By Dale Boyd

Osoyoos Times

I had an opinion piece written about the justice system and providing my perspective on rehabilitation and how it relates to our local crime issues, but it has come to my attention I have to explain why I put my opinion in the newspaper. Back to basics I suppose.

Threats to cancel subscriptions or personal attacks on myself are not new, I am used to that, but what really bothers me is the fundamental misunderstanding some readers had on my column last week regarding the UCP in Alberta and their “war room.”

Some seemed to think it was some liberal-biased think piece instead of an examination of the inner workings of news media politics.

In reality I was admonishing Postmedia more than anything else.

This argument seems to come up everywhere I go. “I hope you don’t get paid for this,” scream the commenters, Why? They cry, would the Osoyoos Times opine on politics? I come here for local news and goings on not your opinion, the peanut gallery says. Of course, if those poor souls would flip through a few pages they would have seen multiple articles about local happenings, a feature on a unique local restaurant, RV parking changes, you name it. All lacking any political opinion.

The “opinion” page, clearly labelled as such, is a long and ongoing tradition in newspapers. It is also important to counteract the objectivity myth.

To paraphrase Hunter S. Thompson: the only objective reporting is a baseball box score. I am human, despite what some readers think, and I am not going to ignore my entire life up until the point I report a story to act as some kind of fact robot.

I am going to use my past, what I have learned and what I know to be true to report a story factually, with as much context as possible.

So why care what I think? You don’t have to. Nobody is making you read the opinion page and buying our paper doesn’t make you implicit in any political leaning. Have a different opinion? Write a letter. Readers seem to disagree with me a lot, but so few write letters to the editor. Harder than it looks to put your opinion to paper with your name attached? Maybe, but why not give it a shot.

I love providing context and big-picture analysis that may not fall under any strict category of news. But I challenge anyone to show me how my opinions impact my news writing.

Readers don’t have to agree with anything I say, but I think it is important to share who I am to give even more context towards my news gathering efforts. I put it all out on front street, so you don’t have to wonder. To me, it seems cowardly to cancel a subscription or boycott a paper or site because you read something you disagree with, but to quote The Dude: “that’s just like, (my) opinion man.”