The Public Editor Responds to "Trail of Death" Caused by Veterans

Posted By Blackfive

The New York Times Public Editor responds to accusations from us about their "War Torn" series:

...The Times was immediately accused — in The New York Post and the conservative blogosphere, and by hundreds of messages to the public editor — of portraying all veterans as unstable killers. It did not.

But, the first article used colorfully inflated language — “trail of death” — for a trend it could not reliably quantify, despite an attempt at statistical analysis using squishy numbers. The article did not make clear what its focus was. Was it about killer vets, or about human tragedies involving a system that sometimes fails to spot and treat troubled souls returning from combat?

Finally, while many of the 121 cases found by The Times appeared clearly linked to wartime stresses, others seemed questionable. One involved a Navy Seabee accused of arranging her ex-husband’s murder during a bitter child custody battle, and another involved a soldier who was acquitted of reckless homicide in a car crash after a jury concluded that his blood alcohol level was below the legal limit and that many other accidents had happened on the same stretch of road...

The end of the piece discusses the motivations of the reporters - concern for veterans returning from a war zone.  As all of us know, the system doesn't work very well and many vets are not cared for.  There are lots of reasons for this - and certainly there are very many dedicated people in the VA trying to help - but the VA needs money and, most likely, a new plan.  A "Surge" for veterans care, if you will.

I, for one, believe the New York Times reporters were concerned about the vets.  But I am also inclined to believe that they were pushing a stereotype, one that began with Viet Nam vets, and their stories fit their own mental narratives.  Obviously, I cannot prove that.  But it does ring true for anyone who's experienced that kind of bias before - "Soldiers and Dogs Keep Off the Grass".

In the end, I think we can all agree that war sucks, it affects everyone, and that our vets deserve all of the support that we can afford to give.  Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI) are NOT being addressed at the level that they need to be addressed.  I don't know anyone who believes that our veterans are being effectively treated.  No. One.

One of you readers sent me a very compelling email but asked me to withhold it.  Bottom-line:  If you have a lot of veterans who have been trained to kill and they are all very likely to become unhinged, there would be a lot more murders than less than 121.

If you've been around here long enough, you know that I've tried to help a few returning vets who've wound up in prison.  In most cases, they did the crime and need to do the time, but they also need support to help them recover (they don't get medical and mental support they need in prison).

To be fair to the New York Times, I reached out to the reporters, Lizette Alvarez and Deborah Sontag, and I'll put the reply from Lizette Alvarez after the Jump.   

Hi Matt,

This is what I have been saying in response to our angry readers. Keep in mind that we spent a lot of time (in consultation with criminologists) trying to find a way to compare the numbers to civilian society but it simply can't be done, for many reasons. Two of the reasons are outlined in my response. I think we were careful to say that while the great majority of service members come home and face re-adjust to civilian society, some do not. It is undisputed that the rates of PTSD and other mental ailments are increasing, and are relatively high, among returning service members. This, obviously, can sometimes lead to other problems. Most service members are still not seeking or getting the treatment they need. What surprises me is that a society we have little trouble accepting a service members's physical wounds. But once you veer off into psychic wounds, politics somehow elbows its way in.

The notion that service members sometimes have a hard time adjusting to civilian society and sometimes tumble into crime is not exactly a new one. Many Vietnam veterans can speak to that.

Anyway, here is the response...

*********

Thanks for your comments.

The series (and there are other stories to come that grapple with this issue in different ways) is not meant to scare people or portray veterans as monsters. It is most certainly not anti-military. I think that most people who came away from the first day story would not think to be frightened of someone like Sepi or Strasburg or Walter Smith. If we wanted to portray veterans as crazy killers, I think the piece would have been written in a very different way.

Some people view the series as offering another reasons to help veterans who are having trouble adjusting to civilan life, particularly after war, and wind up committing tragic crimes, some of them perhaps avoidable.

Rather than framing it as anti-veteran, many people, including members of the military, their families, lawyers, prosecutors and judges who are dealing with veterans in the courthouses, see it as pro-veteran. These combat veterans are different from civilian criminals, and it is worth pointing that out. Lumping them together does them a disservice. In some of these cases, their war experience (as you know everyone reacts to war differently) clearly played a part in their undoing.

It was impossible for us to compare the military homicide rate to the civilian one, for many reasons, One reason is that the military (unlike civilian society) does not keep records of homicides that it does not prosecute through its own mility justice system. Many of the homicides are handled through the civilian courts. The military does not know how many of its own service members are convicted of homicides across the board. It would be lovely if the military kept such statistics. Even the internal statistics they provided us were faulty. What we have collected is an absolute mininum number of cases that we could find. Many service members and new veterans are not identified as such when they go to court or their cases never get reported publicly.

Also please keep in mind that the military population is very different from the civilian population. Military recruits are screened for criminal records and mental illness. That is why you have only a tiny number of felons, or criminals in general, who are allowed into the military, and obviously very few people with documented mental illness. The vast majority of these military men and women have no prior records at all, which makes them very different from the average person charged with murder in the civilian world. Those men and women typically have criminal records by the time they commit a murder.

