Society's Watchdog

Journalists often describe our collective community as the watchdog of society. We like to think we’re doing some good in the world in spite of the fact that we don’t always make a lot of money and we piss people off with incredible frequency. Often times we are. Sometimes we’re not.

I have a dog most would regard as a watchdog. She’s big; about 120 pounds and every bit as tall as I am when standing on her hind legs. When a stranger comes to the door, Gabby shakes the walls with her bark and immediately positions herself between the people in the house, which she knows and loves, and the person or people on the outside, of whom she is unconditionally skeptical.

While I am glad to have the protection of an animal that is, without question, willing and able to tear an individual apart in order to protect myself, and more importantly my fiancée, there is an inherent problem with the situation described above. To this point in my life, none of the individuals who have ringed my doorbell of knocked on my door did so with any intention of causing myself, my family, or my property any harm. Although things have happened to others; break-ins, rapes, murders, etc., causing me to remain cautious, it would be grossly inappropriate for me to assume that every time someone comes calling for my fiancée or myself they are trying to harm us in some manner.

As I near graduation in my chosen discipline and look forward to a magical piece of paper hanging on my wall I am growing ever skeptical of my classmates and soon to be peers. The last Journalism course I will ever take at EMU is Advanced Reporting; a professor’s last chance to force us into some real world experience before we depend on it for a living. The term or, “enterprise,” assignment for the course is to come up with an underlying issue and investigate to its end. Gathering the insights of experts and average Joes alike we are expected to offer a solution to the problem by the end of the course and present it to the class and, ideally, for publication.

As we struggled for topics one student decided to share a story she had been working on since September of last year. Her topic was sex offenders on campus. Through public records and internet searches she was able to find the name and profession of a janitor on campus whom, years earlier, was convicted of raping his wife. She began the cat and mouse game of interviewing the people responsible for hiring and keeping the man on board after his convictions. Over time the search led her to interview the man himself and get a lot of information on the subject.

The student then shared that she received an email this morning to inform her that the man’s employment with the university had been terminated. My professor told us that the university would never admit the fact that the investigation had something to do with the firing, but more likely than not, it did. Don’t worry about the fact that the man hasn’t done anything sexually offensive in years. Ignore the fact that he had moved on with his life and was gainfully employed and contributing to society. Don’t give any mind to the fact the this man was working after hours in a facility with locked doors where no one even had access to fall victim to his cruel intention. The student stated that she wasn’t sure how to feel about the guy losing his job. How about bad?This is when I started to wonder if maybe I’m one of the bad guys.

Rape is a terrible crime. It ranks highly on everyone’s list of blood boilers. While I am no exception, I did think we were a society based on second chances. Whatever his sentence, the individual in question had clearly “paid his debt to society” as we like to phrase it when we’re rooting for the convicted felon. What bothers me the most is that a day earlier, another journalist, with a different set of motives could’ve published a moving feature story on a convicted felon who had moved on with his life and changed his role from violent criminal into productive and meaningful serviceman.

The journalist may have been barking at a door with a trusted friend, whose loyalty had been proven, standing on the other side. On the other hand, what kind of grade would she have earned if she returned to the professor and said, “Nothing wrong here, no danger for students on this campus?” I don’t blame the professor, either; the problem runs much deeper. I feel the assignment is a realistic one perfectly in line with professional expectations. A newspaper editor would find just as much disinterest in a positive version of the story.

Sometimes the wind blows hard enough to make the door squeak and pop in unusual ways. My dog barks uncontrollably because she is incapable of distinguishing a real threat from one that doesn’t exist at all. She is so intent on protecting her family that false alarms are inevitable. I can give her a command forcing her to submit and realize the lack of danger in the given situation. I thank her for being aware of her surroundings and everything going on around her and move on. The world refuses to do so.

Negativity draws attention. If the dog believed in harmony and coexistence she would never be worried at all. We find ourselves in an identical situation. Our skepticism leans towards paranoia in a society that trusts itself less with each sunrise. We know in our hearts that bad things will eventually happen. This fact leads us to assume that they will right now.

I will never get rid of my dog. There’s too much at stake to be unprepared and ignorant of my surroundings. I keep her with a calculated risk, however. There’s always the outside chance that the watchdog, best intentions in tow, can strike an individual who is only passing by. If she were to do she would be deemed unfit for society and killed; a fate I hope the news media and the journalists who control them are smart enough to avoid.