That might seem like too harsh an assessment of television coverage of the Persian Gulf crisis. But consider the saber-rattling and cheerleading tone and texture of what the networks have been offering since Iraq invaded Kuwait.

"CBS Evening News With Dan Rather," reveling in its "scoop" interview with Saddam Hussein, takes to using the graphic, "CBS Evening News With the 24th Infantry" against a background of sand and desert sky, when going to commercials. In the week following the interview, CBS can’t show enough of Rather in the sand. Rather’s own vocabulary becomes peppered with military terms, like "in-country."

Rather’s storyline for a series of interviews the first week of September with members of the 24th Infantry, begins, "Some believe, just believe, that they may be preparing for one of the greatest battles of all time." Rather follows that by interviewing a young soldier. "You want it to blow or not?" he asks the soldier who looks so young he is having trouble growing a mustache.

"I don’t want to sound like a warmonger," the young soldier replies. "But I say we’re here, (so) let’s do it. Then maybe we won’t have to be back again."

The message (from both television’s Ernie Pyle and the kid in the trenches): Let’s do it. Let’s start "one of the greatest battles of all time."

Sam Donaldson, David Brinkley and George Will are offering what is supposed to be analysis of the Persian Gulf situation on ABC’s "This Week With David Brinkley," a Sunday morning show that is generally a model of informed discourse.

"Now we have a real general," Donaldson says, referring to Gen. Norman H. Schwarzkopf, the commander-in-chief of the Central Command. "Stormin’ Norman is a general like we haven’t seen since George C. Scott in ‘Patton.’ . . . He arrived and said we will kick butt . . . I’m sick of those (other) generals with their Ph.D.s from Berkeley."

The message: Donaldson might have taken off the bush jacket since returning from Saudi Arabia, but he hasn’t put down the sword. He’s still a man of action ready for battle (even if he is starting to have trouble, like Ronald Reagan, separating movie characters from real-life persons).

NBC’s Katherine Couric goes "Top Gun," puts on an Air Force flight suit and flies in an F-16 with a fighter pilot at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina. The highlight is Couric showing viewers her air-sickness bag and informing them that she had to use it twice. This report gets more time than any other Mideast report that day on "Today."

The message: Couric and NBC are on the team. We here at NBC have got the right stuff.

For all the money spent and anchor talent deployed covering the Gulf crisis, the results have generally not been very good. Too much of the coverage has been of the kind described above, while the less pleasant journalistic jobs of questioning official policy and providing perspective were all but abandoned.

The gung-ho postures and one-dimensional rah-rah coverage were not happenstance. The networks were reading the polls that showed widespread initial support for the military action. The networks had also started receiving record ratings for their coverage of it from Day One. Some broadcasters, though, left themselves open to charges of exploiting the situation with the manner and extent of their pursuit of the story.

Coverage around the dial the first few weeks in August consisted of packaging virtually everything in the inflammatory rhetoric of confrontation and an action-adventure narrative: There’s a madman with horrible weapons heading this way, and we’re drawing a line in the sand; stay tuned. It was potential war packaged as prime-time entertainment right down to the made-for-TV movie titles. CBS called its coverage "Showdown in the Gulf." On NBC, it was "Crisis in the Gulf."

Once the anchors arrived in the Mideast, the narrative took on another dimension. Rather — in a bush jacket posed in front of the minarets in Amman, Jordan — gave the story an added flavor of the exotic and unknown with the suggestion of our anchorman braving danger to bring us news from the front in our safe and comfy living rooms.

That suggestion was further reinforced when anchormen and women back in studios in the United States interviewed their colleagues in the Mideast and concluded by saying something along the lines of, "You take care of yourself now" or "be careful over there."

By the time President Bush called up the reserves, NBC was going all out to push the buttons of blind patriotism — like a Ronald Reagan campaign commercial. There was much talk of "sacrifices on the home front," with endless pictures of yellow ribbons, weeping spouses and teenage soldiers saying hello to "mom and dad" courtesy of NBC’s cameras.