As far as I know civilian society has no such screening method. This fact, among others, obviously also complicates any comparisons between a military population and a civilian one.

This is not an indictment of service members. No one has ever told the stories of these men who wind up in prison (not to mention their victims, who wind up dead) and we thought the stories were worth telling. For decades, the prisons in America held a relatively percentage of Vietnam veterans, and many feel strongly that if they had gotten help, they would not have ended up there. Some believe that perhaps those who really need help when they return from war stand a better chance of getting it if their difficulties and crimes are acknowledged.

Sincerely,
       Lizette

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Comments

[Whatstherealnews]

Only media doesn't know the busiest court in the nation, family court; is also, due to judges being the most Intrusive form of government, send people over the edge.

Where else but family court does government micro-manage one's life; from when they can parent; to where they go on vacation and whom may accompany them.

See www.FamilyLawCourts.com

Also, parents who flip out from draconian court orders is likewise not covered by media; which never-the-less, keep talking about "family values."

Dead kids listed alphabetically by state, killed by their parents:
www.FamilyLawCourts.com/kids.html

And calling a cop if you've been a victim of domestic violence is also not highly recommended.
www.FamilyLawCourts.com/badcop.html

[Some Soldier's Mom]

It would be lovely if the military kept such statistics.

ummm... why? so papers like the NYT can do more hit pieces??

thanks, Matt for speaking so honestly and forcefully on whether vets are being treated as needed... now I want to see if you receive as much "commentary" from guys who always accuse me of buying into the "soldier-as-victim" meme that I seem to get when I write on the topic of vets who just might need help and aren't getting it...

but Ms Alvarez is SO wrong when she writes, ...please keep in mind that the military population is very different from the civilian population.

They are not different, dear... they are part of this country's citizenry... and you can simply look at the statistics for the general populace to see how veterans compare. And I'm probably not the only one who was offended that she was comparing veterans or soldiers who committed crimes to career criminals?? And really, if the purpose was to show that some veterans might not be getting help, why pick 121 incidents of the most horrible crime to illustrate it?

Military recruits are screened for criminal records and mental illness.
That's a good thing, right??

[LL]

I have a question...if they weren't trying to write an "indictment of service members," WHY did they use the inflammatory language as was pointed out by the Public Editor? What, for giggles? It was not just the numbers, as Lizette was trying to justify. It was the tone and tenor. I've blogged many times about how tone and tenor betray hidden agendas and that canNOT be justified at all.

My 2 cents.

[jordan]

Lizette's response shows that all the commentary on the NYT story hasn't penetrate the thick cloud of her thinking. She persists with the us against them approach, and continues to draw specious comparisons and connections.

She outlines all the factors that make statistical comparisons on this issue difficult and weak. If the dots are that problematic, why do the story? If the data is that shakey, and the methodology so loose, how legitimate are her conclusions? This is a classic example of beginning with pre-formed conclusions, and building a story to prop it up.

Picking vet issues to agitate against the war or the military is a good tack to for them to take. Look at the totality of their coverage, from the total focus on negative news to the publication of classified information, and there's no question that, except for John Burns, there's a political agenda driving their stories that seeks to stereotype the military in a negative way. This one is just the latest.

You see, you can't argue against coverage that advocates improving veteran care -- who would? Any protest of overweaning coverage of veterans' readjustment issues sounds cold and dispassionate, whether it's this or the Post's Walter Reed story. That protects them from accusations that they're forwarding the soldier-as-victim idea.

That's the reason why the issue of veteran's care is picked for frontpage coverage, and stories that show troops as heroic and successful are not. You can do your bashing under the guise of concern, and anyone who protests is uncaring. The agenda is to add Iraq vets to the Vietnam vet myth.

If they're really concerned about veterans' psychological wellbeing, respectful and dignified coverage would go a long way. There's a way to report on the story without pity and emotion, that shows vets going through PTSD with the grace and determination of warriors still in battle. But that's never the tack they take.

The tone of coverage also has an effect on the mental well-being and feelings of satisfaction in their service. When the mission is constantly denigrated and other vets are constantly portrayed as pitiful, hapless victims, that'll sometimes affect how they feel about the war, the military and themselves.

[FbL]

"...if they weren't trying to write an 'indictment of service members,' WHY did they use the inflammatory language as was pointed out by the Public Editor?"

Ditto. That was EXACTLY my thought as I read her email response. She may or may not be correct when she sees herself as "pro-veteran," but the inflammatory language in the introductory installmant was painfully anti-veteran.

[Synova]

My best guess is that the inflammatory language is how they're taught to write in journalism school.

It's a word choice thing.

I had a journalism grad edit a newsletter article I wrote once and while I didn't mind what she did I felt it was very instructive that her focus was on my word choices... I described a setting with plastic chairs, she described a setting with plastic chairs from hell.

The problem of it is that active, compelling language isn't always *accurate*.

Sometimes people run rather than sprint, they cry rather than wail, they shift in their plastic chair rather than squirm.

