Robert Mulder: Real news doesn’t come easy

In the Dec. 7 letter “Legit news sources?” the writer made it clear that The N&O, The Washington Post, New York Times and NPR were not legitimate sources of news. People who believe this sort of nonsense would most likely believe a news story that astronauts could land safely on the sun at night.

I had the fortunate opportunity and privilege to serve a two-year term (2014 and 2015) along 10 other folks on The News & Observer reader panel. We had multiple opportunities to talk with and question the publisher, editors, columnists and reporters. We also were asked to comment on format changes to the paper. It was an eye-opening experience.

Writing and researching stories is time-consuming and exacting work. Yes, mistakes are sometimes made, but nobody is perfect. All the media outlets mentioned above print a wide variety of opinion editorials and letters to the editor that range from a broad spectrum of conservative to liberal. This is how it should be.

Nothing is more important in our representative democracy than freedom of the press, and no one should impede the latter’s ability to investigate and report on the events that affect our daily lives.

This story was originally published December 14, 2016 at 8:11 PM with the headline "Robert Mulder: Real news doesn’t come easy."