"This week's column: Biased against Truth?" : Thinking Out Loud : Blogs : News-Record.com : Greensboro, North Carolina

This week's column: Biased against Truth?

A participant chided the News & Record's editorial pages at a community forum last week on Truth and Reconciliation.

The newspaper has made it difficult to submit op-ed columns that dispute its viewpoint on the killings of five communist protesters by Ku Klux Klansmen and Nazis on Nov. 3, 1979, he said.

In other words, he suggested, views critical of the Truth and Reconciliation process were given preference over those that were supportive.

Please forgive me if I seem confused.

The News & Record endorsed the Truth and Reconciliation initiative in 2004.

Here's some of what we wrote two years ago:

"Why should we bring this up again? And why now? Didn't we just observe the 20th anniversary of the shootout in 1999? What else is there to rehash? Aren't there more pressing concerns today about jobs, education and the economy?

"Yet, why not now?

"After all, the events of Nov. 3 also were about jobs — about labor unrest in local textile plants and attempts to unionize mill workers. They also were about race and class, issues that still color community discussions. As painful as its memory may be, never has there been a true reckoning of what that day means to us."

We added: "Some say the event so shook the city's psyche and so rattled its conscience that it stood still for a while in a fog of self-doubt. That it became an also-ran during that time among the state's major cities. Today, a widely discussed consultant's study on the city's economic health cites race relations as a continuing roadblock.

"Why not now?"

We still stand by those words today.

As for the 24 months that followed that editorial, we've published dozens of staff and guest columns concerning Truth and Reconciliation. Some say too many.

"Why are you printing all that Truth and Reconciliation stuff?" a caller grumbled last week. "I don't care about it. And I don't read it, either."

Others obviously do.

Among the authors of Nov. 3-related op-eds have been the Rev. Z.N. Holler, former Mayor Carolyn Allen, Nov. 3 survivors Signe Waller and Marty Nathan, the Rev. Gregory Headen, all involved in, and supportive of, the Truth and Reconciliation initiative.

Dissenting voices have included former County Commissioner and City Council member Chuck Forrester, a severe and unabashed critic, and Elizabeth Wheaton, author of a richly detailed 1987 book on Nov. 3 titled "Codename: GREENKIL." Additional views have come from News & Record columnists, including Charles Davenport (solidly against), Edward Cone (for), Doug Clark (skeptical) and myself (for).

Still other columns were sparked by disagreements within the Truth and Reconciliation community. For instance, John Young's April 2 column questioned the breadth and balance of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's work.

Young happens to be a member of the Truth and Reconciliation Task Force.

All told, the News & Record has run 45 columns and editorials on Truth and Reconciliation over the last two years alone (not counting today's). Thirty were supportive, 13 critical and two neutral.

We republished excerpts from testimony at last year's hearings. Members of the editorial staff also attended most of those hearings and participated in at least two smaller panel discussions.

To be sure, we've had our misgivings. For instance, we considered the Truth and Reconciliation Project's curious attempt to seek a City Council endorsement in 2005 unfair and premature. And we still consider Nelson Johnson's involvement in the creation of the commission problematic, since Johnson organized the "Death to the Klan" rally where the 1979 killings occurred.

But we believe in the value of learning from the past, even when the lessons are painful.

So I'm not sure where the charges of bias come from or why.

But I'm more than willing to discuss them. Right here and right now.

Posted by Allen Johnson on June 4, 2006 3:00 AM | Permalink

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Thinking Out Loud

Thinking Out Loud

This week's column: Biased against Truth?

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