While having lunch with Dinesh and me, Deepak talked about an incident. He told us that he along with Saroj, a reporter of Nepal Weekly, went to receive their editor at the airport when he returned from Europe. Other at his office called it palm-greasing. He replied them saying they didn’t go because they were afraid of tight security at the airport. And he told us – it showed a story has two sides. Then, I told them actually any story has more than two sides.
Any incident or story always has a people involved and everybody sees it through their own point-of-view thus adding more sides to the story. Anyone hearing about it will also add his own side of the story.
And more over than there is always a side of all stories that we, as journalists, always look for – the true side. Deepak’s point-of-view to that incident and his co-workers’ point-of-view to that incident doesn’t necessarily present the true story – there is always almost certainly the true story without subjective explanation or point of view. Did we call that objective?
One more point, we say that newspapers always raise the alternative voice. Isn’t that wrong? Aren’t we underestimating ourselves? Shouldn’t we call, always, that newspapers present the TRUE VOICE?
