We wish we had invented the concept of alternative facts a long time ago. Readers couldn’t imagine how much easier our news reporting jobs would be. When Mr. Trump and his spokespeople fabricated extra millions of people at his inauguration and millions more phantom cheating voters, they had no idea how liberating alternative facts could be.
Just think, instead of actually attending all those city council meetings, we could just make up a story about what happened. Who would know? Only a very small crowd of the same people show up anyway.
Last week, some readers were wondering where we get our rainfall totals. Maybe we just guess and write down a number that makes our flood stories extra sensational. Maybe it was millions of inches.
We could report alternative facts and solve lots of local problems. How about pumping up student achievement test scores? “Our schools are the best ever — really great.” Want to balance the city’s budget, fix all the potholes, get the SMART train running at last, or make the local crime rate go up or down? We can do it. All it takes is a few well-worded alternative facts.
There’s just one small problem here. And that’s that another term for alternative facts is lies or untruths. It used to be that a newspaper would quickly go out of business for reporting alternative facts. It used to be that accuracy, credibility and trustworthiness was what newspapers were all about. Now there are reasons to doubt real facts from fake ones.
Maybe that’s the case in the daily press briefings at the Trump White House, but that’s not the case here at this newspaper. We stay committed to doing the news the old fashioned way — real reporting, real fact-checking, real news and real accountability.
We implore our readers to keep us honest. Take this copy of the newspaper as a starting point. All items on this page are clearly labeled as opinion. On all the other pages are printed news and facts.
Let’s test our reporting of this week’s news together, shall we?
We covered last weekend’s Steelhead Festival. This anadromous salmonid that spawns in our Russian River was listed in 2005 as endangered by the federal Environmental Protection Agency. There is a federal hatchery at Warm Springs Dam dedicated to the survival of this species. Those are all facts supported by scientific research and decades of local eyewitness accounts. If the Trump Administration abolished the Environmentasl Protection Agency or the Endangered Species Act, our steelhead fish population would still be threatened.
Another current local news story has to do with immigration laws, sanctuary cities and the local population of undocumented immigrants. Our reporting covers real people and families that are expressing real fears their families may be deported or divided by increased federal immigration law enforcement. The real facts are that there are 21,000 unauthorized non-citizens living in Sonoma County. Half of this number (15,000) are eligible for temporary legal status to remain here but only 4,000 so far have registered.
By coincidence we are also reporting about our county libraries — an institution dedicated to real facts. There are 17 branches in the Sonoma County Library System. All are open to the public and most services are free or very low cost. Think of a library as a Do It Yourself (DIY) Google search tool. Voters recently approved Measure Y to support extra library hours, more staff and new public services, including many that are internet-based or digital.
Libraries and newspapers have lots in common. Both are enemies of alternative facts. Newspapers report facts and libraries have shelves labeled non-fiction. It’s true that libraries also have shelves full of fiction, but newspapers, elected officials and U.S. presidents must stay out of the fiction business.
