Afganistan=War/Terror, NOT

Sun, 2 Oct 2005 08:50:43 -0700 (PDT)
Jim is winging his way back to the front as I write this. He had to go to Atlanta to fly out. Yesterday, right before he left, he found out that a guy from his comapny had been killed. It appears to be non-combat related–apparently a jeep flipped over somewhere. This did not put our minds at ease as we sent him off. It was a young guy with young kids, and he was Jim’s squad leader in Iraq, so Jim knew him fairly well. It’s coming closer to home.
Amy

Hey

I sent an e-mail to Mr. Thames, current editor of the CO, wondering why the death of SSgt. James Stoddard hadn’t made it to the war obits page of the paper. Also, according to a Knight Ridder report, another soldier had been killed in Afghanistan about last Friday, but nothing has been said about this soldier, either (He didn’t belong to Jim’s company). Jim said that two other guys from his company were wounded by gunfire while he was on leave. The CO editor said he would ask Knight Ridder why the names of the dead in Afghanistan weren’t appearing in the war obits. Along with Iraq’s invisibility, it seems like Afghanistan has disappeared. Of course, they’re all still there (again) due to the invasion of Iraq and the lack of military personnel to take their places, so maybe that’s it–no one wants to face the fact that soldiers are still dying everywhere due to the bungling of this administration. At any rate, SSgt. Stoddard was buried last Friday at Arlington. Jim’s wife went, along with a group of other FRG wives and families. I’m beginning to hate the times I live in.
Amy

From: amy keith
Sent: Monday, October 10, 2005 8:00 AM
To: rthames@charlotteobserver.com
Subject: war obits
Dear Mr. Thames:
I’m grateful that the CO has been running the names and pictures of the dead in Iraq on a page adjacent to the rest of the obituaries. However, the names of the casualties from Afghanistan seem to be overlooked on this page. My son, Sergeant Jim Keith, Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 504th PIR, 82nd Airborne Division, is in Afghanistan, after serving previously in both Iraq and Afghanistan with the same company, Recently he was home on leave for two weeks. On the day he was to fly back to Afghanistan he learned, therough his Family Readiness Group, that a member of his comapny, Staff Sergeant James Stoddard, had been killed. This past weekend, another soldier was killed in Afghanistan, according to the CO, yet I didn’t see any mention of Sgt. Stoddard, or the name of the other soldier anywhere in the paper.Realizing that the war in Iraq is foremost in everyone’s mind, the soldiers in Afghanistan are still carrying on the war against terrorism and, according to m! y son, are shelled and shot at on a routine basis. In fact, right after Jim arrived in the States for his leave, he found out that two other members of Alpha Company had been wounded. The soldiers in Afghanistan are there because of the war in Iraq. They have been there before but are redeployed due to lack of adequate military personnel. They go cave to cave and put their lives on the line every day, yet I failed to find any mention of SSgt. Stoddard, who was buried at Arlington last Friday. Last April the CO ran a column I wrote regarding the departure of the 2nd Battalion back to Afghanistan. I received a number of e-mails expressing good wishes to these troops. These soldiers deserve recognition for what they do. Many, including my son, have left behind families for yet another year in the desert, searching for al Qaida with numbers that have been depleted by our drawn-out occupation of Iraq, yet their deaths seem to go unnoticed by the Observer, They deserve better.
Sincerely,
Amy Keith
Charlotte, NC 28262

From: Thames, Rick
Sent: Monday, October 10, 2005 9:53 AM
To: ‘amy keith’
Cc: Felsing, Alix
Subject: RE: war obits
Dear Amy,
Thank you very much for your email. Until now, I assumed that we did publish obituaries of soldiers who died in Afghanistan. We certainly want to do so. I will check with our national editor to find out why deaths you know about have not appeared.
Rick Thames

From: “Felsing, Alix” <AFelsing@charlotteobserver.com>
To: Amy
CC: “Thames, Rick” <RThames@charlotteobserver.com>, “Batten, Taylor” <TBatten@charlotteobserver.com>
Subject: RE: war obits
Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2005 11:35:53 -0400
Dear Amy,
Rick passed your message on to me because my team handles the national and international coverage, including obituaries and the tributes to soldiers. We get the tributes to fallen soldiers from the Associated Press, and they’ve been very popular with readers.
You ask a good question about why they don’t include the U.S. military troops who die in Afghanistan.
The AP tells us they focus their efforts on those who die in the war in Iraq (and therefore Kuwait).
They’re not including military deaths in Afghanistan because they view events there as less like a war and more like the many other U.S. military actions around the world.
Please let us know if you have any other questions about our coverage.
Alix Felsing National editor The Charlotte Observer afelsing@charlotteobserver.com

After I wrote my reply back, Mr. Felsing wrote me this letter. I’m sending my reply back in a separate message.

Amy

From: amy keith
Sent: Thursday, October 13, 2005 2:20 PM
To: Felsing, Alix
Subject: RE: war obits
I don’t have any questions, but I do have a comment. I think that line of reasoning is one of the most inane, illogical and insensitive comments I’ve ever encountered from a group of journalists. I’m sure that Sergeant Stoddard’s wife and three children will be glad to hear that comment. What you’re saying is that their lives don’t matter as much as the “war”, which by the way, has never been declared. The men and women in Afghhanistan are under fire every day, and comb the hills and caves along the Pakastani border. This line of reasoning is insane. I’m going to pass along your message to Veterans for Peace, Military Families Speak Out, Gold Star Families for Peace, not to mention Congressman Watt, and Senators Burr and Dole, as well as Lt. Gerneral Swannack, the former commander of the 82nd. What you’re implying is that Afghanistan isn’t real combat, because it hasn’t been declared a war. Again, neither has Iraq. Do you mean to! tell me that being shot at on a ! daily basis is l”less like a war” in Afghanistan than Iraq? Shame on all of you for swallowing the Bush propaganda.
Amy Keith

