It's easy to spot lazy, inaccurate performances in the national media. A fairly significant part of what takes place here is spotlighting those times when some millionaire talking head uses the airwaves of the television networks or the pages of some internationally-known newspaper to practice sloppy stenography in place of news.
That doesn't mean there aren't still a lot of good journalists out there. We're still blessed with many hard-working, tough-minded reporters and editors who are more interested in finding the truth than in repeating press releases. Unfortunately, today we have one less.
Tom Gish bought the Mountain Eagle of Whitesburg, Kentucky in 1956. Up until then, the Mountain Eagle was an innocuous local weekly that rarely ruffled a feather. Under Gish and his wife, Pat, the paper's motto changed to "It Screams." And it did.
The Mountain Eagle screamed out against corruption in Kentucky politics, against the excesses of coal mine operators, against police who abused their power, against mistreatment of workers, and against destruction of the land. Gish used his paper like a hammer, and he didn't care whose political fingers he smashed as he pounded out the truth. It didn't matter if you were a local school board member, or the president of a giant corporation. The Gish's would not back down.
The paper's reputation grew until politicians throughout the region refused to allow the Eagle's reporters into press conferences. Then it grew until they had to let them back in. When the office was firebombed and their press burned, they didn't miss a week. Even when advertisers were so frightened to be associated with the paper that The Mountain Eagle shrank to only four pages, Gish held his ground.
For their fearless journalism, this small town newspaper couple shared the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award for Courage, an award that has also gone to Katharine Graham, and to Studs Terkel, and to Daniel Pearl. Like Terkel, Gish took his stand for the common man against those in power. He didn't just tell the truth, he screamed it.
Tom Gish died last Friday at the age of 82. His wife Pat has retired from the paper, leaving their son Ben as the editor. The masthead still reads "It Screams," and let's hope it does.