best friend as long as they told you. By now, most men have gotten wise. Either don't sleep with your wife or girlfriend's best friend, or keep your mouth shut. Forever. But journalists are supposed to keep their noses clean, or at least tell us when they don't. I've had a few glitches in this column, but one stands out. In a story on Canoa Ranch, I wrote that County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry had backed off from a position that the entire ranch should be preserved. In fact, he had never proposed such a thing. I couldn't reach Huckelberry to check this before we went to press. By the time I talked to him, it was too late to correct the error. I'm doing it now, even though Huckelberry graciously hasn't called me to complain. It seems germane, although not particularly gracious, to ask why Huckelberry didn't try to preserve the entire ranch. Yet another reason for accuracy: It leads to more questions. In another column, I disclosed the fact that I had been active, through a neighborhood group, in the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan. Unfortunately, that sentence ended up on the cutting room floor. Just to clarify, I've withdrawn, with vast relief, from any neighborhood do-gooderism since starting this gig with the Weekly. With media turning into little more than a gaggle of special effects, journalistic ethics may seem a bit quaint. But it's worth keeping up with them so we can criticize politicians with a more-or-less clean conscience. If what happened during my Washington, D.C. sojourn is any guide, the Bush administration will give us plenty of opportunity. One of Shrub's first acts was dissing Arizona's John McCain. McCain had been invited to a meeting about campaign finance reform in what Washingtonians call "the residence"--the upstairs part of the White House where the president actually lives. At the last minute, McCain was relegated to the Oval Office. His meeting with Shrub was "chaperoned" by Dick Cheney, a staunch opponent of campaign finance reform, wrote veteran Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory. Even McGrory failed to point out the obvious lie told by Texas Senator Phil Gramm. Gramm claimed that he had introduced a bill to enact a whopping tax cut - the one Bush promoted in his campaign--without the knowledge of our brand-new president. Yeah, right. While Gramm walked point on the controversial tax cut, Bush got boatloads of namby-pamby press coverage for his feel-good education initiative. The Republicans may not have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate but they had full control of the media. After a few days of this masterly press manipulation, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan (aka God) endorsed the tax cut. The Bush tax cut favors the rich. If it passes, it will exacerbate the already large gap between rich and poor, which has increased dramatically in the past two decades. This is the dirty laundry hidden under the country's high-tech, cell phone-ridden stock market boom. I know, I know. I can't solve this by confessing that I didn't call Chuck Huckelberry in time to make a correction. But at least I can write about it.
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