Typical of NBC’s simple-minded "posturings of patriotism" (to use George Washington’s words) was a Keith Morrison report on Sept. 9 (1990) from Burbank on the mood of the country concerning the Mideast. Morrison dismissed suggestions that Americans don’t know enough about the history and cultures of the Mideast as "the stuff of seminars," and said "everyone shares" what he called a "patriotic mood" for the U.S. to take action against Hussein.

On one hand, NBC’s coverage was most like coverage provided by local stations where the complicated politics of the Mideast were also reduced to those emotionally-hot pictures of yellow ribbons and tearful spouses, with reporters and anchorpersons looking and saying how concerned they were and how much they shared in the suffering, even if it was only at the gas pump.

On the other hand, NBC was also employing some of the more sophisticated techniques of propaganda. Tom Capra, the son of legendary filmmaker Frank Capra, is the executive producer of "Today." One Friday, the show closed with a montage of GIs in the sand that was shown over a soundtrack of spouses saying how proud they were of their husbands and wives who were serving in the desert. It was moving stuff — in the same way Ray Charles singing "America, the Beautiful," with Ronald and Nancy Reagan and all those red, white and blue balloons at the close of the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas was moving stuff. The close of the "Today" show was a direct descendant of the great propaganda films the elder Capra made for the government during World War II.

But this was not World War II, and the only war effort the young Capra was serving was the morning rating war.

Part of the overall problem initially was that too much network coverage on the Iraq story had been built upon the personalities of anchormen and star reporters and which countries they did, or did not, receive visas to — instead of journalistic expertise and judgment.

ABC’s best call was keeping Peter Jennings back at the anchor desk in New York. For several weeks, Jennings seemed like the lone voice of reasonable questions about U.S. policy, as the drums of war were being sounded elsewhere.

But why did it take three weeks for television to start reporting the backlash against Arab-Americans — incidents which the reports said had been happening two weeks before? Was it because we were too caught up in the empty-headed rhetoric of belligerence and "madmen," too busy bashing Arab guests on talk shows or proving our reporters had the right stuff?

If Arab-bashing sounds too harsh, consider Barbara Walters’s performance as host of ABC’s "Nightline" August 17. She ignored the usual courtesy afforded a diplomat and insisted the Iraqi ambassador to the U.S. was lying when he said he did not know where all the hostages were. She then proceeded literally to mock the man through the rest of the show at the expense of any hope of rational discourse.

And, if empty-headed rhetoric of belligerence sounds unfair, consider this from CBS’s Allen Pizzey in Amman, Jordan: "Saddam Hussein thinks he’s a knight. But, as someone here has said, someone should tell him that a real knight doesn’t hide behind the skirts of women and the diapers of children."

It is as if television news has no memory. If there was any lesson learned from coverage of Vietnam, it would seem to be that the best TV journalism is that which refuses to accept official policy blindly, which asks questions even when asking questions is unpopular; which seeks all points of view and reports them, even the most distasteful; which seeks to learn and share that learning with its audience. Being a television journalist is more than putting on a jumpsuit and using the air-sickness bag in an F-16.

I answered truthfully: there were four at the turnoff of the main road.

Three hours later I was stopped by an army roadblock I had passed in the morning on my way into rebel-held territory.

"Where did you last see the rebels and how many were there?" a government soldier asked.

Again I answered truthfully: there were seven outside the mountain town of Ocotal.

As so often happened when crossing into rebel-held areas in El Salvador I was catapulted on that afternoon into a role beyond that of an observer, perhaps even into the role of a collaborator.

How does a journalist remain impartial when crossing back and forth between rebel and army lines?

What are the options for a journalist who is stopped and questioned by soldiers or rebels in a war zone?

Any journalist who is permitted to cross the lines in a civil war must maintain the appearance of strict impartiality. The slightest indiscretion by any journalist can leave us labeled as backers of one side or the other, jeopardizing not only our ability to work, but our lives.

If I had refused to answer the questions of the soldiers or the rebels, I would have been turned back or held several hours for questioning.

Neither side would have interpreted a refusal to answer as a sign of impartiality. The trusting relationship journalists require to work with both groups would have been destroyed.

Journalists must also assume that at times they are only confirming information the army or the rebels already possess.

By answering honestly I was showing that I could be trusted and had nothing to hide.

