"...the truth, at the end of time
losing faith makes a crime..."
-Nightwish, Sleeping Sun
Sometimes it really bothered him, his inability to tell an untruth. To be able to lie his way out of a cornered spot would have saved him a lot of trouble over the years. However, from a very young age, it had been beaten into him (often literally) by the adults around him to always speak the truth, and not to 'make up stories'. The indoctrination had stuck.
Despite this, he'd made a career of telling stories. He'd more or less invented the profession himself. Journalism was all about telling the truth, but sometimes you had to bend it just a little to make it readable. A paper has to sell, after all.
Every time he had to tweak a story by carefully editing it, leaving out small details or adding his own speculations, he felt a twinge in his gut. It felt like he had committed a minor sin, as if he had cursed in a holy building or something like that. Nothing as bad as a big sin, like denying a god, because it wasn't lying per say. It was simply editing.
He wasn't a religious man, but he knew he would always have faith in the truth.