OPINION
4 Jan. 15 - 28, 2021
Explore Big Sky
Editorial: Common Ground Out on the edge of darkness, there rides a peace train. Peace train take this country, come take me home again. – “Peace Train,” Yusuf Islam/Cat Stevens
The concept of respect demands a certain degree of empathy. “Human nature,” wrote novelist Graham Greene, “is not black and white, but black and gray.” In other words, life is complicated and full of nuance. But truth is not.
Words matter. So do facts. As journalists, we rely on both. And so do you.
The siege on the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 proved that words have consequences and consequences matter. Not since the War of 1812 has the Capitol seen such insurrection. Pro-Trump protesters stormed the building, smashing windows and beating police officers in the halls of our democracy. Five people died. Pipe bombs and guns were discovered at the scene. These are the facts. There is no such thing as an “alternative fact.” The election is over. Joe Biden is our new president.
You’ll see it on reputable news sites all the time: “Here’s what we know.” Journalists can’t operate outside of fact for two main reasons: 1) Anything that is not a fact is therefore fiction or yet unproven. 2) Reporting anything other than substantiated fact is a disservice to our readers and it erodes trust. Responsible journalists at responsible media outlets are trained to report fact and nothing more. Here’s the thing: Facts are critical to everyone. Journalists are people no different from anyone else—restaurant servers, or developers, bus drivers or teachers, doctors, chairlift operators, or presidents. We all have to seek truth and think critically. It is our civic and moral responsibility to see through conspiracy theories and hyperbole. This doesn’t negate thinking for ourselves; it reinforces it. We can and will disagree on certain things, but it comes down to how we treat each other and how we disagree. After all, no government, business or organization would ever grow or improve if everyone agreed all the time. But there is one word we must all keep in the forefront of our minds: respect.
Big Sky is a community of caring people and people are inherently good. Kindness matters. We may disagree at times, but at the end of the day we all want the same things: Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And we want peace. Change will come and small communities like Big Sky can be examples--we can be examples--of kindness and peace and recognizing fact over fiction. Change will come and it can come from the bottom up. Joseph T. O’Connor Editor-in-Chief
Eric Ladd Publisher
The 2021 Big Sky Ideas Festival/TEDxBigSky takes place Jan. 27-30, and its theme is awakening. What is a personal awakening you’ve experienced this past year?
Chris Wood Bozeman, MT
Skylar Atencio Big Sky, MT
Chambers Moline Big Sky, MT
Ron Delhaye Big Sky, MT
“This was roughly around March and April, I was skiing up in Tom Miner Basin, and this is right as the pandemic started. I got back to the car and I realized I had been alone for almost ten hours that day. That started the theme of that first part of the pandemic is really, truly being alone but understanding how to be alone in your own thoughts, and how to be alone without being able to see family, friends, coworkers for quite a long time in regard to that. That was a really large awakening that is still a challenge because we’re not over with the pandemic.”
“I have two personal awakening moments that happened to me in 2020 fairly recently and it all happened really fast. One, I got a rock-climbing injury, I tore my ACL and got surgery. Then also moving up here. What I’ve learned is that if you put faith in the process of a new endeavor and what you’re doing, it’s just always going to work out in your favor. I would say that’s been my big awakening moment, just doing something new, doing something that I’ve always wanted to do and trusting that, and just going for it.”
“My personal awakening would be…I was going to go to college this year, and then with COVID I just decided not to. I had the awakening to the idea that you really don’t need to do the whole high school, college then good job, you don’t really need to follow that line so exactly. School always says that you should immediately go to college. It was seeing that I could go travel and do whatever I wanted and not immediately go to college.”
“I had a personal awakening in the form of opening to the heart. Letting judgments and biases dissolve and fall by the wayside and you can’t judge a book by the cover you have to actually get to know somebody and dive in and so that’s been my personal awakening, is coming to terms with something like that.”