When we travel with rebel or army units there is an implicit understanding that, while we will not participate in any war activities, neither will we consciously do anything to harm the well-being of the unit.

Several of us owe our safety, and perhaps our lives, to rebels and soldiers who, in the midst of combat, looked after us. The Sandinistas and the FMLN often assigned soldiers to act as bodyguards to reporters traveling with their troops. The FMLN once assigned two fighters who, at great risk to themselves, escorted me several miles to the edge of a government-held town rather than leave me to find my way back alone.

The Salvadoran army frequently kept us with the commanding officer of a unit and would airlift us out of difficult situations.

With the expectation that we will be protected by soldiers or rebels in the event of trouble, can we conceal information from them that may be detrimental to their lives?

I think not. If we lock fortunes with one unit we are bound together until the end of our sojourn. Once we leave the unit our relationship ends.

To avoid partiality I never allowed myself to join up with an army or rebel unit if I had advance knowledge of an offensive or ambush planned against that unit. And I never left an army or rebel unit to join the opposing enemy unit during an operation.

It is always prudent, at least from the ethical standpoint, to put yourself in a situation where you don’t know what is going to happen to the unit you are with.

Many of us encountered our worst dilemmas after returning from trips of several days with the rebels.

If we had hidden our jeep in the undergrowth, there was always a chance that the army would discover it. Then soldiers would be waiting for us when we returned, a sobering and sometimes frightening conclusion to any trip in the hills.

In the army’s eyes, it is one thing for a reporter to run into rebels on the road or in a village, and quite another to tromp through the mountains with them for several days.

On my return from one trip with guerrillas in Chalatenango province I was picked up by soldiers and taken to the colonel in charge of the local garrison. My film and tapes were confiscated and I was grilled for several hours.

I had no choice but to answer questions on local guerrilla activity.

This was one of the worst moments in my five years in Central America.

We always tried desperately to hide such trips from the army because, after several days with the rebels, we had information that could harm the guerrillas who had escorted us.

A reporter in a war zone, always walking a tightrope between opposing sides, is forced at times to give information to warring parties.

When we know a little we can give honest answers to the questions. This is necessary, I repeat, to maintain working relations with the guerrillas and the army.

But when we know a lot we must do our best to avoid contact with the other side.

When our luck runs out, and we are caught by opposing troops, the only option is the truth. It is a bitter experience for anyone who has gone through it.

But I believe that my forthrightness that afternoon with the colonel probably saved my life.

More than once, President Bush has remarked that this war "is no Vietnam." The reporting is different, that’s for sure. Today’s press seems as interested in supporting this war as journalists were interested in questioning the wisdom of military involvement in Vietnam 20 years ago. The media message is clear: real Americans support the war.

And so newspapers across the country show that they’re real Americans too and donate a page to Old Glory. The Detroit News did it because of what editor and publisher Bob Giles described as "a broad feeling of support in the community." The San Diego Union did it, according to editor Gerald Warren, because "the country is solidly behind this war," and because it’s a local story for readers who have friends and relatives fighting. Virginian Pilot/Ledger-Star assistant managing editor David Addis said that the decision to publish the flag was made "somewhere between news and promotions."

Every newsroom seems to want to be seen as part of the hometown team. The CBS eye glows almost subliminally behind a graphic of an American soldier. Local news shows wrap their promos in ribbons and flags.

Scott Armstrong, head of the Center for International Journalism at American University, said that news organizations are concerned that they’ll be seen as insensitive to the safety of Americans in the Gulf if they question U.S. policy. "They don’t separate ‘we support our boys’ from ‘we support our President,’" he said.

But, it’s not news media’s place to coddle the community through its crisis. This is not a natural disaster reducible to "let’s help everyone through the bad time."

It can’t be simplified into rooting for the hometown team. It’s an extremely complex political, economic, and cultural situation that only gets more complicated by being ignored. U.S. news organizations can best show their patriotism by fulfilling rather than abandoning their traditional role of questioning official action.

At least one newspaper publisher, NBC news president Mike Gartner, likens news organizations’ show of military support to marching in an abortion rally. The editorial page is the only appropriate place for journalists to express their point of view.

No one’s saying it’s easy, but most of the news media could be doing a better job of remaining a voice independent from the U.S. government. And, the news media could be doing a better job of remaining independent of public opinion.

