When the president is talking war, writing about peace can be a risky business. Those can be fighting words.
That’s what the Sentinel learned after covering a pro-America rally a week ago at the Lake Eola band shell in Orlando.
“I shouldn’t be surprised to find that a story that supports the President and our military troops is relegated to page A13,” Michelle Fabrizio wrote in an electronic-mail message, adding, ” . . . I’m sure that the editors and writers rubbed their hands with glee” at the opportunity to place antiwar news on the front page the week before.
She was right, of course. Journalists do get satisfaction from reporting antiwar news — but no more so than reporting any other news. Their concern is to get it right, whatever the topic.
She was mistaken, though, about the relative treatment of the pro-America rally and the antiwar demonstrations of the week before. In that earlier case, millions of people demonstrated in more than 600 cities and towns around the globe, and the sheer magnitude of that event — hundreds of times the size of the Lake Eola crowd — propelled that onto the front page.
Accompanying that coverage, on Page A22, was the account of a simultaneous antiwar demonstration in Orlando.
A week later, the account of the pro-America rally appeared next to the continuation of an article about President Bush crafting a resolution to submit to the United Nations. The local rally, on Page A13, was nine pages farther forward than the antiwar rally of the previous week. The article, longer than that of the antiwar rally, was illustrated with two color photographs — one more than accompanied the antiwar account.
There may have been a slight imbalance in the coverage, but it did not favor the antiwar folks.
Fabrizio, though, wasn’t the only reader who assumed that the Sentinel was aligned against the president it endorsed. Several people wrote or called, suggesting that there was something downright un-American about people questioning the plan to go to war with Iraq — and about a newspaper publicizing such protests.
That was a bit troubling. The right to question the government is one of the primary characteristics that sets the United States apart from totalitarian countries where no dissent is allowed. Even peace advocates might regard that as worth fighting to defend.
It’s not as though this nation had never gotten involved in a war when it shouldn’t — nor that protests hadn’t helped to set that situation right.
The people who oppose a war with Iraq have raised points worthy of debate:
- The potential loss of life — on both sides.
- The ongoing cost to an already-ailing economy.
- The prospect of the United States enforcing a United Nations resolution that the world body, itself, seems reluctant to back.
- The thin evidence that ties Iraq with al-Qaeda, the military’s original target.
Raising those issues doesn’t indicate a lack of patriotism — nor a lack of support or concern for the troops asked to do the fighting. Quite the contrary.
The United States may end up invading Iraq, but to do so without public understanding of the costs and benefits involved would be folly. The newspaper should play a key role in that understanding.
