I feel like I've been discussing ethical journalism a lot lately. And I was thinking about it a great deal today as the head of one of the two main political parties was in town today--two weeks before the election. Republican national chairman Mike Steele stopped by Meadville to rally the local republicans two weeks away fro the fall mid-term elections. As a newspaper, an organization that preaches to be a fair seeker of the truth and report fairly the news, we have to cover and event like this as fairly to the participants as well as the participants opponents. So a picture like the first one wouldn't be appropriate at all. It shows a very awkward moment when candidate for the house Mike Kelley tried to shake hands with Steele and they simply just missed. The picture could be misconstrued as a bumbling Kelley can't even get a handshake right. This sort of thing happens all the time and I laughed when I saw it, but it would be wrong to use this as picture representative of the story--the story of these political figures meeting to exchange ideas and hoo-rahs to motivate their supporters. Also it would be wrong to focus too heavily on the next picture that showed one of only a couple democrat supporters who came to show opposition to Steele and the Republican supporters trying to block her sign. Its important to have this recorded and perhaps even report that she was there in opposition, but if that is all we focussed on we'd be sensationalizing the act of one group trying to suppress the others right to free speech and assembly. We also have to be careful if we use a picture like the third one where it focusses solely on the Republican slogans. This kind of image can be looked upon as being is support especially if it is big and on the front page. It really is a difficult thing to figure out how to tell a story that focusses so heavily on one side or the other. Perhaps the best choice would be the final picture that takes away all slogans, all conflict and simply focusses on the idea that Steele was here in town and talked. I don't really have the answer to what is the right choice, but I think about this alot and if I had to choose I would run several pictures to tell the most rounded story I could and be sure to offer solid commentary on how these pictures document several different aspects of Wednesday's visit. Meadville Tribune photographs by Richard Sayer.