It’s appropriate for a military source to talk about the theater of operations, collateral damage and incontinent ordinances. Journalists, on the other hand, should keep people in touch with reality by talking instead about homes and communities, the deaths of civilians and bombs that miss their targets.

Journalists repeat U.S. reports that Iraq’s missiles aimed at Israeli cities have no military significance. And, we’re left with the understanding that Saddam is clearly evil.

News media repeat Iraqi reports that the U.S. missiles aimed at some Iraqi cities have no military significance. And, we’re left to understand that Saddam is lying.

How do the journalists, who are being kept backstage in this theater of operations, know anything for sure? Did the U.S. and its allies bomb a baby milk factory or a germ warfare plant? Did we incinerate innocent people in a civilian bomb shelter or was that a military command and control center in disguise?

Time magazine puts "Iraq’s Weird War" on the cover. Why is Iraq’s style "weird" and ours is "strategic"? Why is Israel applauded for showing "restraint" and Iraq’s lack of retaliation is called "confused"?

This is cheerleading, not news coverage. It’s natural to want to believe "the good guys" and Washington gives plausible explanations for why Saddam would lie. But who’s helping the public understand that Washington might lie as well? The press in this country has been the victim of political "disinformation" in the past; it ought not to come as a surprise in wartime.

Since the war began, media critics have come out of the woodwork to scoff at the coverage and news organizations have been right, in part, with their defensive "Don’t blame me" reaction.

Journalists can’t be blamed for the censorship. Never before has a war had so many different countries with so many different agendas attempting so many different spins on the truth.

Nor can journalists be blamed for being outmaneuvered by the U.S. government. During the Reagan years, the Pentagon and White House installed a public relations system that rivaled the weaponry system for sophistication. The government’s information officers know what sells: bloodless action, high technology, attractive heroes, hometown melodramas and dying ducks.

The San Diego Union’s Warren said that this war, in contrast to World War II and Korea, is propaganda-free. He sees the lack of "loose lips sink ships" statements from the government as evidence that this war doesn’t have the "propaganda mill that there was 46 years ago."

Instead, I see it as frightening evidence that there’s practically no seam between government propaganda and news media coverage. Why should the U.S. government make up slogans when the networks do it for them, giving us bumpers such as "Showdown in the Gulf" and "Line in the Sand."

Information givers have always sought to fill a vacuum. Old-time mapmakers hid their ignorance by filling up the white space with elaborate illustrations and warnings that "there be serpents here." Today, news organizations hide theirs with fancy graphics, features on the local heroes, and speculations from retired (U.S.) military leaders.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

The traditional duty of journalists to ferret out the truth hasn’t changed, but a new opportunity is at hand. In the past, generals and government leaders were too engrossed in fighting the war to talk to journalists about it. Now, talking to journalists is an important part of fighting the war. And journalists can talk back; they can ask important questions of people on both sides rather than help the U.S. show that Saddam really is as bad as Hitler. "That," according to Armstrong, "has little to do with why Iraq is in Kuwait and less to do with how to get them out."

The hours reporters spend circling around the families of soldiers should be spent in the library or on the phone with non-military experts so that the audience is constantly provided context for events, a check of facts provided by sources, and an understanding of why even our own government’s representatives may choose to lie.

As Hiram Johnson said to the U.S. Senate in 1917, "The first casualty when war comes is the truth." An independent press need not be the second.

We were helping pay for it too.

News of our paper’s contribution reached us in the way reporters least like to learn anything: We read about it in another newspaper. Even special projects editor Robert Friedman didn’t know about the sponsorship.

But, as a Village Voice media column informed us, Newsday had kicked in $25,000 to support the June 10 parade. Later, we learned that Robert M. Johnson, publisher of Newsday and New York Newsday, had served on the commission that organized the festivities.

And Newsday wasn’t the only local paper to endorse the parade with a handsome check. The New York Daily News and the New York Post also chipped in $25,000. The New York Times reportedly contributed about 20% of its $250,000 proceeds from a special advertising section (which it advised readers to "save as history") to a fund for Desert Storm veterans.

