A fine line between fact, opinion

There's a good and obvious reason why articles written by columnists appear on a newspaper's opinion page. If I may be excused for stating the obvious just a bit, that reason is this: Columnists are full of, among other things, opinions.\nGranted, most columnists, depending on the subject about which they are writing, will at least mix in a few facts here and there in order to back up their argument or point of view. \nBut one should not look to the columns of the opinion page to find objective news. Just because someone writes a column in the IDS does not mean he or she is in possession of or in contact with the truth about the topic of said column. Thus, most columnists' views cannot be objectively labeled "right" or "wrong." They are opinions and perspectives: things that, in a society founded upon personal freedom and liberty, we hold up as valid in their own right, regardless of how repugnant, extreme or just plain nonsensical they might seem.\nAs a columnist, I, of course, am no different -- which is why the predominantly negative responses I received regarding my Oct. 17 column came as such a surprise. That particular piece, "Selling out or just the facts?" dealt with IDS reporter and campus editor Michael Eisenstadt's recent trip to the New York headquarters of Goldman Sachs, a prominent Wall Street investment firm. Goldman Sachs, which was at that time promoting its Oct. 10 recruiting day here at IU, paid for the trip.\nSensing that something was rotten in the state of newsroom ethics, I interviewed Eisenstadt in preparation for a column that would lambaste the IDS for allowing such a gross transgression against its journalistic integrity to occur.\nObviously, that column was never written. Instead, after talking with Eisenstadt and considering the facts, I concluded that the trip to New York was "unnecessary and frivolous," but not unethical. E-mails from professional journalists around the country ensued -- thanks to a link to my column that appeared on the Poynter Institute's media ethics Web site -- taking me to task for not condemning the IDS and Eisenstadt for their actions.\nI stand by my conclusion. It was my opinion and my point of view. Maybe not the objective truth, per se, but as close to it as I could get, given what I knew about the situation. Is it possible to get any closer?\nUnfortunately, I let my ethical sleuthing get a bit carried away. In "Selling out," I made some speculations about a possible connection between the full-page Goldman Sachs advertisement that appeared in the Oct. 10 IDS and Eisenstadt's news story about the company that was published on page two of the same issue. My suggestion that newspapers sometimes "reward" loyal advertisers with news coverage -- a practice I have actually seen during my experiences in professional journalism -- was interpreted by many who read the column as a veiled indictment of the IDS on such charges. \nNothing could be further from the truth. \nI'd like to refute such allegations and say, for the record, the IDS has a firm and established separation between its newsroom and business/advertising department. The editor in chief himself rarely, if ever, sees an ad prior to its publication in the paper unless advertising manager deem it "controversial." The Goldman Sachs ad was no exception.\nAs much as I would like to pass off the comments I received in response to my "Selling out" column as nothing more than tired sermons by self-righteous journalists, it's better to just take such criticism in stride and not worry about it. After all, just because I'm a critic doesn't mean I can't be criticized.\nWhat it comes down to is this: I'm not writing for the professional journalists out there who just happen to click on a media ethics hyperlink. I'm writing for this newspaper and its readers. \nI would hypothesize that most of the reporters and editors who complained about my column didn't even read the article about which I was writing. But if I were writing for them, I'd have to say that if all of us in the media instinctively knew what was right and what was wrong, our jobs would be much easier. Especially mine.