NBC News Joins NYT in Exploiting Fallen Soldiers

On their "In-depth" segment tonight, NBC News focused on SPC Eric Slebodnik's parents, who were shown in their grief, talking about the son they lost on September 28th, one of five members of the Pennsylvania National Guard's 109th Infantry killed when their Bradley fighting vehicle was blown up.

NBC used these deaths to postulate growing unrest and opposition to the War on Terror. The local mayor expressed his opposition. But nobody at NBC thought that Eric Slebodnik's beliefs were relevant.

From the Charlotte Observer there is this:

In a letter to The New York Times on Sept. 22, 2003, Slebodnik wrote to respond to the notion that the military was asking too much of its soldiers. "Where would we be as a civilization," he wrote, "if at one time or another we decided that dying on the hills of Gettysburg, the shores of Normandy or the mountains of Afghanistan was too much to ask?"

This letter, of course, was not mentioned by NBC.

On Friday, Michelle Malkin wrote about a similar incident involving the New York Times in which a fallen soldier's views on the war were deliberately distorted in order to advance an anti-war message. This is despicable, intolerable behavior. These media outlets need to be brought up short immediately.

Malkin provides contact information for the New York Times in her post. If you'd like to let NBC know how you feel about their selective editing of Eric Slebodnik's story, you can email them here: Nightly@NBC.com , or write them at this address: NBC News 30 Rockefeller Plaza New York, N.Y. 10112