He would start six sentences and not finish any of them. He knew this. I knew this. Finally, he would throw up his hands and say, “Just make me look good.”

For some unexplained reason, I thought of the mayor after a recent tornado warning woke me up in the middle of the night. After the warning expired, I tossed and turned, obsessing over a phrase that popped into my mind.

Reporters should be a watchdog for their community, not a lapdog for their sources.

The fact that officials want the newspaper to make them look good is not a poor reflection on them. None of us wants to look bad in public.

But the truth doesn’t always make everyone look good. And while reporters have an obligation to be fair, their goal should be to tell the truth without pussyfooting around an issue.

Quality reporting hinges on getting information that public officials don’t always want to give up.

A straight-shooting public official is a rare godsend.

Many officials try to sidestep a difficult issue by answering a phantom question that nobody asked, or by diluting their response with vague language or gobbledygook. Some attack the interviewer or split hairs with the acuity of a skilled attorney.

The people asking the questions don’t have to be jerks, but they must be unrelenting in the pursuit for answers. That might involve asking the same question over and over again in a different way. It might require asking the source why he won’t give a straight answer. It might involve having the gall to report that a public official refuses to answer at all.

All journalists should approach their beats with the well-worn journalistic adage: “If your mama says she loves you, check it out.”

We should question everything with a skeptical eye, including conventional wisdom, which so often shrouds falsehoods. For inspiration, we could consider the great scientists and explorers who had the courage to question accepted thinking about the Earth and the universe. Or consider the religious leaders blessed with the wisdom to discern between scriptural truth and Southern culture.

The facts might not be popular with all public officials — or even readers — but that should not deter us from asking the hard questions and reporting the truth.

So my late-night, storm-induced hope for 2012 is that we will live up to our duty to be a community watchdog.

Executive Editor Scott Morris can be reached at 256-740-5721 or scott.morris@ TimesDaily.com.