Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, June 15, 1993                   TAG: 9306150393
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

`CLAIM' NOTHING - IT WAS A FACT

It indicated that the 13,000 delegates attending "prompted Republican leaders to claim it was the largest political convention in world history." The fact is that the 1978 Virginia Republican Convention, with approximately 9,000 delegates, was the largest in the history of the western world until this year's Virginia Republican Convention, as far as the number of delegates is concerned. Reading the article, anyone not knowing this would believe that it was untrue.

Also, where were your reporters when Congressman Newt Gingrich gave a rousing speech, calling for Republicans not only to take over statehouses and the federal House of Representatives and Senate, but also to have a plan in place, ready to go, on the first day when we win the White House back in 1996? Where were they when Sen. John Warner received the loudest, most boisterous standing ovation when he vowed to fight endlessly President Clinton's insistence on allowing homosexuals into the military? Or when Republican Women for Choice staffed a well-stocked booth in the coliseum, answering questions and providing a forum for their point of view without any controversy?

I would never ask your paper or any others to report news with a conservative or Republican bias. But stop reporting everything with a liberal Democratic bias and report news as it occurs - not as you would like it to have occurred. JAMES M. VASCIK ROANOKE