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Commenting Online Can Make a Difference!
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by Terry Burke, W A M M
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AYou can change how the news is covered. Often, online articles give readers the opportunity to write a comment after the article. If the article is biased or misrepresents the facts, you can write comments that quote other news sources with the accurate information. I’ve been elated a couple of times to see that updated versions of an article had changed after my comments.
During the January Israeli attack on Gaza, there was a rally in St. Louis Park for Israel and a counterdemonstration. The Star Tribune covered the rally and demonstration and included a comment section after the article. There was also a paragraph on an anti-U.S. demonstration at the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan. There was not a word in the Star Tribune about the worldwide demonstrations against the Israeli offensive—nothing—even though the huge demonstrations were getting a lot of coverage in other media.
I wrote a comment after the St. Louis Park article and gave it the title “Where Is the Coverage of the Worldwide Demonstrations?” I wrote a short comment and quoted an AP source on the hundreds of thousands of people who had demonstrated against the Israeli offensive.
The next morning, instead of just a paragraph on the Pakistan demonstration, there was a 12-paragraph story on some of the worldwide demonstrations in the online Star Tribune. I’ve had this experience before of seeing a change in coverage. I always quote other mainstream media in the comments. The media seem responsive to comparison with their peers.
Having a letter to the editor printed in the opinion pages is always rewarding. It’s seen by immeasurably more readers, so do keep sending letters to the opinion pages. When your letter is not printed, however, it never sees the light of day.
An alternative is writing on the Internet, which guarantees that some people will read your comments. Certainly, the newspaper reporters also read some of the comments after their articles, and if your comments make a strong argument for better coverage, some reporters will incorporate them into updated versions.
You always have to register with the online newspaper or news agency to comment. That’s easy to do and usually they don’t require much information—sometimes just a name and address. Because I’ve registered with several online media, I use the same password so it’s easier to remember. With the Internet, it’s also easy to do a search, look at articles from other news sources, and find good quotes to use in your comments.
It’s frustrating and aggravating to read articles that are biased and misrepresent the facts, but online commenting gives you an opportunity to immediately write a correction and lets you and others see that correction online. It’s immediate gratification.
If you have the time to write a couple of comments, you improve the odds that your points will be included in updated articles. Commenting online is one aspect of the positive, democratizing effects of the Internet, so participate, and help improve news coverage! |
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Cost of War
Minnesotans’ Contribution to Enduring War
By January 2009 Minnesota taxpayers will have paid $15,756,456,033 (almost 16 billion dollars) for the Iraq war. (Friends Committee on Nat’l. Legislation)
What we could have bought instead:
• 4,532,602 people covered for health insurance for one year.
• 717,600 scholarships for university students for one year.
• 270,034 elementary school teachers for one year.
• 18,086,082 houses powered with renewable electricity for one year.
For more information, visit www.fcnl.org/budget
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© 2009 Women Against Military Madness. All rights reserved.
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Complete March 2009 Index - click here
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