EVEN WHEN THEY TRY THEY GET IT WRONG

A Salt Lake City television station tries to address the story of Soldiers fed up with the all negative all the time coverage.

One soldier with the Iowa National Guard was so upset with this imbalance he saw, he wrote an E-mail and sent it to a dozen friends who sent it to their friends. Within a month it had gone global.

Sgt. Ray Reynolds, Iowa Army National Guard: “When you come home and see a lot of the negative, it tends to swing people the opposite way. I live in peace knowing there were a lot of good things going on."

Sgt. Ray Reynolds wrote, “…the media has done a poor job...” His widely circulated email reels off numbers on clean drinking water, kids in school and democracy in progress -- stories he says the media has ignored.

However, it’s not necessarily fair criticism of the media because the numbers in the email are not completely accurate. Nevertheless, the sentiment is shared.

Did you get that last part? It isn't a fair criticism because a Soldier gets some of his numbers wrong.

But isn't the point that the soldier at least tried to tell the story that the media doesn't seem willing to tell? And isn't it a reporter's job to go out and get the numbers right?

Not completely accurate? Let's discuss not completely accurate. How about the looting of the Iraqi National Museum that turned out to not to be so. The cries of "quagmire" when the 3d ID and 1st MEF slowed down due to blinding sandstorms en route to the longest, quickest storming of a nation's capital in history. Oh...and how about the repackaging of the General's comments.

You should be ashamed of yourselves...pointing to inaccurate numbers on the part of a Soldier as "unfair criticism" when you yourselves have turned your back on accuracy as a prinicpal of journalism.

Shame on you.