Letter to the Editor, Arizona Republic

Another week, and no news as usual.
 
Why is it that we are three weeks into February now and there has still not been a single front page article about the war in Iraq this month?
 
I could understand bumping it off A1 if there were a lot of other urgent news stories to cover instead, after all, it is kind of getting old and boring, what with all the constant news of deaths, violence, and uncompleted reconstruction.   But it hasn’t been big news stories that have been taking up the space on A1.  This week we’ve been treated to stories about Girl Scout cookies, baseball games, the sex life of seniors and news of the appeal of the cartoon character Dora the Explorer.  This last bit of information might be news if you live under a rock, but for most people, it’s like telling them that kids like to eat ice cream.  Wow, she speaks Spanish too?  Great.
 
You might have the impression that I’m only critical because you never give prominent coverage to the bad news coming out of Iraq.  Actually, I am critical because you never give prominent coverage to any news coming out of Iraq.  I would welcome any news about the war that took another ten American lives this week, at least 37 since the last front page mention and which has cost over $242 million so far.
 
In fact, I think the place you really dropped the ball this week, was when you relegated news of the return of the 150 members of the 860th Army National Guard Unit to a brief box in your “Today’s Talker” section on page B1 on Monday.  How exactly are people supposed to talk about it, when the story is so small that they may miss it altogether, and when it has so little information that a conversation about it would last about 60 seconds?  “Hey, did you see the Guard Unit came back?”  “Yup, that’s great. Wonder what they did over there.” “Don’t know, the paper didn’t say.  Think it’ll rain soon?”  “Mebbe.”  Was that really all the space that could be spared to celebrate and honor their safe return after an 11-month deployment that saw them undertake 2,500 missions?
 
Is this how we are supposed to support our troops?
 
Until next week,