Garibay’s death a lesson in compassion

With the war in Iraq heating up thousands of miles away, here in

Newport-Mesa we regrettably learned the fighting would leave

Newport-Mesa with its own tragedy.

It was late Tuesday night when we heard the news that Jose

Garibay, a Marine corporal from Costa Mesa, was killed fighting in

Iraq.

Early the next morning, we dispatched columnist and culture

reporter Lolita Harper and photographer Sean Hiller to Garibay’s

family home to interview his mother, Simona Garibay, a Westside Costa

Mesa resident.

Interviewing grieving family members is one of the toughest things

a journalist will ever face.

How do you express your condolences and still manage to ask

personal and impersonal questions about their newly lost loved ones?

It’s something journalists are often criticized for also. How can

we be so callous, some ask? Don’t we have any feelings for the

survivors?

And we’ve all cringed at those scenes where a television reporter

shoves a microphone and camera in front of a mourner and asks, “So

how do you feel right now?”

But except for those ghoulish and nonsensical showboats, my

experience has been that instead having disdain for the media, family

members appreciate the chance to tell the world about their loved

one. Maybe it helps lessen the pain, maybe not. In most cases,

though, grief-stricken survivors hardly ever turn us away.

In this case, I had to hand it to both Harper and Hiller. They

came back, I believe, with touching stories and photos of Garibay’s

family and his life growing up in Costa Mesa.

Other writers talked to his friends and a teacher and we learned

more about this young man whose life was taken so soon.

In all, I thought the staff handled the coverage in a professional

and compassionate manner. Even still, I’d love to hear your thoughts

one way or the other.

*

As a 100% local newspaper, we don’t provide our readers with

coverage of state or national or international news. We leave that to

our capable big brothers and sisters at the Los Angeles Times.

Still, with the death of Garibay and as protests over the war

become commonplace, we realize we can’t ignore it altogether.

News is news, whether you disagree with it or not.

Some readers have suggested that since our readership in Newport

Beach and Costa Mesa is largely made up of conservatives, we should

only feed them things conservatives want to read.

Didn’t newly elected Councilman Dick Nichols just try that with

the library’s Distinguished Speakers Series? And you saw the

tongue-lashing he got from Mayor Steve Bromberg and Council Tod

Ridgeway for that, right?

And we don’t want that.

So we’ll take the safe way out and forego censorship for

journalistic standards.

If it qualifies as news, we think our readers are smart enough and

strong enough to read it and make their own decisions. They don’t

need a sugar coating on their morning paper.

Some readers also took me to task for my comments last week about

the protests by Orange Coast College students.

My point was that despite how anyone feels about the war, it’s

hard for me and many people my age or older to take advice from a

bunch of college kids, who hardly read the newspapers anyway.

“Why do you think that only the opponents of the war don’t read

newspapers?” asked one e-mailer. “I would venture to say from my own

listening that the amount of unsupported opinion is spread pretty

broadly across the political spectrum .... I have regularly heard

otherwise intelligent men and women say that ‘the president must know

what he’s doing’ and ‘he must know something we don’t,’ forgetting,

of course, that Johnson and Nixon lied to us from the beginning of

the Vietnam War to the end”

That’s pretty hard to quarrel with, and I agree. Skepticism over

what the government tells us is the whole reason the press exists in

the first place.

Another e-mail writer told me that students probably are more

informed than I think, gleaning their knowledge from radio,

television and the Internet.

As to my complaints that the protesters seemed to have

conveniently neglected to criticism Iraqi President Saddam Hussein,

she had this to say: “There are groups, such as Amnesty International

and Human Rights Watch, that have exposed and worked against the

human rights abuses of Hussein for many years,” she wrote.

“Unfortunately, the media rarely acknowledges the work of these

worthwhile groups. Since we do not have diplomatic relations with

Iraq, I’m not sure where protests would occur if they were to happen

here.

I agree that we are fortunate to live in a country that allows the

expression of dissenting opinions.

“I cannot understand the logic of those who say that we should not

protest the acts of our government we feel are wrong,” she continued.

“This country was founded because our forefathers wanted to protect

the right to dissent. If we fail to exercise this right, we will

surely lose it.”

Finally, there was this e-mail from a reader who agreed with my

column and its message:

“Hopefully, enough people will read your column and think twice

before they voice their opinions,” the e-mail said. “I do not mind

(that) people voice their opinions or debate, but they must know

about their living situation and know their topics before they can

debate.”

That’s the beauty of debate. I can’t say I disagree with any of

these readers.