But the company of other papers in the media donors club wasn’t much comfort to us. Nor was the chorus of controversy, which included two of our own columnists.

Jim Dwyer wrote that "New York Newsday and the others, with no evil agendas, are funding a public relations effort that — probably innocently — blurs the truth about what happened."

Sidney Schanberg complained that the New York papers were "blithely becoming sponsors of a parade to celebrate a war they were in effect not allowed to cover as professionals."

House ads hawking Newsday "Victory!" T-shirts didn’t help either.

Among the reporters who’d written stories for the sections, reaction was unanimous. In our view, the paper’s support of a controversial political news event we were assigned to extensively cover represented a clear conflict of interest.

How could readers be expected to separate the paper’s corporate sponsorship from its editorial decision to run special sections about the event?

There had been no pressure on us to alter the normal newsgathering process. But there was nonetheless every appearance of a conflict. How could we be seen to be covering the parade objectively when we had pitched in to sponsor it?

As reporters, we surrender our right to become involved politically: We don’t march in political rallies, join political groups or support political candidates because our involvement would create a conflict that would compromise our ability to report the news.

Now we reasoned that, just as a reporter forfeits those individual rights, so too should management forfeit some of the rights enjoyed by other corporate citizens. It must limit political involvement to expressing views on the editorial page.

After discussing the issue among ourselves, seven of the nine reporters who’d worked on the special sections decided to withhold our bylines from our work. Of the two reporters whose stories were published under their bylines, one was off work and couldn’t be reached. The other was Middle East correspondent Susan Sachs, whose first-person account couldn’t run without her byline. Sachs chose to write a letter of protest rather than scrap the entire story and leave a gaping hole in the section.

Management disagreed with our arguments, saying the parade donation was no different from a contribution to the Philharmonic. New York Newsday editor Don Forst called the group of us into his office and asked us to reconsider.

Forst said the newspaper’s corporate side makes all sorts of civic contributions that he doesn’t know about or want to know about, and they have absolutely no effect on the news pages.

But our feeling was that our newspaper and others should monitor corporate contributions to make sure they don’t inadvertently involve the news side in even the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Some of the reporters present at the meeting felt we might reach a compromise by running a box explaining Newsday’s sponsorship of the event. Others said a disclaimer wouldn’t change the basic conflict. Ultimately, the point was moot since editors rejected the idea, saying that Newsday’s contribution was no secret and had been reported in a news story about the controversy over media funding of the parade.

In the end, the special sections went to press without bylines on most stories.

The majority of readers probably didn’t even notice. And, perhaps inevitably, those who did notice tended to confuse the issue of the newspaper’s involvement in the parade with the issue of U.S. involvement in the war.

One of the tabloids ran a column questioning the patriotism of the reporters who withheld their bylines.

To the enormous credit of the people who run Newsday, the byline strike resulted in surprisingly little in-house acrimony — and no subsequent retribution.

With less debate than is generated by the average office romance, the relatively minor controversy was quickly forgotten. But questions about the ethics of a newspaper’s involvement in civic projects should not be.

How does a newspaper company properly give back to the community it serves while still protecting its news side? And what about the sporting and cultural events routinely sponsored by newspapers and covered by their news staffs? Such occasions are not necessarily non-partisan either; their funding might also be reconsidered in favor of charitable donations made through some sort of blind trust.

In a shrinking business in a shrinking economy — and with more and more newspapers owned by companies with diverse interests — the risk of a paper’s corporate side unwittingly dragging the news side into potential conflicts has probably never been greater.

Meanwhile, the list of measures designed to protect reporters’ purity seems to grow ever longer. This year, for example, Newsday posted a list of journalism prizes reporters have been asked not to compete for because they’re sponsored by professional groups we may cover.

While that sort of vigilance is commendable, it should apply to our corporate colleagues as well.

Television stations across the country including Denver, Milwaukee, Baltimore, Detroit, Louisville, and Atlanta — jumped into pools for coverage of funerals of those killed in the Gulf war and for contacting and interviewing families of victims. In some cities, the pool arrangements extended to POWs and MIAs.

"We didn’t want a media circus. The victim’s family had already been through enough," said Bob Freeman, assistant news director of WAVE-TV in Louisville.

