What happened to the soldiers’ stories?
This newspaper and most others around the country took notice of the Pentagon’s announcement Wednesday of 11 more GI deaths in Iraq and the possibility that this month’s death toll could exceed peak casualty numbers of nearly two years ago.
But Robert Best, a reader, was among several in the past several months who asked why the Tribune stopped writing articles about the life and death of every U.S. soldier killed in Iraq.
“Here is a complaint that hopefully is not a partisan issue,” Best wrote. “During the first two years or so of the war in Iraq, the Tribune published on a regular basis … stories containing obituaries of sorts of the American troops who died in Iraq. Usually, a single story might contain stories about three or four soldiers who had died, with background information on them and quotes from family members and/or friends.
“While the soldiers were from different geographic regions of the country; represented different races, religions and ethnic groups; and were of differing age, gender and marital status, they shared a common bond in that they made the ultimate sacrifice for our country. I can’t remember reading a single story without thinking to myself that this soldier was just an ordinary kid from an everyday walk of life.”
Best, whose 22-year-old son is completing his third deployment to Iraq, said those stories “put an important face on the war.”
Best did not raise it as a partisan issue, but many readers believe it is.
Some complain that prominently displaying the stories and photos of dead soldiers–2,786 killed in Iraq, 280 in Afghanistan as of Thursday –is an attempt to undermine the Bush administration.
Others complain that not putting the number of dead soldiers and their obituaries/stories on the front page or in another prominent place in the newspaper is a sign of a pro-Bush administration bias and an effort to minimize the cost of the war in the American public’s mind.
The truth is that there are still many stories about fallen soldiers in the newspaper. Recently the paper published a Washington Post story about the first female West Point graduate to die in Iraq. Within a few days, Tribune reporters also wrote about two young men, high school friends who grew up near Peoria, who died in Iraq within 24 hours of each other. Later a story of their family and friends mourning was on the front page.
But some time ago, the paper stopped trying to record the details of every soldier’s death. Late in 2004 and into 2005, as the fighting in Iraq increased, the competition for space to cover the war news also increased. Soldier obituary/stories were often delayed and then they began to back up until they were weeks and even months behind, recalls foreign-national news editor Mark Jacob.
The effort to track down and interview family and friends of soldiers from all over the country became overwhelming in terms of staff and space in the newspaper. Finally, Managing Editor James O’Shea decided to scale back and concentrate only on fallen soldiers from Illinois and the region.
Also, in Sunday’s Perspective, the editor of that section during the first 21/2 years of the war used the pages to record the photo of every dead soldier on or near holidays such as Veterans Day, Memorial Day and the 4th of July.
This year, a different set of Perspective editors thought that photo presentation had lost its impact and on Memorial Day weekend published only the names of those killed along with small head-and-shoulder drawings of the Illinois dead. There was virtually no mention of Iraq in Perspective on the 4th of July weekend and, they said, no decision has been made on future Iraq memorials.
Since Best and other readers raised the question, however, there have been significant changes within the newspaper.
Recently the foreign desk created an Iraq Digest to take note of developments and to update readers on the death toll of American military men and women. The digest sometimes includes the number of injured American soldiers, now some 21,077.
The number of Iraqis who have died and been injured in war-related violence are only estimates, often controversial, but those figures too are worth their own account.
The digest should also list the number of allied military casualties in Iraq. And the newspaper should also regularly note the number of American and allied deaths and wounded in Afghanistan.
In addition, there is another change on the Chicago Tribune’s Web site that now connects readers with online memorials, links to newspaper obituaries around the country and even family photo albums, through an affiliated Web site called legacy.com.
You access this service at chicagotribune.com/soldierslost.
