News-Record.com

I have just finished reading your article in the Life section of the Tueday paper about cockfighting. What would possess you to run an article about this subject? It only encourages this illegal and very brutal sport in our society.

That's from a reader. We get similar notes whenever we write about or photograph something beyond the mainstream. Add cock fighting to tattooing, binge drinking and passion parties. Readers think that by publishing such stories we are endorsing the behavior and/or we are irresponsibly spreading the word.

In this case, the story about cock fighting in the Philippines hardly makes the practice attractive. More interesting to me is the idea that a newspaper should avoid writing about unsavory or objectionable aspects of the world. For us, it's about delivering information so that you can expand or deepen the way you think about things.

Honestly, we don't do it enough.