Rules of Journalism Can Cause Issues From Time-to-Time with Ignorant Readers

by Julian Spivey
I’m a little irritated tonight and figured I’d write it out. 

As a former journalism student and one who runs his own entertainment website online I’m a bit of a journalism nerd. I love journalism when it’s done right and hate it when it’s done wrong. A lot of the time you’ll see it done wrong these days, but from my viewpoint that’s mostly on the broadcast side of things.

One of the things about journalism that thoroughly pisses me off is that so many readers don’t actually know much about the inner-workings of the medium. They don’t realize things like the code of journalism and the little rules we as journalists have for our work. The biggest rule maybe of them all is it’s our duty to report the news no matter what.

There is a country music website that I enjoy called Saving Country Music that is run solely by a writer who goes by the penname Triggerman. It’s a terrific website, the best country music site on the Internet in my opinion. The only thing I can’t stand about the website, in fact, is that the creator/writer goes by a penname, instead of his real name Kyle Coroneos, which can only be found under the ‘About’ section on his website.

I don’t believe journalists, and if he’s not a professionally trained one he’s become one through his site’s popularity, should go by pennames. This is especially true when you have opinions as strong as Coroneos’. I have strong opinions too in my writing and my full name is always there to accompany them. I even use my full name when responding in comments sections of websites so my opinions at least hold a little credibility and aren’t from some anonymous avatar. People should always own up to their opinions and the only way to truly do so is signing your complete name.

But, I digress, because this isn’t so much about my one minor critique of Coroneos’ fantastic website.

This is about a piece of news he published, caught utter hell for and eventually caved to the masses and deleted.

Jon Hensley, the manager for performers Shooter Jennings and Wanda Jackson, died on Monday, June 1 at a young age and an obituary for him was published on Saving Country Music. It was a pretty standard obituary telling of the news of his death and his life and career.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with this article.

And yet dozens of folks took offense to it and claimed it to be disrespectful and offensive to the memory of Hensley and his family and friends.

The reasoning given was that Hensley hated the Saving Country Music website and he and Coroneos apparently had unspecified bad blood between themselves. This potential bad blood had no noticeable impact on the straightforward obituary.

Coroneos defended his obit from many people taking issue with it for quite a while on both his website and on Twitter, before finally taking it down in the early morning hours of June 2.

I’m irritated by the response of people toward a piece of journalism and I’m irritated by the poor decision of the author/journalist to remove his work (even though it’s his website and his decision).

People simply don’t understand journalism. The sole point of journalism is to publish news for the public. So many people, however, believe its intent to be to bring negativity to the world. Journalists aren’t the heartless individuals people make us out to be, we just have a job that needs to be done. That job is to publish news.

Hensley was affiliated with country music and Saving Country Music as a website dealing in country music news had every right to publish an article about Hensley’s death. The fact that Hensley disliked Saving Country Music and may have had bad blood with the creator of the site honestly had no relevancy to the story.

It’s important to note that just because readers don’t like a story doesn’t mean it shouldn’t have been published. If every article ever written was deleted or redacted because people took offense there simply would not be any journalism ever again.

Publishing a news story is all Saving Country Music did and in doing so did nothing wrong or out of the ordinary and, in fact, was merely doing its purpose.

What the website did do wrong is kowtow to the masses and eventually delete the obituary.

If you give in to readers in such a way as a journalist you lose your credibility and show the readers that they have a say in what you publish on your website. This is the very reason journalists are instructed almost from day one in college to never let a subject of an article read said article prior to being published.

I run an online entertainment website, this very one, and I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that if I publish something you will never get me in a million years to delete it simply because you disagree with it or find it offensive.

That’s a fact.

That’s journalism 101.

You have options as a reader. You can turn away from the article and refuse to read it. You can say your peace about it in the comments section. You can never visit the website or read the publication as long as you live. Those are all reasonable ways to object to a piece of journalism you don’t like.

Demanding a journalist remove his work is never a reasonable way to act toward an article or editorial. It’s a slap in the face to the medium of journalism and a real, true journalist would merely laugh at your suggestion.

These people ignorant of journalism getting a journalist to stoop to their demands is a huge blow for the medium.

It doesn’t make Saving Country Music a worthless online publication. I suspect it will remain the best country music website on the Internet. But, unfortunately it does prove that Coroneos can be too easily swayed and there’s a little bit of a loss of respect there as one journalist to another.

You’re never going to get me to cave so easily, so don’t even try.