Media email template (re: second Swift Boat Ad)

[troublemaker]

It's always better to personalize our activism mail, but I am "pig-biting" mad and time is of the essence on this story, so if you want to cut and paste this, that's cool too. Just hit 'em. But hit 'em soft... They want an excuse to ignore us, so don't make it easy on them. I don't even accuse them of bias. Stick to journalistic error and they can't dismiss you as partisan. (And don't forget snail mail; it can be even more effective, though less timely.) Latest DU media contact list link included here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=106&topic_id=8816&mesg_id=8816

Dear XXX,

I’m writing to bring a journalistic error to your attention. In your reporting on the Swift Boat Veteran’s advertisements you have inadvertently endorsed as fact something that I think you will agree is indisputably false.

The text and video of Kerry’s 1971 congressional testimony used in the second Swift Boat ad is edited to create the impression that Kerry is personally testifying to the catalog of atrocities. In the transcript and *unedited* videotape Kerry clearly identified the catalog of atrocities as a list of things that other individual veterans had stated about their own conduct.

This is black and white “five W’s” stuff. I am not asking you to editorialize or speculate about the Swift Boat group’s motives in how they chose to edit the testimony, merely that you note that the impression left is not factually accurate.

Thanks for your attention.

Sincerely,
XXX

I have included the relevant transcript below. For brevity’s sake I have replaced some clearly extraneous comments with ellipses, so I encourage you to check the original transcript to remove any doubt. (It would be pretty ironic if I asked you to rely on my editing.)
________________________

Mr. KERRY. …I am here as one member of the group of 1,000, which is a small representation of a very much larger group of veterans in this country.... I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit, the emotions in the room, the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam, but they did. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do. They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

*** Excerpted from COMPLETE TESTIMONY OF LT. JOHN KERRY TO SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE From the Congressional Record (92nd Congress, 1st Session) for Thursday, April 22, 1971, pages 179-210.

[troublemaker]

1. BTW Please edit or re-write or post related letters in this thread.

If a series of emails on this topic accumulate there then people who only have time to cut, paste and mail will have a variety of messages to chose from. Think how handy that would be! (And with other threads for mail on other timely topics...)