Professors do it. Scientists do it. Theologians do it. And, yes, even journalists do it. Politicians and their speech writers are supposed to try to do it. "It" is to search for, express in words and communicate to others "truth."

Truth takes many forms. Through many media, human minds approach or reach reality. We describe objects. We stand back and look at our mental or artistic or pragmatic constructs and say: "Aha! Eureka! Yes! By Jove, I've got it." And to the extent that we judge rightly, we have touched, expressed and communicated truth.

Telling the truth is also good for the soul of the truth teller. Obversely, to mislead, to distort is not good for the soul. But liars can be redeemed if they face up to their lying, admit it, repent of it and make amendment. 

Remember Ed Rollins in 1993 after he had masterminded Christine Todd Whitman's winning campaign to be Governor of New Jersey? To trump rival spinmeister James Carville,  Rollins publicly lied and boasted that Whitman's campaign had given money to black ministers to suppress the black vote. Even Rollins says that he does not understand  why he told this lie. 

In her powerful 1994 memoir, LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS, Peggy Noonan, former speech writer for Presidents Reagan and Bush, said that Rollins told her that he had planned to retire from politics but the Whitman win had suddenly made him king once again and he lied as he did just to assure that he self-destruct his way out of politics forever. That part obviously has not worked, in retrospect, with Rollins hard at campaigning once again.

Ed Rollins also told Peggy that his lie, the resulting public fire storm and his taking a hard, unhappy look at his boasting self in the moral mirror had sent him back to the Catholic Church.

Some time after her White House years Peggy Noonan, now a mother,  journalist and author, also returned to active practice of her inherited Catholic faith, in large measure because only faith could fill an inner emptiness which no amount of rubbing shoulders with the rich and powerful satisfied.  She discovered that opposition of American elites, particularly media elites, is not all that bad for Christianity. 

"Christianity, after all, is at its purest, its most vital, when it knows it is what it has always been: counter cultural" (251).  Something is wrong, she argues, when Christians allow themselves to become what the media sometimes portray them to be: "bland guys in gray suits with gray buzzcutts" (252).

The book, LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS is about Peggy Noonan's personal search for truth. This, her second memoir, also asks if politicians and political parties are not obliged to seek for truth and goodness more than they in fact do.

At a dinner for Jack Kemp, Peggy Noonan was seated beside a young, wry journalist who contributed news pages to the Wall Street JOURNAL. They discussed why America now seems so lost. The young man thinks that what is missing is God, that "he is not what he was to us. We don't give him the same place we did, as a society."  It is hard, he thought, for journalists to write about Americans' growing inattentiveness to God, because God is a journalist's rival. A journalist can write about non-divine power and be seen as a secular high priest. But he can't write about God and remain a priest (173f).

Is that so? Let's think about that.

This conversation made Ms. Noonan recall the Pope's speech to broadcasters as he concluded his first visit to New York. He told them that journalists have a mission: to make man's life on earth better, to promote unity among nations through the truth. His Holiness said:
 

--"Be faithful to the truth and to its transmission, for truth endures; truth will not go away; truth will not pass or change...The service of truth, the service of humanity through the medium of the truth, is something worthy of your best years, your finest talents, your most dedicated efforts" (175).

The cultivation of truth by good journalists has a uniquely journalistic dimension while also partaking of the general canons of truth. Journalists tell the truth after first having searched for it. Journalists develop personal and institutional sources of the truth. Newspapermen travel far and wide for stories. They punish themselves to file before deadlines.

One of the classical Chinese constitutional structures of government was "the Inspectorate." The Inspectorate was independent of the other branches, meant to be fearless in seeking out corruption. The USA is now experimenting with a statute law equivalent: the Special Counsel. That is a new institution and may not last long. But before there were special counsels and special prosecutors in America there was the Fourth Estate, the free press.

It is worth being reminded that being a good journalist is also a way to become a good person.  Pope John Paul II told the world this when the Catholic Church celebrated  World Communications Day 1998. His message was released January 24, 1998, the feast of St Frances de Sales, bishop of post-Calvin Geneva and the  patron saint of journalists. John Paul said:
 

--"It is the task of communication to bring people together and to enrich their lives, not to isolate and exploit them....Christian communicators will communicate hope credibly if they first experience hope in their own lives, and this will happen only if they are men and women of prayer."

Journalists like Peggy Noonan and political strategists like Ed Rollins, in their stronger, clearer moments, grasp that journalists and all communicators  find personal fulfilment in the painstaking, humbling pursuit of truth.

-000-

for Asheville TRIBUNE

[revisited 04/17/2005]