It’s in America’s blood to welcome differing opinions — to agree to disagree.
That’s a cornerstone of democracy and smart politics, which President Bush clearly acknowledges. But some of his most devoted supporters may not see it that way.
They’re among the 300-plus readers who have telephoned and e-mailed their reaction to the Star-Telegram’s coverage of the war on terrorism during the past three weeks.
Generally, readers have approved of coverage and have sent encouragement and story tips to us as staff members have worked to stay on top and ahead of complex developments, locally and elsewhere. “Keep it up,” one reader wrote. “We need you.”
Readers have thanked us for printing full-page American flags, running lyrics to patriotic songs, explaining flag etiquette, listing where to call and write to join relief efforts, etc.
Readers have caught oversights. For example, when we ran a Page One photo of Afghans sacking the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, one reader legitimately complained: “You didn’t say in the caption that the [building] had been empty for years. This is inflammatory.”
Some readers have hated the headlines about clouded economic trends.
“You’re going to terrify the consumers,” one businessman said. “You need to be positive.”
We can’t sugarcoat reality, and there’s an “if” attached to the news anyway: If we allow the attacks to intimidate us, the murderers will win, so don’t be intimidated — live as fully as possible.
The sharpest reaction has come from readers who say that they are Bush loyalists and that criticism of the president will not be tolerated. One put it this way, and she sounded angry when she said it: “I don’t want anything derogatory about our president in the paper. He needs our backing.”
Soon after, columnist Bob Ray Sanders expressed concern that the president’s use of Old West imagery in discussing the pursuit of Osama bin Laden would damage the “exceptional leadership” that Bush had established.
The Sept. 19 headline in our City Final edition — “The times demand a leader, not a cowboy” (a good headline in that it distilled the point provocatively) — and Sanders’ critique enraged readers who had announced zero tolerance. The switchboard lit up. Calls and e-mails poured in. “How dare he say a thing like that at a time like this?” one said. Eleven people canceled subscriptions.
It didn’t matter to them that, at that very moment, Bush was seeking all sorts of opinions nationally and working to build the international consensus needed for an action plan.
As passionate as the response was, it was small in comparison with the storm that hit one newspaper in Britain, the liberal Guardian. I learned about it after querying fellow members of the Organization of Newspaper Ombudsmen about the extent of reader reaction in London, Paris, Tel Aviv and Istanbul.
The reader advocates there were overloaded with calls and e-mails, but Ian Mayes of The Guardian managed to reply, referring me to one of his recent columns on the paper’s Web site (www.guardian.co.uk).
In it, he reported unprecedented reaction from around the world to a column by Seumas Milne, the new editor of the Comment pages.
The headline on Milne’s piece read, “They can’t see why they are hated.” He blamed the Sept. 11 terrorism on U.S. foreign policy and America’s “unabashed national egotism and arrogance.”
Milne drew more than 2,000 e-mails from readers, many of whom attacked his view as insensitive and anti-American. One respondent wrote, “The hatred felt towards Americans in his article made me want to vomit.”
Milne got a cussin’. So did Sanders. It was beautiful. Opinions were flying all over the place. Everyone was free to speak. Everyone was free. Just like we need to be.
