During the second course of the evening - the pasta one - at the annual Orange County Press Club Gala, journalist Jean Pasco presented the Sky Dunlap award to a former OC Register, current North County Times staffer Jeff Rowe. If any are unfamiliar with Sky Dunlap, you're not alone. He has no wikipedia page and as near as we can remember, Pasco said he was a journalist in Orange County in the first half of the last century.

Anyway, Rowe accepted his award. Then he relayed a story about interviewing a Hiroshima survivor on the 60th anniversary of the bombing. The survivor was 14 at the time of the blast. He said to the man that Japan had lost Iwo Jima and other fronts. They were nearly defeated and yet there was no urging on the part of the citizens to surrender or change course. The man, according to Rowe, offered,"Because our newspapers told us we were winning."

There was a barely audible gasp in the otherwise dead silent room.