Dear Reader, Korean War Veteran and Peace Activist John Fortier wrote with fire when he saw the Los Angeles Times (and other U.S. news media) gave huge coverage to actress Lindsay Lohan's problems and almost nothing to the victims of a suicide bomber in Pakistan who at the time of John's writing killed 27 people. That number has since grown to 32 dead.
In the Thursday, Feb. 10 TIMES, there is an article about 27 troops being killed and more than 40 wounded at a Pakistani army training camp Thursday. I assume I am supposed to assume that the killed and wounded were Pakistani. The article, on page AA2, was too short to include that detail.
On pages AA1 and AA3 are a picture and article about a woman on trial for stealing. The article is big enough to tell us that she "sat in her familiar spot"; that she is still on probation for drunk driving; that she's under investigation for assaulting a worker at a recovery clinic; that she was given preferential treatment for booking and shielded from view of TV cameras; and was spared jail time when she "tested positive for drugs while on probation in a DUI case" by Judge Eldon S. Fox. In addition to those details we are given the value and description of the necklace and the name and location of the store it is charged that she stole it from.
The color picture, 4 1/2 x 6 1/2 in.,occupies about 32 square inches or the equivalent of 29 column inches. Add that to 27 column inches of text and you have on pages AA1 and AA3 an equivalent total of 56 column inches. That's the same as 4 feet 8 inches of 'news', in considerable detail.
The article on page AA2 about the27 human beings killed and more than 40 human beings being wounded was too short for many details. It was only 3 inches.
Is it any wonder people consider our media censored ? Censored by omission maybe, sliced and diced into tiny pieces in spaces as inconspicuous as possible. Behind, beneath and beyond the acreage of blah, blah, blah, blah about irresponsible behavior and enabling judges with 'stars' in their eyes.
Did those 27 dead troops have spouses, parents, children ? Does anyone care ? Not the media, it seems. It would trouble to tell us what the woman in the story had written on her fingernails when she went to court a while back. But it doesn't have the space or the interest to tell us how many widows or widowers or semi-orphans were created today.
The wars we are presently waging around the world are shielded from our awareness, buried in little mention on back pages. There is no draft. The economy and employment make filling our 'volunteer army' easy. But even so, re-deployments have reached the double digits for some, and 5, 7 and 8 or more are not unheard of. If the armed forces is the only place that's hiring, it will get applicants, Until the public starts thinking about these things. Then there won't be enough street corners to accommodate the protesters.
John Fortier
Redondo Beach
Korean War vet , protester
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