Published CommPRO.biz 2014.01.06

Who Cares What You Think?

We like to kick off the New Year responding to the remark we have heard so often over the decades that we have been writing opinion pieces: “Who cares what you think?” Good question. Our response is always the same: “Hopefully, no one.” 

A friend owned the only newspaper and radio station in a small town. He ran editorials in the paper and personally voiced them on his station. His newspaper would take one side of an issue and he would dispense the opposite on the radio; he wrote both. He believed a good opinion writer should be able to see both sides of an issue, or they shouldn’t be writing opinion. 

While we make every effort to look at both sides, we are not sure we can follow that ideal in every issue we address. We do not write to convince anyone to take up our position. We do the research; often we will have as many as fifty pages of research for a five-hundred-word OP-ED. Ethics rarely has two acceptable sides. On the other hand, it isn’t always a simple matter of right and wrong either. Like it or not, Situational Ethics are called for at times; the situation can change the ethical call. There are times when one has to think about the impact of hard-line adherence to what seems the right thing at the moment. Or as our friend Saul Alinsky once defined truth, “You don’t have to cross the street to tell someone how ugly they are.”  

So if we don’t write to change your mind, or help you make up your mind, and if we don’t expect people to care what we think, why do we write? We write because the ethical issues we raise seem important to us and we hope you will think about them. We want you to sort through the facts. We want you to search the internet, to read and find a position. If you toss a brick at your computer every time one of our OP-EDs turns up, that’s OK. At least you are thinking about the issues. 

Beware those who dispense opinion for other reasons.  Beware the manipulators.