“You can’t be serious?” Elaine Chung asked her editor.

     She looked around the editor’s office in the two storey pink building that housed the offices of the Central Coast Bee, the regional newspaper recently acquired by Eagle Communications, the news media giant located in Manhattan. She could not miss the prominently displayed awards received by him for investigative journalism and his two Pulitzer Prizes, one for investigative reporting and one for distinguished commentary.

     “Mangement won’t have it. Trust me, I know their policies ,” Lancelot Wentworth said. Wentworth had hired Chung who had graduated at the top of her class in the Columbia School of Journalism, his alma mater. She wondered why Wentworth  left  the Big Apple to return to the Central Coast to helm a regional newspaper. She, on the other hand, reluctantly left the city in order to care for her mother who needed to be in a nursing facility. She could not wait to get back to Gotham.

     “We both took the same course on journalism ethics. Remember what Norman Stahl drilled into us, the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

     “Print journalism’s dying,” Wentworth said. “The news ecosystem has changed.  Empty slogans don’t put bread on our tables. We can’t afford to piss off our readers.”

     “We’re not meant to create an echo chamber. Our job is to give our readers the unvarnished truth or are we to be scared of Eagle?”

     He looked at the woman before him. She was now more focussed, confident and mature than when she first started six months ago. Lancelot sighed and stroked his salt and pepper beard. He took a sip of Red Bull. She was a talented reporter with the potential to succeed him.

     “We have to live in reality. Eagle’s pending application to merge with Venus Communications with the FCC will be rejected if we create a political storm.

     “We live in a democracy, or so we’re told. Citizens need to know what their government is doing. This is not Russia, or China or North Korea.” Elaine’s phone began to ring. She silenced it.

     “As your editor, I’m entitled to know your source. Especially given the explosive nature of your article.” Satisfied that this deal-breaker demand would end the discussion, Wentworth knew he had won this battle.

     Elaine looked around the room again. In addition to the journalism awards were pictures of him with some celebrities and politicians. But what caught her eye was the photograph on the desk. Pictured were Wentworth and his special needs son whom she knew was enrolled in an expensive school for special needs children. Wentworth saw her gaze linger, and he placed the frame face down..

     “My source? You can’t be serious! I promised confidentiality.”

     “We fact check. You know that.”

     “My source is a whistleblower. She will lose her job at the Pentagon if she’s outed.”

     “How reliable? If we publish, it would create a storm. We live in a cancel culture.”

     “Scoops sometimes do just that.”

     “Leave such stories to the New York Times and the Washington Post Elaine. You are no Woodward or Bernstein. At least, not yet. No one will take a county newspaper seriously. Tell your source to take her story to the Times.

      “Don’t our readers have the right to the same truth as the readers of the Times and the Post?”

     “The truth, you say? The truth and nothing but the truth. The Russians have a saying that someone is lying like an eyewitness. So tell me, what is truth?”

     Elaine gathered her handbag and was about to get up.

     “Pilate didn’t wait for an answer, I do,” Wentworth said.

     “I’m neither a thesaurus or a dictionary, so I can’t give you a definition of truth. But I know how a truth is smothered by falsehood.  128 schoolkids killed by our bombs in Minab in a double tap strike is true. That truth may be suppressed but it does not go away.”

     “Have you thought of taking the story to a podcaster?

     “They lack credibility, most of them are known for having a political slant.”

     “Between you and me, our legacy media is no different. In Russia and China the news outlet play the news the government wants. In our case, it’s not the government but what the owners want us to say. Remember when the new owner bought the Santa Barbara News Press, she sacked the liberal leaning staff. Fox News peddles the news that Murdoch wants to feed the Boomers, the folks at 60 Minutes have been sent packing by Barri Weiss. You can’t expect to keep a job at Fox if you were to say that the election was not stolen. The list goes on.”

     Looking around at the awards, Elaine said, “So all that parchment means nothing?’

     “We have a staff of two hundred. I should say a family of the two hundred. Print this story, and Eagle will shut us down. No question. What would you do in my place? Tell me. Like the Duke of Wellington do we say “Publish and be damned!” or do we keep our ourselves below the radar of corporate HQ and work within our limits?”

     “The next time our Constitution is printed, we need to redact the First Amendment.”

     “Might as well after our SCOTUS has re-written it. Tenured professors, Jimmy Kimmel, and ordinary folks who said that Charlie Kirk was no great shakes were fired for expressing their views. True many of them have sued and won but the chilling effect remains the same. Who would want to go through the soul breaking hoops of litigation?”

     “This is not what I signed for when I applied to Journalism School.”

     “It is what it is. What Amazon has done to bookstore chains and bookstore owners, media conglomerates have done to TV and print journalism. Podcasts and Tik  Tock have not helped. We feed from the trough that supports our viewpoints and gives us the news we want.”

     “So you want me to remain?”

     “You’re young and idealistic. Idealism has a place but so has pragmatism. I would hate you to leave us. A talented journalist is hard to find these days.”

     “I appreciate your kind words. A journalist without ethics is nothing but a hack. That I don’t want to be. At the same time, I don’t want to take a holier than thou approach and damage the lives of my friends here. Tomorrow the Labor Day weekend begins. A holiday for us, an opportunity to do some soul searching for me. On Tuesday, I’ll  tell you what I found.”

     Elaine arose with Wentworth. As she hugged him, she felt the tears on his face.