It was early in the morning on Aug. 20, 1982. I had been sleeping in a chair in the intensive care unit of the local hospital at the bedside of our daughter, Becky. The afternoon before, she and her sister, Amy, had been riding horse and had gotten separated. When Amy came upon Becky, she found her lying on the ground unconscious. Amy said it appeared Becky’s horse had slipped on muddy ground and gone down.
I looked at my watch and saw it was 5 a.m. It occurred to me if I had been at work in the newsroom, instead of at the bedside of our daughter, I would have made my morning calls, including one to that hospital. It was our news policy if someone had been in an accident and admitted to the hospital, that was justification for writing a story about it, especially if the person was in intensive care. And we would have used names. This was before privacy laws.
But that morning, I was glad my replacement hadn’t made the call. It seemed to me the public didn’t have a need to know about an accident that had occurred privately, on private land. Anyone who needed to know had already been told. I thought of all the times I had written stories about people who had been admitted to the hospital after falling out of a tree or something similar. I never asked permission to make their private misfortune public. I felt bad about writing those stories. Countless times since then, as I have read, listened to or watched the news, I have asked myself, “Does the public have a need to know that?”
There are things we need to know – a convicted murderer is on the loose, a pedophile is teaching in our school, government malfeasance, scammers taking people’s money. Not always, but often, what we need to know is bad news. There’s too much bad news, people say. They want more good news. Increasingly, news outlets have been shifting emphasis to finding and presenting more good news.
One might argue while people want good news, they often need the bad news. Perhaps they need a balance of both. Our good news is although it took a long time – months of brain fog – Becky fully recovered and resumed riding.
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Al Gustin is a retired farm broadcaster, active rancher and a member of Mor-Gran-Sou Electric Cooperative.
