The general public knows what and whom it likes or dislikes, loves or hates, reveres or reviles.

Polls generally reflect the notion that newspapers and reporters rate somewhere near the edge of the abyss, generally down there looking into the depths of hell alongside with the likes of pushy TV reporters, smarmy politicians (an oxymoron?) and used car salesmen.

While I find no need to apologize for my profession and know that there are good and honorable people in it, I remain amazed by the reaction of friends who routinely disparage the media in my presence.

When that happens, I say, “Wait a sec, I’m one of those guys you’re bashing.”

And their reaction always is, “Not really. Your paper isn’t like the others.”

To most of my friends, it may well mean that I’m not the politically correct, left-leaning type that to them typifies the average reporter or newspaper editor.

Well, that may or may not be so. I’m hardly a flaming liberal, but I certainly strive for objective, down-the-middle journalism in the news columns of this paper.

I still cringe when I hear someone refer to a “member of the media” as if there is some sort of exclusive club with secret handshakes and passwords. There’s not. And I know that newspaper men and women come in all different political stripes, from far left to dead center to far right.

As one who attended college in the late 1960s/early 1970s, I earned my news spurs covering anti-war protests and sit-ins at Michigan State. But I learned journalism from a generation of journalists who had primarily come to maturity in the 1950s. Their mantra was one of objective reporting.

I told a PR person recently that I’m a dinosaur and if that means adhering to objective reporting and editing, then I’ll plead guilty to that charge.

We didn’t take stands, at least not in the news columns. We were not into advocacy journalism, at least not those of us who were journalism majors, but I did note an influx of poly-sci types who perhaps regarded newspapers as a vehicle to further some political goal.

Later, a few years after we were out of school, Woodward and Bernstein’s coverage of Watergate made journalism a hot profession, at least for a while.

But not every day in this business—like any business—is exciting.

Admittedly, we are a pro-business newspaper. We say—and we really do practice this—that our mission is to tell the stories of successful businesses in our vast coverage region with an eye toward helping other business owners learn from those stories.

We will mark 15 years in business in April and do believe that we have become a voice for suburban business, covering that news and those issues and trends that our two large daily papers don’t have space for or interest in and that might also go unnoticed by the various area dailies.

I’ve discovered over the years that people take a proprietary interest in the media and somehow regard media—whether newspapers, TV stations or radio stations—as somehow belonging to the public.

Of course, that’s not the case. Many newspapers are privately owned, almost like mom-and-pop operations, while others are owned by the likes of Gannett, Tribune Co. or others. Ditto for radio stations, which run the spectrum from the rural 1000-watter to mega-stations like WGN or WBBM, and TV stations, some of which are corporately owned or still held by their parent network.

For example, we sometimes get calls alleging that a company has been unfair to the caller or to a group and what could we do about that? We’re asked to tell the “truth” about so-and-so, but one man’s truth is another man’s lie, and when it gets down to “he said, she said,” then the truth may not be what someone wants to hear. Sadly, we can do little with limited reportorial resources. Other people seem to think that we should run whatever story they want, regardless of whether not it has anything to do with suburban business coverage.

Protecting the public’s right to know is one of the tenets of our secular faith, the U.S. Constitution. Freedom of the press is something we should treasure every day along with freedom of speech.

Newspapers, while hardly perfect, still inform and entertain. So why all the hate?

Thomas Jefferson, one of my favorite presidents, said it best: “Were I too have to choose whether to have a government without newspapers or newspapers without government, I would unhesitatingly choose the latter.”

I hope most of our readers would understand this, if not agree.

Contact editor Don Kopriva at 630-428-8788 or at dkopriva@thebusinessledger.com