"Our goal is to spare the families repeated phone calls from various TV newsrooms and from news teams ‘camped out’ near their homes," states the Milwaukee pool agreement.

Stations involved in a pool rotate interviews and coverage of events. The station shooting the videotape makes it available to other pool members. The originating station is not supposed to hold back anything, including information gotten off-camera, that would give it an advantage.

"We have used the pool six times," said Tom Luljak, news director of WTMJ in Milwaukee. "The only problems were a couple of miscommunications with crews in the field and with producing dubs in an orderly fashion."

David Zurawik, television critic for The Baltimore Sun, said technical problems involving the pool have cropped up in his city which may not have been inadvertent. Zurawik said a television photographer told him that "on paper the pool looked great, but in the execution of it, everybody sort of nickeled and dimed so the station doing the interview gave itself a competitive advantage."

Zurawik said he was told about a situation in which interviews done with relatives of a Gulf war victim early in the evening were not fed to the pool members until a half hour before air time. "The feed had the audio messed up on one of the interviews and they couldn’t use it but when the interview showed up on the station that did the interview, the audio was fine."

Bob Feldman, news director of WMAR in Baltimore, said he thinks he knows the incident about which Zurawik is talking. "I’ve been in this business for twenty-six years and I’m not naive. I don’t think they were trying to beat us, I think it was a communications error."

In Detroit, stations built in safeguards. "We have a rule that if everyone doesn’t have the tape a half hour before the show, then no one can use it," said Nelson Burg, managing editor of WJBK.

Despite some problems, the television news managers believe the pool arrangement worked well. Most said they would consider using it again in situations where grief-stricken families were involved, for example, a plane crash. Some noted that it would be hard to work out pool details for a spot news story; pool coverage for the war aftermath took several days of advance planning.

"I think it (a pool) should at least be discussed in situations involving multiple deaths," said Burg. "It certainly is a good thing for grieving families — anything which would keep them from having to do five or six interviews."

While the pools, no doubt, were of primary benefit to families, they also had a secondary benefit to the image of TV stations taking part. News directors said they received favorable comments from the public as well as the families.

"One of the (Baltimore) news directors told me that they were doing the pools partly in reaction to public opinion polls that said people didn’t like the way the press was covering the war, that they were being too aggressive," Zurawik said. "Local TV has long endured the stigma — I think that it’s an undeserved stigma — that when a horrible thing happens, they stick microphones in people’s faces and say, ‘How do you feel?’ Print does the same thing, you just don’t see it."

While broadcast journalists usually get the criticism for insensitivity, few of their print colleagues have taken extra steps to be sensitive to the feelings of families suffering losses in the Gulf war. An exception is Dennis A. Britton, editor of the Chicago Sun-Times.

In an open letter to readers, Britton announced the newspaper’s policy: "We will afford family and friends the opportunity to talk to us if they like, but we will not bother them with phone calls, nor camp out on their front steps, nor invade the privacy of their funerals."

The policy was prompted by Britton’s feeling that "grief is an extraordinarily private event."

"We’ve had the opportunity to cover funerals and body bags coming back and we just didn’t do it. If families want to invite us in to talk, then we should do it because it is cathartic for people to talk. But when we’re not invited in, I don’t think we should insert ourselves."

Britton’s "call us/we won’t call you" policy has not been picked up by competitors or widely embraced by other editors.

"The problem with that kind of policy is you’re assuming that people are thinking of the newspaper when that might be the farthest thing from their mind," said Bruce Frassinelli, editor of The Express in Easton, PA. "I think you miss out on some good opportunities by not calling. They always have the option of saying no, they don’t want to talk or don’t want us at the funeral."

Britton believes his readers are not being deprived by his policy. "We’re still covering the story. The only thing they are not getting is the victim’s family’s reaction to death. I cannot think of any valuable piece of information our readers will lose by not attending a funeral or knocking on some poor family’s door."

"I don’t mind being lonely in this one," Britton said. "I truly believe it is the right thing to do."

I never imagined that in a matter of days the story would cost me my job and prompt Lee to turn in her resignation.

