THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 26, 1996 TAG: 9605240033
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: LYNN FEIGENBAUM
LENGTH: 86 lines
Our military readers seldom miss a misstep.
When two Navy helicopters collided earlier this month at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, several readers called in to say that our graphic portrayed the wrong chopper. The one identified as an H-46E Sea Knight was really a similar twin-rotor model, the Army's H-47 Chinook.
Last Sunday, former Lt. j.g. Tracy Thorne, standing in front of a plane, was misidentified in a ``Gay Rights'' photo caption as Lt. j.g. Dirk Selland. Both men have publicly declared their homosexuality but Thorne was an aviator and Selland a submariner. A half-dozen readers pointed out the error.
And Tuesday, after a story on the new Ben Moreell off-base Navy housing in Norfolk, we were quickly reminded that it's not ``Benmoreell,'' as The Pilot has spelled it for years, but two words - as in the name of the admiral who founded the Seabees.
I think you get the point. Not a week, and usually not a day, goes by when some aspect of our military coverage isn't challenged by our many Navy-connected readers.
And about 20 - not an overwhelming number - shared their feelings about the tragic death of Adm. Jeremy ``Mike'' Boorda by writing the newspaper. Some of those sentiments are in the letters to the editor you see on the facing page.
I was surprised that we didn't hear from even more people. Boorda's death was the lead story in The Pilot for four out of six days, with extensive coverage on inside pages as well. And, obviously, it was a story that everyone was talking about.
Perhaps the relative silence is because the subject is still too painful - we remain shocked and puzzled by his suicide. Or perhaps some members of the Navy community weren't inclined to share their sentiments with the very medium, the press, they felt had betrayed Boorda.
Most of us still don't understand what went wrong, and probably never will. The public's confusion began with reports that Boorda had shot himself shortly before he was to be questioned by Newsweek over the V (for valor in combat) insignias he once had worn on his Vietnam War ribbons. That confusion has only grown.
Alfred JaCoby, former reader's representative of The San Diego Union, believes that, with Boorda's death, ``the tragedy of Vietnam has struck again.''
In a column that ran Wednesday in the California paper, he said the war left a heritage of lies, and a strain on the relation between the media and the military.
``A lot of the then-young military of the Vietnam era now grown high in the ranks have a standard blame-the-media mode. For them, the Boorda case confirms that media-monsters roam through the land seeking the blood of the military.''
On the other hand, he couldn't quite understand why Newsweek wanted ``to plow an old furrow.''
JaCoby concluded that we cannot blame the magazine or criticize Boorda. ``What remains,'' he wrote, ``is the sad fact of the death of an officer whose value to the nation was very great.''
That realization has brought anger, as well as sorrow. One reader who called, the day after Boorda died, was furious at the press. But before I could say a word, he backed down. The caller himself concluded: As the top man in the Navy, Boorda should have been able to handle the heat.
What newspaper criticism came to the public editor's office was mostly channeled into details - a wrong ribbon shown in conjunction with the combat V, calling a boatswain's pipe a ``captain's whistle.''
Other readers were angered by the front-page banner, ``Is the `V' that big a deal?'' One man called the headline ``really a cheap shot'' - a ``grandstanding'' approach that displayed a lack of concern for military families in a Navy town.
The headline posed a legitimate question, but could have been worded more delicately. Blaring that question across the front page in 84-point headline type sounded flip. To many in the military, as the story itself said, the V is a big deal.
Still, two readers - a Navy spokesman and a chief petty officer - gave The Pilot high marks for its coverage of Boorda's death. And that, I think, counts even more than getting all our bells and whistles exactly right. (Of course, I'd prefer to do both.)
``You've covered the story and all the side issues in a very fair and impartial manner,'' said John E. Peters, public-affairs officer for the Naval Facilities Engineering command in Norfolk. ``Good job.''
Jim Maher, a Chesapeake man who served in the Air Force, hopes the Boorda tragedy will lead to greater understanding that our leaders are ``human, not superhuman,'' and need their own ombudsman.
``The Pilot is in an excellent position now to surface this issue,'' said Maher. ``We lost a great man. There are other great men behind him. Let's surface the issue but please with dignity and respect for the family of Admiral Boorda.'' MEMO: Call the public editor at 446-2475, or send a computer message to
lynn(AT)infi.net by CNB