The Western Depressor, readers sometimes call us. They say the headlines too often provide bad news or that stories tend to dwell on the negative.
But oddly enough, it’s the stories with so-called “good news” that generated reader angst last week. The culprits? A Dec. 23 story suggesting the farm crisis hasn’t drastically affected retailers in Humboldt, Sask., and a Jan. 6 story mentioning a Saskatchewan farmer who had a good year.
Callers suggested the stories could de-emphasize the farm crisis that is affecting many prairie farmers. They feared any stories of farmers who were surviving against the odds would undermine efforts to wrest more agricultural aid from government. Some people quoted in our stories were criticized by people in their communities, criticized for telling the truth.
Read Also
Agriculture needs to prepare for government spending cuts
As government makes necessary cuts to spending, what can be reduced or restructured in the budgets for agriculture?
As with every story in the Producer, these stories were meant to provide information. The Humboldt story was an attempt to assess the effects of the farm crisis on one agriculturally based economy. The Jan. 6 story specifically stated the farmer with a good year was an exception to the rule, the proverbial round peg in the square hole of government income statistics. And for those who question the numbers in the latter piece, an explanation of the math is provided on page 5 of this issue.
Some callers suggested we apologize for not making things look bad enough.
But that’s the least of the challenges in covering this farm crisis. It is a situation where the people most drastically affected – the farmers whose finances may not allow them to plant a crop this spring – are not eager to tell their stories. And this is understandable. Few people want to talk about such a painful situation, let alone reveal financial information for the neighbors and the banker to read.
On the other side of the coin, farmers who did well last year (and yes, that’s a relative term) are also reluctant to speak. Modesty, privacy or the desire not to make sad comparisons dictate their silence.
Yet it’s this newspaper’s job to present stories that represent the small picture, the big picture and the geography of our readership. We try, and thankfully readers care enough to provide feedback on our success or the lack of it.
If we must have a nickname, we’d rather be the Western Depressor than the Western Suppressor.
