April 06, 2004, 08:53 PM
An Affront To Decency And Decent Journalism
The Chronicle's Lucas Wall penned a story a few days ago about a soldier from Houston, Leroy Sandoval Jr., who was killed in Iraq.
That story is now the subject of some controversy. Before telling you why, I'm going to reprint this excerpt:
Walters said his family did not want to discuss their sentiments about the war or the political debate surrounding President Bush's failure to find weapons of mass destruction, one of the prime reasons cited for invading Iraq last year.Steve Walters is the young man's stepfather.“Right now we strictly want to honor Leroy,” he said.
There are a number of ways to interpret that excerpt. Certainly, one fair way to interpret it is that the family was upset with the President, but didn't want to talk politics so soon after Sandoval's death.
Unfortunately, the opposite is true.
The family called KSEV radio earlier, and expressed great disappointment that Lucas Wall included any reference to the President. They are actually supporters of the President and the war, do not think that Sandoval died in vain, but wanted Wall to concentrate on Sandoval and not the politics of Iraq in his piece about their dead loved one.
So, at the very best, Wall mischaracterized what they told him (since they say they did discuss their sentiments about the war, but asked that no reference be made in a story honoring Sandoval). At the worst, Wall was determined to work his political beliefs into a story that didn't need it.
It gets worse. The assistant managing editor of the Comical actually called during the show, and said he was sorry if the story upset the family. After being taken apart by the Sandoval's 16-year-old sister on the radio, all he could do was argue with Dan Patrick that a lot of people were opposed to the war (or some such). He never acknowledged that his writer mischaracterized the family, and he never seemed to grasp that the issue is not that some people do or do not support the Iraq war and the President, but that his writer got the story wrong (and perhaps wrongly inserted his political beliefs in the story).
Anyone could understand if the writer made an honest mistake, although a notation should be made at the very least on the corrections page. For that newspaper's assistant managing editor not even to be able to grasp the journalistic issue at stake is horrible.
That's what we're up against. That's why we're here.
A version of this post originally appeared at PubliusTX.net
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