I had been managing editor of the Round Rock Leader for 10 months. Round Rock is a bedroom community of 32,000 about 15 miles north of Austin, the state capital. By February, Round Rock had caught the patriotic fever sweeping the country. The city was festooned with the colors of war red, white, blue and yellow. A pro-war rally was in the works.

Leader coverage of the Gulf conflict had to this point mirrored the community’s pro-war slant. I was delighted then when Lee discovered IBM engineer Issa Mahmoud, a Middle Eastern native and 27-year American citizen with children attending local schools. At last, the newspaper had an opportunity to present another side to the story.

Mahmoud spoke frankly and intelligently, mostly about Middle Eastern culture. But he also criticized U.S. involvement in the war and called President Bush a liar for covering up what he said were the real reasons for the war — to divert attention away from failed domestic and economic policies on the home front.

Monday’s edition is printed Friday and goes on the stands on the weekend. At day’s end Monday, publisher Ken Long called me into his office and told me I was fired. Long explained that both he and his father-in-law, Leader majority owner Bill Todd, agreed I’d exercised "poor judgment" in running the story.

Long also alluded to an incident the previous August when I’d run a reporter’s opinion piece critical of the city’s call for voters to approve tax-funded bonds for a minor league baseball stadium. The Leader had endorsed the proposal.

Next Long amplified his objections in an unusual Page 1 editorial appearing in the next edition. He proclaimed the article "misguided, misdirected journalism" that belonged more appropriately on the editorial page. His editorial implied that I’d deliberately run the article while he was out of town and said the story ran without the "approval or knowledge of management."

He apologized to President Bush, servicemen and women and their families. Long pledged the Leader’s wholehearted support for the president’s "handling of the liberation of Kuwait" and "every U.S. effort to halt tyranny in that part of the world." To allay any remaining doubts about the paper’s patriotism, Long concluded his editorial: ". . . we hope the flag flying from our office and the yellow ribbon on our tree will remove any doubt about our loyalty to the President and our men and women in uniform."

Lee’s byline was removed from her stories in the edition following her Mahmoud article, an action Long told her was meant to shield her from harassment. Lee said she received no calls about the article and she soon resigned.

Tipped off by the apology, the Austin American-Statesman reported the firing. The paper was deluged with calls, most protesting the firing, receptionists said. Others wrote letters to the editor.

"Do you have such a low opinion of your readers that you think we cannot hold onto our convictions in the face of scrutiny?" asked one.

Looking back, I can see that the conflict was inevitable. Long frequently enforced his own personal opinions and biases on news coverage. At Halloween, for example, Long decreed that no pictures of witches or devils would appear in the Leader because he said such art promoted Satanism. Coverage of a months-long dispute at the Chamber of Commerce that was highlighted by the ouster of a prominent Chamber employee was kept to a minimum by Long, who this year heads the organization. Long also ordered that the foreclosure auction of the mayor’s home not be reported, though the mayor had a history of financial problems.

The problem at the Leader is fundamental: a failure to differentiate between the roles of publisher and editor. The editor’s job is to provide a forum for all members of the community. The publisher is the business manager who keeps the paper on sound financial footing so it can provide that forum.

That does not preclude the publisher from having a say in editorial policy and direction. But this division of responsibility can only remain intact if neither publisher nor editor allow themselves to be influenced by friends, advertisers, or cronies at City Hall.

I believe that the Leader’s credibility was badly damaged by the whole affair. Reader Bruce Selcraig summed it up quite well: "Unfortunately, you’ve confirmed in some peoples’ minds the old stereotype of the timid small-town newspaper editor who is frightened of controversy, intimated by advertisers, and suspicious of ideas not his own."

 

. . . We extend our apologies to all who were offended by the article. I, likewise, was offended when I returned from a vacation to find the article dominating our front page.

In particular, I wish to apologize to the families who currently have loved ones serving in the Persian Gulf. Our personal prayers and public support will continue to be with them daily.

. . . I offer my apology to our Commander in Chief. . . We support President Bush in his handling of the liberation of Kuwait and will continue to endorse every U.S. effort to halt tyranny in that portion of the world.

. . . The front page of any newspaper is the most important. . . . Rather than publish this editorial apology inside the Leader, we desire to have it appear in the most obvious area possible so our readers will know where we stand. Furthermore, we hope the flag flying from our office and the yellow ribbon on our tree will remove any doubt about our loyalty to the President and our men and women in uniform.

