The correct answer to Question No. 107

The 116 written questions answered by the 500 people in the jury pool for the September 2008 kidnapping and robbery trial of O.J. Simpson ranged from the obvious to the tedious to the silly.

We obtained copies of the completed questionnaires after the state Supreme Court ruled in our favor that they are part of the public record.

I'll say this about the seated jurors based on a single question: They were fairly savvy.

The question in question was No. 107: "Do you think the news media always reports the truth?" (Never mind the subject-verb disagreement since "media" are plural.)

Only one of the 12 answered in the affirmative, and she qualified it by saying, "Mostly — yes. They should and usually did not have any bias issues." The 11 others checked, no.

One lady explained, "they report what they think is the truth at that time."

"They report on facts given them, which may be wrong," said a guy who reported he got news from newspapers, television and radio.

Others mentioned the need to "sell" the news, attract viewers and sensatinalism.

Most claimed to get their news from television, and, of course, none of those who made the cut said they followed the O.J. case "very closely."

Yes, it is as longtime Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee wrote in his autobiography "A Good Life," sometimes "our sources lie" or may be "ill-informed, misinformed, or incompletely informed."

When we in the press admit this, it can come back to haunt us, as Bradlee learned when he read Richard Nixon's memoirs in which he gave his take on the post coverage of Watergate:

"That it was a dangerous form of journalism should have been understood by the Post, whose editor, Ben Bradlee, has since observed: 'We don't print the truth. We print what we know, what people tell us. So we print lies.'"

But that is not the end of the matter. As Bradlee oberserves, the truth does eventually emerge. We may have to stop reporting and start writing today. But there is another edition tomorrow. Another chance for the truth to come out.

So, dear reader, be skeptical, but also be patient.

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Read my take on jury questionnaires in my Sunday column. It may not be what you assume.