Sometimes, news and rumors of news carry equal pressure

In the end, readers will judge for themselves both the truth of what authorities say and the merits of what they don't.

In an ideal world, rumors would never figure into the events and issues we report. Our business should be to deal in facts and decision making based on them.

But daily journalism -- and in the online world, 24-hour journalism -- is hardly an ideal world. Sometimes, rumor works into our reporting whether we like it or not. Last week, it figured into two quite different stories.

The first began with urgent whispers that began sweeping through the Prospect High School community and reached our ears late on a Sunday night. The theme: A student had threatened to bring a gun to the school the next day because of taunts he was experiencing.

That's a theme that's all too familiar and frightening on today's front pages, and parents were understandably concerned. It was certainly a story parents would want clarified before sending their kids to school, but it wasn't easy to confirm late on a Sunday night. We went directly to the village police who would say only that a student had been questioned, the rumor determined to be exaggerated and the schools were "dealing with" the situation.

Not a lot to go on, but enough to give the community some idea that authorities were addressing the issue. We carried a brief item in Monday morning's paper. How could we not? Parents who had heard the rumors needed to know they were being dealt with. Parents who had not heard them would surely consider us derelict if something did occur at school and we had withheld a warning.

On Monday, we were able to sort things out in more detail and we reported the following day that school officials had heard of a student's threats, determined they were not serious but had removed the student from school to help ensure that the interests of all concerned, the student included, were protected.

It's the nature of rumor that the story didn't end there. Often people focus more on what lies between the lines than on that which is in them, and in this case it took a polite scolding from the principal, sent in an e-mail to all parents insisting that the rumors "have gone far beyond any actual concern," before things would settle down.

In the case of Dennis Hastert's tenure in office, it would take a radio interview this week before rumors would be calmed that the former House speaker from Plano was about to retire from Congress and force a special election to replace him. That story, simmering ever since the Republicans lost control of the House last year, exploded on the blog world last week with reports that Hastert aides were saying an announcement was imminent, reports that Hastert would not directly deny.

Even his radio interview left open the possibility of an early exit by Hastert, who promised, as he has since announcing he would not seek re-election in 2008, to stay "as long as I can get things done for the district," not exactly a clarifying vow to finish his term.

Hastert's plans, certainly, have important implications in his district. The very root of the rumors of his departure was that he was trying to time it to ensure the greatest possibility Republicans would retain his seat. So, we need to report them as authoritatively and as immediately as we can, just as we strive to report as authoritatively and immediately as possible suggestions of an imminent threat at a local school. Unfortunately, neither case can definitively dispel the effect of public whispering; in the end, readers will judge for themselves both the truth of what authorities say and the merits of what they don't.

Not an ideal approach, I know. In an imperfect world, doing all we can as journalists to limit the scope of rumor may be the next best alternative.