The line distinguishing and setting apart right and wrong, legality and illegality, left and right, long and short, well-groomed and sloppy, treasure and garbage, honesty and dishonesty, etc., has become seriously blurred and cries out for attention. The sound should be heard in the classrooms and boardrooms and leadership training sessions wherever they are and wholesome results should be forthcoming.
 

The line must be redrawn, re-defined to show that the struggle underway between advocates of hate and those who favor love can have hope of rising above the futile struggle and begin to exhibit that amazing level of clear, understandable communications that take place when everyone involved casts opinion aside and deals with truth, reality, fact as opposed to entertainment or imagination.
 

Fiction has a place in our lives and can be quite entertaining and the stimulus for application of creativity and personal artistic expression but it should be identified for what it is. In fact, it is even more entertaining for most of us when it is carefully identified to the degree that the possibility it might be viewed by some as the truth that it is not is avoided.
 

As every experienced journalist learns early in his/her career, if you have a dozen witnesses to an incident, such as a traffic mishap, each will offer a quite different concept of what really happened. This is in part because each saw it from a different perspective and interpreted it in accordance with differing experiences.  Some can be relied upon to get creative in the telling process.
 

Finally, if you choose one of the many as your presentation of the incident, the chances are great that from the dozen different versions you may select the wrong one, the false one, the one altered for entertainment purposes and the sound of applause. Most of us tend to conclude that hopefully the best source is the official record. But the truly accurate assessment of the matter at hand may remain elusive until a final decision is made in a court of law.
 

One of the more serious errors that seem to have become habitual among television  journalists  is to select the most entertaining version and ignore elements of the scene that might suggest the real truth is something else entirely. This may make the presentation more saleable but what meanwhile has happened to the truth?
 

Drawing the needed line of separation often becomes difficult. But the truly dedicated journalist knows the real challenge is in sorting out the real event from a noisy clamor of almost truth, this being one of the profession s greatest burdens.
 

The opinions expressed by various onlookers, all eager interview prospects probably waiting in line for a moment in the eye of the camera, is among the least likely sources of the truth.     
 

Another oft-repeated error is to select a dramatic scene to illustrate the affair and create the impression the entire scope of the incident and the condition of the environment in which it occurred has been fully revealed.
 

Fact — or fiction?
 

Difficult as it is, we need to keep struggling to draw the line precisely and tell the truth — or our reasons for not yet knowing the truth in this case at this moment.
 

Failure to make that definition as clear as possible can have a painfully destructive effect that can, in its time, come back to haunt us.
 

Am I speaking to some particular incident? Of course not.

But awareness of the need is an unavoidable reality of the world in which we live.