If some readers had their way, The Virginian-Pilot would have been court-martialed Wednesday for treason or such. They would have burned us at the stake, strung us up, sentenced us to die in the electric chair, paraded us before a firing squad.
Our action, one reader said, was “seditious.” So “totally out of character” that Dennis Massey was “mad enough . . . to spit.”
Our “crime”? We ran a large front-page photo of an injured “survivor of a Taliban rocket attack in Anaba, Afghanistan” receiving treatment at a civilian hospital.
The photo identification explained: “As U.S. jets dropped bombs, Taliban gunners opened up with mortars, rockets and artillery on several Northern Alliance positions. A Taliban rocket hit another village outside Kabul, killing two people.”
Some readers saw the photo and immediately saw “the enemy.” Other readers realized the individual pictured was an innocent civilian, but they were still upset.
“Whose side are you on?” asked Alex De La Zerda of Virginia Beach.
“It looks to me like you’re some sort of an Arab sympathizer and you’re not sympathetic to the United States casualties that were killed in this conflict,” said one caller.
Some readers feared that such photos as well as stories about missiles landing near civilian buildings “gives comfort to our enemies, both foreign and domestic,” to quote Jack Scheible Jr. of Virginia Beach.
Denis Finley, the paper’s deputy managing editor for presentation, noted that the photo was not of a Taliban fighter.
“There have been many stories lately detailing Taliban accusations of U.S. attacks on civilians,” Finley said. “This picture and the picture inside the A section show the other side of the conflict, that the Taliban are inflicting pain upon (their) own innocent civilians.”
Several complaining readers urged us to show more photos of victims of the terrorist attacks on the United States or of dead American soldiers.
Finley said that there are no photos of American soldiers who have died in combat because none have. “And as for the victims of the (terrorist) attack, we have published extensive bios of many and we are planning to publish a special, six-page memorial section to the victims in the near future.”
Considering the super patriotic blanket that covers much of the country in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks, I can understand the readers’ attitude. But we must remember that part of the story of war is that of innocents who sometime suffer and die. Not every Muslim in Afghanistan is a member of the Taliban.
Fear itself: Ed Kraus of Virginia Beach called recently to suggest that we publish “sometime very soon, ASAP” one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s most famous quotes as an aid to relieving the public’s mounting fear over anthrax and terrorist activities.
As Kraus recalls, FDR said in one of his fireside chats, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
“I think that should be in big print on the front page along with a big picture of FDR,” Kraus said. “I think it’s very important and would have a tremendous effect on many, many folks everywhere.”
I told him I would try to get the fear quote in, and planned to use it in my column.
Imagine my surprise when Kraus called Oct. 17 to thank me for working the quote into an editorial, “The anthrax threat is greatly exaggerated.” The editorial “didn’t say FDR,” Kraus noted, “just said a great president . . . I think it was a good thing, too bad we couldn’t get a big picture of FDR.”
Our editorial said: “As a great president once said, the greatest thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
That’s a paraphrase, of course, and it’s not exactly correct. But Kraus’ recollection of the quote was off a bit, too.
Eleanor Kanter called the day our editorial appeared to say we should “get it straight if you’re going to quote a certain president.”
The correct quote, as Kanter noted: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” That’s from FDR’s first inaugural address in 1933.
Taking measure: Here’s a question for you math-minded readers.
Which of the following is always true?
- A. If two angles are vertical angles, the sum of their measures is 90 degrees.
- B. If two angles are vertical angles, the sum of their measures is 180 degrees.
- C. If two angles are vertical angles, one measures more than 90 degrees and one measures less than 90 degrees.
- D. If two angles are vertical angles, each has the same measure.
That’s a sample question for eighth-grade mathematics from the Standards of Learning tests. It was among sample questions we published Oct. 17, with stories and informational graphics about area schools’ SOL results.
We told Pilot readers the answer is B. But it’s actually D, as math teacher Laura Chapman called to say. So did a reader who figured we had already probably gotten at least 25 calls on the question.
We had gotten only two. That’s surprising, considering all the math teachers who deal with the SOLs.
