Journalists seem to be rallying amid a Watergate-like swell of enthusiasm for the craft of truth-pursuit.

Yet readers need to keep pressure on our media sources, especially local journalists, to not just raise issues but fully resolve them. In other words, focus on the finish of the story as opposed to just the entry, or the blizzard of distractions from all things Agent Orange.

Some recent local examples where at least one more journalistic question still needs to be asked:

An “impromptu” first stop in Syria? I’ve been waiting for other local journalists to really latch onto Civil Beat’s reporting that U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard didn’t just randomly cross paths at, say the local farmers market, with Syrian dictator (and all-around horrible human being) Bashar Assad.

Reporter Chad Blair went to primary-source documents, including travel forms Gabbard filed with the U.S. House Ethics Committee, to discover that Gabbard actually met with Assad just 45 minutes after landing in Damascus, which was followed by hanging out with Assad’s wife, for another hour, and then another hour-long meeting with a state-appointed cleric who has threatened to activate suicide bombers in the U.S.

So Gabbard really expects us to believe that she flew all of the way to Syria and had no plans to meet with these shadowy people but just happened to go to them first, right after landing? She continues to avoid addressing this issue directly, offering distractions such as shallow comparisons to Patsy Mink and Dwight Eisenhower as well as paying back “the costs” of her trip. What she really needs to do, though, is come clean, and journalists should not give up on this story until she does.

Why should we negotiate full access to public business and full accountability for public officials? Deep down in an otherwise straightforward report about ongoing U.S.-Japanese relations, by Civil Beat’s Washington correspondent Kirstin Downey, came this jaw-clenching passage:

This kind of bartering over ordinary access and attribution to pedestrian insights from public officials should send shock waves into every democratic muscle in your body. These people work for us. We pay them, through our taxes, to do these jobs. They are not doing us a favor by sharing their knowledge. That’s what they are getting paid for, and they should be fully accountable for whatever they say on these issues, because that is how we assess if they are worth the cost to employ them or not.

Civil Beat’s reporters, and other journalists in similar situations, represent us best not by serving up this kind of spoon-fed pablum but by standing up to such demands. This is an uncomfortable act to do, of course, but my recommendation would have been for Downey to go to the briefing, document which news organizations kowtowed to this arrangement, and then publicly state an unwillingness to go along with this deal, which in no way serves public interests.

Every self-respecting journalist (or at least Downey) then should have left the room, and these antidemocratic bureaucrats could have held this briefing for empty chairs. Instead of the modest line gained in the story, Downey could have written a sidebar about journalistic access in the new administration and tainted news organizations that trade their core ideology for an easy story.

What happened to those dogs? I asked in last week’s column for readers to help return our gaze from the federal circus to the local issues deserving of more attention. Of the many lingering and unresolved stories suggested, including several important ones raised by reader Curtis Kropar, I was particularly surprised by the negligence of journalists to follow to the end the story noted by reader “Happyandyouknowit.”

It was about a homeless man, Cris Aliado, who was attacked and killed on the banks of Kalihi Stream by two pitbull-mix dogs from a nearby business called Containerland. KITV said the return of the dogs to the owner, without punishment of any sort, “raised eyebrows.” The dogs were found at the scene. They reportedly had bit other people before. A search for Aliado on Civil Beat produced no related results. The Star-Advertiser’s coverage wrapped up with a shrug of an editorial, noting “We hope (the dogs are) properly secured.”

I’m trying to imagine the community reaction if this mauling had been of a charismatic little child, just playing down by the river after school, instead of a homeless man washing his clothes. I’m trying to imagine the argument for allowing these dogs to remain in this community. I’m trying to understand why journalists throughout the community paid such little attention to such a major community-safety issue.

Dogs that bite are dangerous weapons. Owners should be fully responsible for their “pets.” If you want to keep killer dogs, and if those beasts injure or kill another human being, a civil society would demand repercussions beyond a fence patch. Journalists can make our community better by putting a focus on such jarring injustices.

Aliado wasn’t a cute kid anymore, but he was a person, who deserved better. Local journalists should finish that story, too.