A newspaper should allow its readers to make up their own minds

Darren Bergman

I buy a newspaper because I believe I’m going to be kept abreast of what’s going on in the world and I’m going to be given the opportunity to hear both sides and make up my own mind as the reader, who is right and who is wrong.

I rely on journalists and editors to capture the story for the sake of news and not because it will sell sensationally, void of proper investigation. 

I assume this is why we only find opinion pages in the middle of the newspaper and not the actual headlines. 

On Sunday I bought my last copy of a particular Sunday newspaper. I cannot help feeling that the money can be better spent on real newspapers that compete on the day. 

I can go to a hospital today and find two people in terminal stages of cancer. I will take a picture of one smiling and the other one sad. However, that is cheap politics bordering the lazy and deceitful. How immature and senseless can the person be who is responsible for posting the two pictures? 

People are insensitive to the messages they are sending when they pick sides and then try to qualify their stance afterwards to reflect a more sober view. You need to answer a few questions before you enter the fray, guns blazing: 

1. Do you know enough of the history of the “Muddled East” saga?
2. Are you for peace or for taking all the pieces?
3. Do you know why the number of casualties reflect the way they do and can you apportion blame correctly and appropriately in this war?
4. Is this a war against area or religion?
5. If this is another fight against an apartheid state, please research the South African story and the ME story and draw your own conclusion. 

The consequences of not knowing the answers on the above five is that you generate religious intolerance and hateful propaganda on all sides. If you are truly peace loving and part of building a global nation, then you should be able to report the stories from both sides and allow your readers to take their position from your reporting. 

It is sad to watch journalists, editors, radio commentators and station managers, spewing their own personal bias based on an inherent racism and a lack of researching the issues for themselves.

You watch them carefully tread when it comes to not exposing themselves when it is an ANC versus DA issue, but then everything flops out of the belt when they are let loose on a global stage. 

I have no problem if people are genuinely polarised through their beliefs to support Israel or Palestine and I will always accommodate their views and have time for them, but when a newspaper gets to the 1930 Nazi tactics, one needs to question whether they truly want peace and to stop all killings, or are they just worried about their own circulation? 

Darren Bergman

Johannesburg