Rally Misrepresented

Your Sept. 8 coverage of a rally for Hancock Elementary school students affected by the Mideast deployment of military parents is headlined: “Help or Hoopla? Rally to Ease Pupils’ Fears over Mideast Crisis Stirs Debate.”

The school staff’s concerns about a U.S. congressman attending with a Navy ace who is running for Congress caused them to elicit guarantees that the event would not be a political rally. Norma Trost, school district spokeswoman, said school officials were satisfied with the outcome, as were parents. Undoubtedly, the children met more father figures than Navy kids ever encounter during deployments.

The satisfactory ending of the school staff debate about the effects of publicity on the children raises the question: why inject anti-U.S./U.N. policy views from people who did not attend and would not have known of the event without a phone call from a Times reporter? Why use a kids’ event to provide a platform for an invented debate?

When I tried to call these groups to learn whether their quotes were accurate, I could not find the Middle East Cultural and Information Center listed with the phone company. The Alliance for Survival director hung up and put on the answering machine after asking me who I was with, and the Peace Resource Center tape advised that I call the next day.

Inexplicably, the reporter’s account of the efforts of a caring person (San Diego businessman John Chester, who organized and paid for the event) to do something nice for children under stress was slanted to emphasize outside groups’ objections to U.S. policy, which these children’s parents must support. Even if these students don’t read your paper, they and their school deserve protection from such distortions.

This injustice to the planners and participants is, in the kindest phrasing, a departure from journalistic standards readers expect from reputable newspapers.

MARIANNE GREEN

San Diego