Integrity

As you may already see there is a certain theme in my postings: music, movies, social problems and God all around us touching our lives.

There's a new television series that has recently debuted on HBO called “The Newsroom” , from the producer and creator of “West Wing” Aaron Sorkin.  That means something to me, because the West Wing really touched on, and brought to the forefront, themes that reflected the sign and times of that day. Whatever our political view, it really was a mirror of what went on in the West Wing.

Now here we have a show that talks about News, such a difficult subject. What is truly news? What is important? What is relevant? What is the truth? These are certainly tough questions to answer. As I visit friends’ houses, community houses, or catch the news all by myself I see that we all tend to look for the news that fits our persons, our needs or our political views. Seldom do we want to hear the news without that tinted color we have gotten used to. Even though we know there is always going to be some slant, left or right. I quest for some centeredness.

In episode 3 of “The Newsroom” they start with a transmission where the main correspondent asks forgiveness for not giving news with Integrity. It mentioned a few newspersons who we have felt were persons who had integrity, Walter Conkrite for example, who always finished he news with the phrase: "And that’s the way it is."

According to the Oxford dictionary, Integrity means:

·                     1, the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles: a gentleman of complete integrity

·                     2, the state of being whole and undivided: upholding territorial integrity and national sovereignty

·                     3, the condition of being unified or sound in construction: the structural integrity of the novel

·                     internal consistency or lack of corruption in electronic data: [as modifier]:

So I read few things here: persons with Integrity have strong moral principles, have a wholeness about them, there is a sense of honesty that is perceived in them. I think it's something we have lost in what we want and we desire, or look for. There is a sense of compliance, where even though we may know and see that there is a lack of Integrity, we have stopped looking for or expecting this quality, not only in the news and the person that brings it to us; I honestly think we have lost this scope in many other ways and levels. This worries me, because we can say this person is not whatever, but we´re not able to have that measure placed upon all and even ourselves. What do we lose?, what do I lose? We lose ourselves, and our ability to siphon the things that are our offered us.

Can we say I have this value and that I am going to keep that value across the line. Now this does not mean I do not accept others point of view, but it doesn´t have to be mine, even if that person is my friend, my family, my political party etc. All because I want to be faithful to whom I am and what is important to my being. Time can only tell if we can accomplish this. One man came over thousand years ago and showed us what it meant to be a person of integrity, of values, of being coherent on all levels. The model is there, or here, but do we want to see?