A Mexican journalist was murdered. It wasn’t the end of the story. He got up after the murder and began to write about the murders. The murders began to turn out to be more than that, a real human tragedy.
I don’t know if this is the new age of journalism or if we’re living through something similar to the early part of the twentieth century. A newspaper or magazine can be like a family or like the family of your friends. And like the friends of your friends, the newspaper and magazine can get you in trouble, even kill you, and for every person who dies, a hundred live.
If you care about being a person of integrity and of good will, you need to remember this.
This is a new age when you can be killed for being honest. I am not talking about killing innocent civilians. I am talking about killings that don’t cause any major problems for society, but become a story in the national news, like the killing of Juan Dominguez Torres, a journalist who was killed for covering a story.
Journalists, like doctors, doctors, and professors, are held in low esteem on several levels. They are not thought of as heroes because these people can destroy your life. That is not a good thing. And even worse than that, they are not thought of as heroes for doing what they have to do to inform the public.
This is when it is necessary to be a friend of the people.
I am not saying that one should not publish stories. But if you cannot do it without getting into trouble with the law, or if you cannot do it without getting into trouble with the people, then why are you bothering to publish? Is it because you have a special talent? Because you are a genius? You should think more seriously about that.
I am not going to tell you how to behave like a person, because you are going to have to learn that