“Felsing, Alix” <AFelsing@charlotteobserver.com> wrote:
Dear Amy,
Please re-read my message. I gave you the Associated Press’s reasoning, because they provide the tributes to us. It isn’t my position, nor is it The Charlotte Observer’s position. We cover the events in Afghanistan as a war in every other way. We are going to call the Associated Press and ask them again to rethink their position. The reality is, however, that we depend on them to provide the information. As a regional newspaper, we don’t have the resources to report these tributes ourselves.
Alix Felsing National editor The Charlotte Observer afelsing@charlotteobserver.com

From: amy keith
Sent: Thursday, October 13, 2005 2:58 PM
To: Felsing, Alix
Subject: RE: war obits
I bet, if you really wanted to, you could be in contact with Ft. Bragg or any of the other bases that have soldiers deployed. These guys deserve it. They go out to Pakastani border to rescue fallen comrades, and can’t even chase them across the border. Yet, according to Senator Dole in this morning’s CO, Pakistan is “such a valuable ally” in the war on terror. Do you not think that you have the responsibility to let the world know what is really going on? There are young Americans dying and getting torn to shreds in Afghanistan, and you can’t even make the effort to find out who and when? Has journalism come to the point of reliance on conveniences such as the AP without any thought to truth or compassion? So far the editorial stance of the CO has been in favor, from the beginning, of the occupation of Iraq, but it’s too much trouble to report the deaths of soldiers who are fighting on the other front for the third ! time because of the lack of numbers of the military to support this bungled war.
Amy Keith

From: “Felsing, Alix” <AFelsing@charlotteobserver.com>
To: “‘amy keith'”
CC: “Felsing, Alix” <AFelsing@charlotteobserver.com>, “Batten, Taylor” <TBatten@charlotteobserver.com>
Subject: RE: war obits
Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2005 21:30:25 -0400
Amy,
Your questions indicate I need to clarify a few things.
First, we get the mini-obituaries that we call tributes from the AP. They only do deaths in Iraq, and they move a batch of them approximately once a month.
We run them as we have space, and usually run out before the next batch arrives, so sometimes you’ll see a gap of a few days or weeks. (More on tributes below.)
Second, you asked about telling readers who died in Iraq and Afghanistan and when. We can get names, ranks, hometowns and usually the units of soldiers who die in either country, via the Department of Defense, which sends out e-mails with that basic info. The DOD does that only after families have been notified.
We try to run that basic info when the soldier is from a Carolinas base, as soon as we get it. We try to have a staff reporter write about that soldier when they are actually from the Carolinas; again, as soon as we can get information.
So, to answer one of your questions, we are trying to tell our readers when such deaths have local interest. We’re also trying to do it in a timely manner. And we’re trying to be consistent about how we do it.
To answer another of your questions, yes, journalism relies on wire services such as the Associated Press and similar organizations. And it’s far more than a convenience.
It’s a business arrangement that allows news organizations to get stories from around the country and around the world that they might otherwise not be able to get.
It’s not financially feasible for every news organization to have a staffer in every country, but AP comes much closer to being able to do that.
Now, back to AP’s policy for a moment. The AP called me back since you and I exchanged e-mails earlier today, and they have been discussing ways to start doing similar tributes to those killed in Afghanistan.
We will publish them when we get them, which I hope will be soon. The person I talked to did not give me a time frame. In fact, she was greatly concerned that someone there had told us they don’t think Afghanistan is a war.
AP fully grasps the gravity of the situation, she said, and whoever we originally talked to has the wrong understanding of why Afghanistan deaths aren’t represented in the tributes.
She said the AP originally came up with the idea of doing the tributes to fallen soldiers when the war in Iraq started and they realized the death toll was going to be far higher than what we had seen so far in Afghanistan.
I hope you will follow up your earlier complaints about AP’s policy with this updated information, since we had received inaccurate information about their policy.
Alix Felsing National editor The Charlotte Observer afelsing@charlotteobserver.com

Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2005 20:36:03 -0700 (PDT)
From: “amy keith”
Subject: RE: war obits
To: “Felsing, Alix” <AFelsing@charlotteobserver.com>
I think this answer is covering a lot of ground , so to speak. It seems more like a smoke screen, honest. The deaths in Iraq are more than “local interest” stories, as the death in Afghanistan should be, I’m sorry–this is not s good enough answer for Sergeant Stoddard, and the rest of the soldiers. It needs to remedied, yes, and soon, but it should never have been an issue. These guys have been fighting the real war on terror since day one.
And, please, you don’t need to “clarify”–I know about the AP and “business arrangements”. It’s a shame journalism has come down to “business arrangements” and the deaths of soldiers have been reduced to “business arrangements” and “local interest”. I get it–deaths of young Americans are worth reporting as long as it’s good business practice. Come to think of it, maybe it did need some clarification.I don’t think I would have believed it if someone hadn’t said it. But, then, this George Bush’s America, and even journalism hasn’t escaped its effects. It’st great to know the AP understands the “gravity” of the situation. This whole exchange feels really absurd–it would seem like newspapers would feel an obligation to publish obits about soldiers without anyone prodding or complaining, especially one whose editorial policy so openly and unwaveringly supported the Iraqi war. Maybe, since it’s such a financial burden and onerous duty for the CO, it’s better to leave the obits to the Army Times after all. Honest. It’s time for us who give a damn to close ranks.
Amy Keith