Editor’s note: Round Rock Leader Publisher Ken Long substantially confirmed the facts in Wolbrueck’s story. He added that the dismissal was also prompted by earlier events he can’t discuss because of the possibility of litigation.

First, the long odds. Less than 100 coalition troops were killed during the ground war with Iraq. Unbelievably, one of them, Kenneth Perry, was from Loris, the small town where I edit the weekly paper. Further stretching those odds is that Becky, my layout and design manager, is married to the dead man’s uncle.

Next came the lousy timing. The news of the death was received at the paper just two hours before our press time. There wasn’t enough time to gather any information beyond the simple fact that the man had been killed. Printing just that seemed senseless, so we held off. As editor of a weekly, I have learned to accept such cruelties of timing. All I can do in such a case is to be more thorough when my time comes; in effect, substituting depth for speed.

That was my intention when I went to visit the family the next afternoon. I decided early on that I would not rush anyone into talking. I knew the death was a shock and I had a week to get the story. So I sat on the porch and talked to Becky’s husband and other family members. It was a prototypical Southern scene, as people sat in the porch swing and on the front steps, talking about everything but the death that had caused them to gather.

After some time, I spoke with the sisters of Kenneth Perry. They gave me some very good background. We talked about his love of sports and dancing. I learned that he was a "sharp dresser" and something of a ladies’ man.

I also heard some news that really caught my ear. There were hints that Perry had been killed by friendly fire. Those hints became fact when another uncle told me, off the record, that Perry had been killed when he picked up an unexploded bomblet from a cluster bomb dropped earlier by an allied warplane. This uncle, as well as several others in the family, stressed to me that the distraught parents wanted nothing written about the way Perry was killed.

I was faced with a tough decision. Immediately upon his death Perry, and by extension his family, had become heroes in our small town. Any actions seen as denigrating that heroic status were certain to be viewed unkindly. The town had a new hero and would not easily surrender him.

Adding to my difficulty in deciding on what to print was the fact that the Army representatives on the scene refused to comment beyond the bare bones of the circumstances of Perry’s death time, location, unit identification. Other than that, they referred me back to the family, which refused to confirm the information for the record. The casualty assistance office at Ft. Jackson referred me to the Army representatives on the scene. I was handcuffed.

I discussed the problem with Becky, who was also getting a lot of pressure from her family. She told me that she understood my position, but that she was asking me not to pursue the question of how he died. "I have to live with the family when this is all over," she said.

My only comfort, I was told no one else would hear the story from the family either. That was important since media from all over both the Carolinas had descended on the town.

I chose to withhold the information. In effect, I had no choice since I could not corroborate the story. So I wrote a story about the young man’s life, blending what little information I had about his death.

Then came the funeral. It was a funeral like Loris has never seen, and surely will never see again. The casket was transported the mile from the funeral home to the church on a horse-drawn caisson accompanied by a full military honor guard. Behind the caisson walked a black riderless horse.

The family walked behind the horse as two thousand people lined the streets, and nearly as many media darted in and out taking pictures. At the graveside service, ceremonial flags were presented to the mother and two sisters as a lone bugler played "Taps." Once again, lousy timing plagued me, as the service was held on Wednesday, giving everyone else six days lead time before I could get into print.

That night, both CBS and CNN carried footage of the funeral. Time magazine had a photographer there. Local television stations for a hundred miles around ran stories.

The next day, at least a half dozen newspapers featured the story and, unbelievably, every one of them carried quotes from the family about how Perry died. Everything that I had been asked to withhold was now in print a week before I could do anything about it. I really felt like I had been had. I felt, and still do, that the family used their relationship with Becky, and hers with me, to get the boy buried before the truth came out.

I wrote a sparse, sedate account of the funeral and let it go at that. But I will never again let the emotions of a situation dictate my coverage of it. It really bothers me that faced with the decision, I chose hometown journalism over sound journalism. It reminds me of something my father used to say when he was faced with a tough decision. "It’s better to have other people mad at you than to be mad at yourself." I should have remembered that sooner.