Trying to figure out when public officials are mistaken, when they are being coy or when they are just flat out lying is always a challenge. That's compounded when public officials are unwilling to correct the wrong information they have initially provided, or withhold public information until it is wrestled away by newspapers.

We had our challenges in 2007.

Last April newspapers in Ohio began misreporting the cause of death of Jeremy Greene, a Fort Drum soldier killed in Afghanistan. Greene's mother said she was told that her son died while soldiers were cleaning their weapons and one accidentally discharged, a fabrication that went uncorrected by the Army for five months.

During a court-martial of the soldier who actually shot and killed Greene, the truth came out — it was Greene himself who had secretly put ammo in his buddy's weapon during what amounted to horseplay in their barracks.

Yet, even then the Army did not announce the results of its court-martial, which in turn would have corrected the initial erroneous reports. Instead, the Watertown Daily Times and the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News, acting on tips from family members of the deceased, requested that the public affairs office at Fort Drum reveal the truth.

And so five months after Greene was shot dead and one month after Xavier L. Tafoya pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter, the correct information — horseplay and all — was finally published in this paper.

Another fact was revealed as well: Years after its mea culpas over providing the public wrong information about the Iraqi army's capture of Jessica Lynch and the friendly fire death of Pat Tillman, the Army still hasn't figured out how to make all of its PAO officers understand that the temporary fog of war shouldn't result in a permanent fog of information.

In December, Fort Drum Army Chaplain Col. James R. White told Watertown residents during a community breakfast that the military has not fully collected information about soldier suicides related to post-combat stress. But he added that Fort Drum's suicide numbers are lower than the national average. Is he right? Hope so.

But consider this: Four days before White's talk, a Fort Drum soldier killed himself in Lowville and neither the military nor the Lewis County Sheriff's Department announced the violent death of this young man. Again acting on a tip, the Times was able to confirm the information, but the death of a soldier — and the fact that a murderer wasn't still on the loose — went unpublished for almost a week.

(A deputy told the Times that the suicide was related to the soldier's drinking and marital problems and not his deployment last year. Well, I guess that explains that ...)

Some officials think the public is served best if it knows less. Sackets Harbor School board Chairman James L. Lawrence declined repeated requests from this paper to name the three finalists for school superintendent even though announcing finalists is a practice common throughout the state.

(I recently learned an interesting fact about Lawrence: when he wears his county highway superintendent hat, he's one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet; but when he wears his school board president hat and is asked a question he doesn't like, he uses language that would get the average Sackets Harbor student suspended for a day.)

In Lisbon, school Superintendent Erin Woods headed for the tall grass for two days before the Times printed the name of one of her teachers, who is being investigated for allegedly having sex with a student.

I called Woods to go over the allegations an anonymous caller was making about teacher Christel Gravlin, figuring Woods would appreciate a heads-up from the managing editor about a pending public relations crisis in her district. No call back. I called the next day. No call back.

I'll be interested to see what kind of crisis manager she is as more information is revealed about how quickly she responded to community allegations that a teacher was boozing and snoozing with a student.

The past year saw dozens of people climb into the bunker after a private Family Court document was posted on the Jefferson County Web Board. No one expected the administrators of the Web site to tell the truth, but it was surprising to learn that Justice isn't just blind, she is also mute. To this day the entire legal system — Family Court, local lawyers, the state judiciary — won't confirm which attorney's husband did the dirty deed.

(Was it the husband of attorney Ruthanne Sanchez? We can't be sure, but if she ever returns a phone call — or stops running the other way when she sees one of our reporters — we'll write an update.)

And one day we'll also tell everyone about that audit of the Ogdensburg Free Academy regarding a World Wrestling Entertainment fundraiser and alleged forgery by a former school district official. The Times has filed Freedom of Information requests and is now preparing a lawsuit because the school board is hiding the audit in a lock box.

(For the uneducated, professional wrestling features steroid-fueled athletes acting out misogynistic, jingoistic and phallicistic story lines with characters suffering from delusions of grandeur, sexual addictions and paranoia. In real life, many of these performers beat their wives and die young from testosterone overload. Yet, if you ask the WWE to define evil, it points to OFA.)

This newspaper's 2008 New Year's resolution looks strikingly similar to our 2007 resolution, which, not coincidentally, is a mirror image of our resolutions for the past 127 or so years.

That is, we will not simply pass along self-serving press releases from government and politicians and mislead you into thinking that you know all there is to know. We will continue to dig, prod, push and likely annoy. That's because freedom of the press doesn't mean information comes free or easy. Getting it often requires a lot of heavy lifting and money.

Let the games continue.

Bob Gorman is the managing editor of the Times.