Journalists are trained to provide “balance” in every story by dutifully presenting opposing viewpoints. This is a solid philosophy in principle, but sometimes such an effort to reach for “fairness” reaches ridiculous proportions.

Take, for example, the recent Honolulu Star-Advertiser story about a man who rushed through airport security, only to die in the melee afterward. His death definitely should be investigated to the fullest extent possible, and I’m not trying to diminish at all that outcome (or comment upon the amount of force used).

What I will opine upon, though, is the way this person has been characterized in local media reports. The Star-Advertiser, for instance, had an odd juxtaposition of details about the 48-year-old man, Charles Kosi:

• He was a “very interesting guy, nice guy, smart,” said his former public defender, Alexander Silvert. Silvert added that “the incident” seemed out of character for Kosi. KHON contributed this, from his brother: “Charles Kosi loved his family. He was trying to return home to his family.”

• Yet also in the Star-Advertiser story, reporter Rob Shikina wrote that Kosi had been sentenced to more than a decade in prison for methamphetamine-related crime, had been released and then sent back to prison. Oh, and he had 35 state convictions on his record “for a variety of offenses,” including assault on a police officer, reckless driving and car theft.

Of course, people are complex, and they usually are not all good or bad. But this kind of token quoting in a veil of “fairness” is akin to the neighbor in the serial-killer story who always seems to chip in something like, “He was such a nice, quiet, unassuming guy.”

For reasons unknown, the Star-Advertiser declined to include in this story that Kosi’s brother, Daniel, is serving life in prison without parole for murder, and that Daniel Kosi went so far as biting the leg of a Star-Bulletin reporter who was taking a photo of him in the courtroom. That reporter’s name? Gary Kubota, who also happened to write one of the Star-Advertiser follow-up stories without mentioning in print his painful connection to the Kosi family.

Label-failing in politics: Labels, like the “nice guy” thing, give us outsiders a way to quickly assess situations without much effort, especially when consuming news. Operating with such haste, though, also might make us prone to false impressions, leading to repeated poor decisions.

Such shallowness seems most evident in the political sphere, where many people, I suspect, look at a political party affiliation as the primary shortcut toward forming an opinion on any civic issue, without spending much time reflecting upon what’s really at stake.

State Rep. Beth Fukumoto raised some of these real-life complexities recently when publicly pondering whether she should change her political designation from Republican to Democrat. “Democrats” control politics in Hawaii arguably more so than any other state, with all federal positions, all state senators and almost all of the state House under that single political label.

Only some of these politicians, considering their policy views, might be labeled as Republican in other states, or something else. The important part of this story for me is not what label Fukumoto uses, but what power that label has in characterizing and controlling her.

She claims that Republicans in the Legislature and in state party leadership sought to censure her “for raising concerns about the treatment of women and minorities by politicians in power” and also for trying to work at times with Democrats.

Such a significant charge – of state Republicans putting their party over service to all of their constituents, by a political insider – should be taken seriously and investigated in-depth by voters, especially considering the issue-adverse response by former Minority Leader Gene Ward: “Beth picked a fight with her party, her president, and her caucus, and she lost.”

Demanding more information, not less: Journalists, in turn, need to dig beneath easy-to-apply labels in pursuit of more nuanced truths. Ultimately, they are the ones responsible for the veracity of what they publish or air, even if some prominent figure says it. Sometimes, restraint – in order to gather more of the facts – is the better course.

For example, as skeptical as I am of the Hawaii Tourism Authority and its increasingly secretive practices, I also think state Sen. Glenn Wakai needs more evidence on the table before taking his case against HTA to the public, especially considering his conflict of interest involving his wife and the group.

According to a story by the Star-Advertiser’s Kevin Dayton, Wakai says his wife, Miki, quit her “brand manager” position at the authority after she discovered “suspicious” activities in the organization. What those were, we don’t know. The Wakais aren’t saying, but that hasn’t stopped the legislator from criticizing the organization at public meetings and in the media, but then also declining to go on camera to elaborate.

HTA board chair Rick Fried said in the Star-Advertiser: “Not until (the recent newspaper) article did Sen. Wakai ever bring up these accusations to HTA’s attention. Not in the public hearings, not in the private meetings and not in the hundreds of emails that Sen. Wakai has sent to HTA.”

We all benefit from having more facts, not more labels or conjecture. In that regard, Fried seems to make a reasonable request: “There is this vague allegation of some impropriety, but we don’t know what it is, so we couldn’t possibly respond. But if he gives us evidence, we will immediately get on it and look at (it).”