Monday, July 17, 2017
557 - The Objective Case
Spirituality
Column No. 557
July 18, 2017
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
That’s when he left journalism to take a corporate communications job at the Chrysler Transmission plant in Kokomo, Ind., beginning work there just a few weeks before President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963. In February 1964 our family (dad, mom and four kids) moved to Indiana, as it turns out and for historical perspective, the same weekend the Beatles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. So that was a while ago, and I’ve been a Hoosier ever since.
I was then in fourth grade and it wasn’t for another few years when I began to show some writing aptitude and made the high school newspaper staff as a freshman that I remember talking with dad about journalism. He always had told newspaper stories but, prior to my teen years, all I really remembered was stopping into the Enquirer newsroom after church occasionally where they had this amazing new device called a “Xerox” machine. It could copy the image of whatever you put under the flap cover.
I had no idea what dad actually did at the Enquirer – I was five or six years old at the time – but one Sunday he “copied” my plastic sunglasses on that Xerox machine. That just seemed so … magical. It wasn’t until later, in the years leading up to my own education and career in journalism, that I paid close attention to the way dad described what I am very sure was the golden era of American journalism; now long passed.
Dad told the story of weeping at his typewriter on April 12, 1955 – as the father of two young children (my sister Linda and me; younger siblings Joe and Debbie came along a little later) – while editing the wire story about the public release of Jonas Salk’s vaccine for polio, a disease Dad’s children would now not have to fear or endure.
Working as a stringer (part-timer) for Associated Press in Detroit, Dad, a non-golfer, was assigned to cover the U.S. Open being played in Michigan. Grousing around the press tent about how he didn’t know anything about golf, legendary AP national sports columnist Will Grimsley looked up at Dad and said, “Y’know John, we have guys downtown writing about murders every day but they never committed one.”
And then one story that truly stuck in my mind was Dad’s coverage of a labor dispute at the Clark Equipment factory in Battle Creek. Intent on finding facts, truth, and covering the disagreement fairly, Dad noted that when it was over, principals from both sides told him privately how angry they got at Dad’s writing, but admitted he never published an untruth. To me, that is the core of journalistic objectivity and integrity.
How does this relate to Jesus? Well, Dad for sure was no Bible thumping doctrinaire, but he was a traditional Episcopalian who knew that objective truth was a real thing and that a slanted, partisan agenda had no real place in hard news coverage.
I am sorry my father died (1991) before I found my faith in Christ (2001). I would like to have known what he thought, objectively, with his humanity, humor and honor.
It would be quite a story.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) learned to type by fifth grade; a big deal in the 1960s.
July 18, 2017
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
The Objective Case
By
Bob Walters
My dad, John L. Walters, was a newspaper reporter and city
editor at the Battle Creek (Mich.) Enquirer and News from 1955 until 1963.
That’s when he left journalism to take a corporate communications job at the Chrysler Transmission plant in Kokomo, Ind., beginning work there just a few weeks before President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963. In February 1964 our family (dad, mom and four kids) moved to Indiana, as it turns out and for historical perspective, the same weekend the Beatles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. So that was a while ago, and I’ve been a Hoosier ever since.
I was then in fourth grade and it wasn’t for another few years when I began to show some writing aptitude and made the high school newspaper staff as a freshman that I remember talking with dad about journalism. He always had told newspaper stories but, prior to my teen years, all I really remembered was stopping into the Enquirer newsroom after church occasionally where they had this amazing new device called a “Xerox” machine. It could copy the image of whatever you put under the flap cover.
I had no idea what dad actually did at the Enquirer – I was five or six years old at the time – but one Sunday he “copied” my plastic sunglasses on that Xerox machine. That just seemed so … magical. It wasn’t until later, in the years leading up to my own education and career in journalism, that I paid close attention to the way dad described what I am very sure was the golden era of American journalism; now long passed.
Dad told the story of weeping at his typewriter on April 12, 1955 – as the father of two young children (my sister Linda and me; younger siblings Joe and Debbie came along a little later) – while editing the wire story about the public release of Jonas Salk’s vaccine for polio, a disease Dad’s children would now not have to fear or endure.
Working as a stringer (part-timer) for Associated Press in Detroit, Dad, a non-golfer, was assigned to cover the U.S. Open being played in Michigan. Grousing around the press tent about how he didn’t know anything about golf, legendary AP national sports columnist Will Grimsley looked up at Dad and said, “Y’know John, we have guys downtown writing about murders every day but they never committed one.”
And then one story that truly stuck in my mind was Dad’s coverage of a labor dispute at the Clark Equipment factory in Battle Creek. Intent on finding facts, truth, and covering the disagreement fairly, Dad noted that when it was over, principals from both sides told him privately how angry they got at Dad’s writing, but admitted he never published an untruth. To me, that is the core of journalistic objectivity and integrity.
How does this relate to Jesus? Well, Dad for sure was no Bible thumping doctrinaire, but he was a traditional Episcopalian who knew that objective truth was a real thing and that a slanted, partisan agenda had no real place in hard news coverage.
I am sorry my father died (1991) before I found my faith in Christ (2001). I would like to have known what he thought, objectively, with his humanity, humor and honor.
It would be quite a story.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) learned to type by fifth grade; a big deal in the 1960s.
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