I'd say I love my job 99.9 percent of the time. But, there's that little .1 percent where I really hate it. That's when I realize the amazing power of words.
It is never my intention for my words to hurt anyone. Yet, every once in a great while, it happens.
I received a phone call from a very unhappy reader and by the time I hung up, I was almost as unhappy as she was.
I didn't write anything that had not been told to me by a person I interviewed. But according to this new source, a statement made by the person interviewed, was an untruth. Because of that alleged untruth, she says she and her son have been hurt, not just emotionally, but business-wise, as well.
I'm still of that generation that has a hard time believing how wide our world has become through technology.
I still think of our TIMES NEWS as a small-town newspaper. But with the World-Wide Web, emails and Facebook, my one little story has reached into another close-by state and even as far away as Kansas.
The statement made by the interviewed person might not have had any repercussions here in our immediate readership but, it made good old Facebook and now I'm left feeling bad that my words inadvertently caused someone else pain.
Before I hung up with my unhappy reader, I made a promise to her and to myself that in the future, I will be very careful with the words I am responsible for sending out there into the world.
Another Facebook incident a few weeks ago was responsible for upsetting my daughter and she took it out on me.
She read on her Facebook that her uncle was hospitalized for a possible heart attack and she called me very irate that I hadn't called her to tell her.
After she calmed down, I had the chance to explain that he was fine, he didn't have a heart attack and that I had planned on calling her when I knew exactly what had happened. But, with the speed of Facebook, and the inaccuracy of the report, she heard about it long before I even was aware of his condition.
So, I am not a big fan of Facebook.
A friend of mine told me that she became upset with the way a local television station has been referring to a specific group in an ongoing news story. She believes it stereotypes a whole group in a negative way. While folding her clothes listening to yet another report, she finally had had enough. She sat down at her computer and wrote the General Manager of the station that she thought it was wrong for the reporters to keep referring to the young men allegedly responsible for a crime as members of a larger group, which gives a negative connotation to all those who do not participate in crime.
Apparently her message did not fall on deaf ears. In a news report two days later, the offensive connotation to a specific group was omitted and hasn't bee