Chapter 118

The following day, after breakfast, I sent Charles off to work with carefully worded good-luck wishes. I’m sure David and Theo had heard everything that the other alphas had been accused of through work. But I wasn’t sure that we could trust either of them yet, and I didn’t want to reveal Charles’ true feelings in front of them.

After Charles left, it was my turn. The previous night, I’d stayed up late working on my portion of the story, sending it off to Wendy for submission. By the time I arrived at work, our article should be back from the panel and ready for its first round of edits.

The whole way to work, I thought over what exactly Charles and I were going to do to prove these other alphas weren’t guilty of the type of corruption that they were accused of. After having met some of the alphas in Charles’ company, and then meeting Governor Kruck, I was positive that the corruption in the government was stemming directly from the government.

It seemed like horrible people were placed in all levels of government where they could be in charge of others. It seemed unlikely to me that the alpha’s were pulling the strings behind all of those other powerful people.

The governor was a far more hideous person than any alpha I’d met. And he didn’t even try to hide how awful he treated other people. Despite wanting to help Charles, I really knew nothing about the alphas. My impression of them as a group was simply my trust in Charles and his belief in all of them. So, how was I supposed to help?

By the time we reached the elevator to head up to the Palace Press, I’d decided on my course of action. I was going to focus on getting myself set up with the Palace Press. I needed to finish the stories that I was doing with Wendy and get them out of the way. If I wasn’t pitching my own stories, then I wouldn’t have a platform to share the alphas’ innocence.

When I arrived at the cubicle I’d been assigned, Wendy was already waiting for me, sitting in my chair. She had a frown on her face.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“The article has been sent back to us for revisions.”

“Revisions? Isn’t that normal?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Not line editing. They want content revision.”

“Why?” I demanded.

“It was your interview,” she said.

I fumbled, trying to think of what in my interviews could possibly warrant content revisions.

“Were they too long?” I finally asked. “I interviewed an awful lot of the families, after all.”

“Girl, no. It’s sensitivity.”

She got up and pointed me into the chair. My document was open on my screen. Nice to know that everybody had my passwords. Or at least one other person did. That made me feel so secure. I let my unspoken sarcasm drop away.

I already knew I was being watched. Someone having my password shouldn’t surprise me. After all, yesterday, I’d been trying to figure out whether or not Wendy was actually my friend or whether she was sent to spy on me. I guess that was fairly clear now.

The notes I read on the side of the article suggested that I needed to tone down or remove the interview with the middle-aged man and his wife.

“What is wrong with this interview?” I asked. “It was a differing opinion. That’s round reporting.”

She sighed and dragged over a rolling chair, sitting next to me and speaking in a low voice. “Okay, so you’re a new resident here, and you might not understand, but we don’t talk about Southhaven.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, it’s taboo. Southhaven’s existence is common knowledge, but it’s a subject that decent people don’t touch.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “it’s not like it’s shameful, is it?”

She said, “Well, it depends on how you look at it. The interview that you took doesn’t make Southhaven sound like these people just live outside of Packhaven. You make it sound like they’ve been forcibly removed and stuck in Southhaven by the government. And that wasn’t the case at all.”

“The government reimburses everyone who moves to Southhaven. They’re treated well. They’re given housing. They’re provided an opportunity to keep their jobs in Packhaven and have free transportation to and from someplace that is affordable.”

“Implying that the government should have put that same type of housing in where the municipal park went is insulting to everything that the government has actually done for the less fortunate.”

I drew back in confusion. “The man qualified his statement and said that it was a good thing that the community had a place to play. He just wished that the government would have kept those people in their longtime homes. “

I, of all people, fully understood how frustrating it was to be moved around the government without your permission. I bit back many comments. For all of Governor Allen’s assurances that my writing wasn’t going to be censored, I hadn’t even completed the story, and they were already cutting it apart.

“What am I supposed to do with the man’s opinion?” I asked.

Wendy shrugged. “It’s easy. You just paraphrase. It’s not like you’re changing his feelings. Just put in that he would have liked to have seen the city use that space for a different project or something. It’s the truth, but we don’t have to publish his untruths just because they’re in his quote.”

“Are they untruths, though?” I demanded. “I haven’t been to Southhaven. I can’t verify whether what this man said is true or not. I didn’t use half of what he told me about it for that very reason. I had to stick to just his opinions.”

She shook her head. “This sort of newbie mentality is going to get you stuck writing nothing but fluff pieces. If you want to continue to get out there and report anything meaningful, then you have to learn how to balance the Alpha King’s reputation along with the material that you use.”

“No one is going to pay for you to go out to Southhaven and investigate, so you can just put writing that story out of your head. And you’re free to use this source if you want. Just dial back his quotes and say that not everybody unanimously agreed that the space needed to be used for a municipal park. But the more you fight the system, the faster you’re going to find yourself doing meaningless work.”

I bit my lip and nodded. Suddenly, it became clear exactly where things stood, and much like Charles’s revelation yesterday at work, I was now having my own revelation. If Palace Press reporters were spinning the truth so that it always painted the Alpha King, the government, and Packhaven in a good light, then it might not be full-on censorship, but it was certainly a strong filter.

“I’ll get to work changing that right away,” I said.

Wendy smiled. “I’m glad to see you’re not going to try and fight the process. It’s just the way things go here. Don’t worry. You’ll quickly learn how to tell the truth without stepping on toes.”

“I guess I can see where the learning curve is. What will our next story be?”

“You’ll see at the next pitch meeting.”

“Does the palace press ever do anything live?” I asked.

She pressed her lips together thoughtfully. “Kind of. We always do live interviews with government officials and with the Alpha King, and sometimes, we do interviews for events or breaking news. But the people being interviewed are always screened.”

“How does that work?”

“For example, let’s say a building caught fire. There are actually two representatives from the Palace Press Panel who go out and pre-interview before sending screened people to the reporters for their full interviews.”

I kept all of my thoughts to myself on this one, as well. So, the Palace Press was actually screening to make sure that they didn’t put people with unfavorable viewpoints on the air. Yet somehow, they had all convinced themselves that this wasn’t censorship.

Call it what you will. The people of Packhaven and anyone else in Orlune who watched the official state news were getting a carefully curated sampling of what was really going on. It was close enough to the truth that no one would question. But they were definitely getting one-sided reporting.