What do we do when the news itself is unpalatable? 

My phone rang one evening.

It was a prominent maggid shiur, and he was very upset. We’d run an article about a politician and detailed the positions he’d taken over the years, including some completely antithetical to halachah.

Why did you include that information, the maggid shiur wanted to know. This is a publication for people who strive to keep their homes and minds pure. How can you go there?

It was a disturbing call and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

We hadn’t used explicit language — we never do — but by casually mentioning the policy, had we crossed a line? Had our fingers slipped off a vital moral compass?

Those of us involved in planning, writing, and editing the current affairs segment of the magazine make it a priority to stay on top of the news. This team keeps a constant finger on the names, the issues, the underlying trends and long-term movement along with the facts, figures, and headlines.

And then we try to translate all that into a package that is enlightening and also appropriate for our readership.

It can get tricky. The news cycle includes wars and peace treaties, natural disasters and election campaigns, power struggles and backroom deals, economic developments and knotty legislation. It also includes foul language, personal scandals, and legally sanctioned (not to mention socially celebrated) immorality.

We’ve developed a pretty good sense of how to create a news package addressing the items on the first list. But what do you do about the items on the second one?

This is a publication that is, by definition, curated. It’s built expressly for people with specific standards. But it’s also built for people who want an accurate picture of the news that may very well affect their lives, their decisions, the country they inhabit. It’s not a lifestyle magazine that suffices with music updates, inspiration, and great stories. Our readers want and expect an up-to-date dose of current reporting every week — one that belongs in their intentionally sheltered homes. So what do we do when the news itself is unpalatable?

The easy way out is to ignore news that’s too disturbing. The harder way is to tease out the strands that are most relevant to our readers and figure out how to present them — how to phrase the individual words and convey the bigger concepts — in a package that delivers the information without crossing our lines.

When warranted, we’ve taken that second approach. If the story is important, if it has real consequences for our community, we will do our best to report it — sensitively, with careful phrasing, with the guidance of our rabbinic advisors. And we’re grateful to the rabbanim and gedolim who have helped guide us over the years in this very difficult balancing act.

But there’s still that reality, the fact that the more we read, the more we’re exposed, the less shocked we become. And while we use technological filters as well as our own red lines and mental blacklists to limit our exposure, just following the news cycle dulls our sensitivity to words, phrases, crimes, or moral failings that could have made us cringe a decade or two ago.

I want to hope that with the right guidance, the right calculations, and lots of prayer, we can continue to report news and current affairs while keeping to our — and your — standards. The deteriorating moral climate is going to make that harder and harder. But knowing that you hold us to a high standard is a compliment and obligation, and we’re committed to meeting that standard every week.

—Shoshana Friedman

Managing Editor

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 884)