[Arch]

The sharks are circling the Grey Lady as we write. Murdoch at NewsCorp is poaching NYT advertisers to the WSJ. A stockholders revolt is underway, proposing four new board members. Goldman Sachs still has a sell recommendation on the stock and they are bleeding readers to the web and other news outlets. As many of you know, I am shorting the stock until I see it break $13, half its price last July. The company is worth $2.8B broken up and someone will pounce at $12.

I'm looking forward to seeing Pinch and his slanderous staff in the soup lines.

[antimedia]

This irks the crap out of me. "The notion that service members sometimes have a hard time adjusting to civilian society and sometimes tumble into crime is not exactly a new one. Many Vietnam veterans can speak to that."

Prove it, you sanctimonious jerk. Number don't lie, and the numbers betray your agenda. Vietnam era veterans, as a group, are more successful, earn more money and are more well-adjusted than their counterparts who never served. They enjoy lower unemployment rates and suffer lower rates of mental illness than the general population. Yet you liars want to make us out as homeless, unemployed, drug-ravaged shells shuffling through life while we suffer from terrible flashbacks of the many war crimes we committed in the name of freedom.

You couldn't be more wrong, you couldn't be more of a jerk and you couldn't tell more vicious lies. Yet you have the unmitigated gall to claim compassion for us? Spare us your solipsismal misanthropy of veterans. We don't need you to validate our lives. Just go crawl back in your hole and shut up.

[douglas]

Well, her reply is rather revealing. If you read it carefully, it's basically the paradigm of major problems with most journalists- they're 'givens' are all wrong, and they don't understand context at all.. If you start in the wrong place, you'll surely end up in the wrong place.

Perfect example of both problems in one sentence:
"It is undisputed that the rates of PTSD and other mental ailments are increasing, and are relatively high, among returning service members."
Increasing compared to what? Peacetime? Relatively high compared to when? The 90's? Zero context, it's just a given that we must accept.

"Most service members are still not seeking or getting the treatment they need. What surprises me is that a society we have little trouble accepting a service members's physical wounds. But once you veer off into psychic wounds, politics somehow elbows its way in."
So, when service members don't seek aid, it's society's fault? Society has a hard time accepting psychological wounds? This is political? Perhaps it's just that warriors tend to not want to deal with "psychic (sic)" issues, and are perhaps a bit to 'macho' for their own good. There are some people who deny the legitimacy of PTSD, but they are few, and I think it's mostly because of the way it was abused in the 80's when "Vietnam vets" who weren't, were all labeled as PTSD for funding sake. That hurt efforts to deal with PTSD in the long run. Perhaps she should also read Grim's piece about PTSD etc. As for politics in this- it's mostly from the left trying to distort legitimate concerns to use them as a political club. Who's fault is that?

More problems with givens:
"The notion that service members sometimes have a hard time adjusting to civilian society and sometimes tumble into crime is not exactly a new one. Many Vietnam veterans can speak to that."
I suspect to her, many means most. She's got no clue. It's still the classic 'psychologically damaged vet' stereotype. I guess she should also read "Stolen Valor" by B.G. Burkett.

"The vast majority of these military men and women have no prior records at all, which makes them very different from the average person charged with murder in the civilian world. Those men and women typically have criminal records by the time they commit a murder."
Well, not as true as she thinks it is. In a 1999 story in the NYT, in NYC that year "...Half of those arrested for murder had no prior record...". Sure, far less than average military members, but is 50% best characterized as "typical"? It's not even most.

And of course, she's still full steam ahead on the 'killer vet' meme, without any acknowledgement (from her) that several of the cases they highlighted had perhaps little or nothing to do with the persons combat experiences (the one who was drunk driving and got in an accident for example).

I was also slightly taken aback at the sloppyness of her reply to you. You'd think journalists would be more careful about how they write. Well, on second thought...

[douglas]

uh, that's "their givens" not "they're givens". Hate when I do that.

[Caper2]

Guys:

So far the best response that I had seen to the whole issue was IOWAHAWK satirical take.

Except that his take was alarming enough to make anyone wonder what's going on in the nation press rooms.

Two can dance the Tango.

El Coqui

[Ken]

I might (might!) be able to buy that response if the NY Times didn't have the track record it did when it comes to Iraq war coverage.

The 800 front page stories on Abu Ghraib.

The constant sniping from the editorial section.

The near-complete lack of news from the theater once things started going well.

Sorry ladies. Your hearts might be in the right place. But the heart of your newspaper is most definitely not.

[Arch]

Several years ago, Fred Barnes interviewed one of my favorite conservatives, Dr Thomas Sowell, on Fox News. Sowell has a great column over on Townhall.com. Sowell, if you don't know him was a US Marine in Korea who went to Harvard on the GI Bill in the early 1950s. After he got a BA in Economics, he published a successful book and earned his PhD well before civil rights movement or affirmative action. Forgot to mention, he's black, a fact that drives liberals crazy.

He said whenever he encounters these silly Liberal ideas, he asks them three questions:

1. Compared to what?

2. What evidence do you have to support this conclusion?

3. At what cost?

According to Dr Sowell, all of these feel good assumptions dissolve when challenged. In the case of these killer veteran stories, their argument crumbles before #2 alone.

Arch,

Proud, although Crazed Vietnam Veteran.