There are journalists who ride the manufactured waves of “non-news”, stick to the reams of text churned out daily by the many media and information arms of the many private and public departments that make up the gloriously painted quilt of normalcy. But missing for the reader is the peculiar bitterness of unvarnished truth. The mantra here is “all is well”, after all how can anything go wrong in such a beautiful and sunny place?

The truth is the truth stinks; it’s hard to swallow and if you have enough money and control over the situation you can suppress it. Tragic accidents happen everywhere, no one is immune. It is the management of information after the tragedy has occurred, the level of empathy officials show to victims and their families, that is what people remember long after the event itself has passed into history.

Journalists are not the blood thirsty heartless fiends many observers believe them to be. In the final analysis our role is to get the most accurate information to as many people in the shortest time and through the most efficient channel.

Scoops and exclusives are mere tools used to keep journalists on their toes, to keep competitors alert for the latest news story, for an angle that can be exploited, played up and splashed on the front page, all of which culminates in one of the most democratic information delivery systems ever devised by human kind.

In this well oiled assembly line, from the creation and collection of news, to verification of facts, editing and layout, printing and delivery to newsstands and door steps, the role of the official public relations department is to delay and postpone the inevitable. These departments fight a rear guard action, put a positive spin on events, polish and trim facts, confuse “the enemy” and scatter his resources, but all to no avail. The truth always finds a way and comes out, later at times rather than sooner.

People can overcome tragedy, time heals all wounds, but what people cannot forgive or get over is the mere appearance that something was being kept from them, that the true size and scope of a tragedy is somehow being played down and hidden from them. This is where the democratic information gathering system plays its role, to give voice to these frustrations, to gather every shred of information, to tell the truth.s

If we can learn anything from tragedy is that death makes no distinction between one community or another, between one social class or another, it will come for us all eventually. The final irony of this life is that at its end we become truely equal. For all who died as a result of the colapse of the wall under construction at the airport, their ordeal is over, ours is just begun. Our choice now is do we want to build a better, freer, more transparent society, or one that is spoon-fed “safe” information cleared by PR censors.