Reporter’s role

Regarding Tim Rutten’s excellent piece on Spc. Thomas Wilson’s pointed question to Donald Rumsfeld about inadequate armor [“Free to Shoot From the Hip,” Dec. 11], who cares if the soldier had help from a reporter in drafting the question?

To me, the most important part of the story is that Wilson’s comrades burst into spontaneous applause after the question was posed. Did reporters coach them to do that too? Wilson may have been sharing others’ concerns, but they weren’t the concerns of a liberal-minded reporter, they were the very real concerns of his fellow soldiers.

Cindy Mediavilla

Culver City

*

Certainly the soldier has the right to ask any question he wants to of anybody, like every other citizen of this country.

But the rights of reporters do not include attempting to deceive your readers, which is what reporter Edward Lee Pitts tried to do by omitting the entire context of the incident. His alleged “passion” for his job is no excuse.

It’s also entirely plausible that Pitts’ real concern was that he himself might get hurt while riding in an unarmored vehicle, and that he was attempting to remedy the situation. No one can blame him for that.

And I applaud the courage of the many reporters like Pitts who are putting their lives on the line in Iraq.

But the fact remains: Pitts’ story was another example of dishonest reporting. He and his paper came clean only when they were caught. It’s one more reason to take anything you read in a newspaper with a pillar of salt, especially when it comes to anything political.

Mark Bedor

South Pasadena