Letters, 4/24: Bias in debate coverage

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This letter is in response to your April 10 story about the Young Professional Group mayoral debate.  As a young professional who attended that debate, I find it extremely biased that you chose to release this story in the way you did. Overall, this was a very good debate, and I believe Ken Svoboda really stood out as the leader Lincoln needs.

Unfortunately for the general public which relies on your newspaper for their information, you chose to release a tiny portion of Ken’s presentation. Being a news organization, your duty is to deliver news to the public that is unbiased and forms no opinion.

Please explain to me how you can print one candidate’s entire closing remarks and one paragraph from the other candidate? You are not a news organization, you are a newspaper with an agenda.

This is a very important election we have coming up. I hope the voters of Lincoln take the time to get educated on the two candidates, and I hope they don’t educate themselves with your newspaper.

Eric L. Lemke, Lincoln

Smoking ban is healthy

As a reminder to those people who opposed the smoking ban in Lincoln, the majority of the voters voted for it. Ken Svoboda has served on the Lincoln/Lancaster Health Board for many years. Yes! He favored the smoking ban. Why?

Health-insurance rates are increasing by double digits. For business owners who offer health insurance, they are passing more of that cost on to their employees. If they did not, they would have to lay off employees. Most business owners do not want to do that.

Smokers are a large part of the problem of increased health-insurance rates.  Because of some employees’ smoking habits, other nonsmoking employees have to pay higher insurance rates. On group insurance the increased rates are spread among all the employees.

More insurance companies are urging employers to implement a wellness program. When the employer does that, the rates of the nonsmokers go down and the rates of the smokers will go up. If you pay for your own individual insurance plan, you know that your rates are higher than if you were a nonsmoker.

So, let’s rethink this. Svoboda understands this, and he believes in controlling the increase cost of health insurance. Makes sense to me — healthy people result in fewer doctor office visits and lower insurance premiums.

Maggie Higgins, Lincoln

Push poll isn’t 1A news

Lincoln Journal Star, you have done it again regarding a poll regarding the death penalty (April 12). You have attempted to further your anti-death penalty agenda by reporting a poll by the very ones who are against the death penalty as actual news, and then you have the audacity to run it as news on the front page adjacent to Iraq coverage — very clever.

Whether for or against the death penalty or any other important issue of the day, a “push poll” is not news, it is propaganda. If you must report such “factual findings,” the findings certainly should not be on the front page. Although polls that buttress an agenda have become news, they aren’t because of the ease in which they may be skewed to make the point of the ones who have commissioned/paid for the poll.

The Journal Star did at least report the entity that took the poll, Nebraskans Against the Death Penalty, and for that I give you credit.

This letter is not written advocating a side. It is written only in the interest of professional journalism, which, as I understand, is to report real news as real news and then let the readers interpret the news as they wish.

Polls, especially push polls, certainly are not real news, especially if they appear to favor your agenda. But if you do consider them news, rather than endeavors that citizens/readers may consider to be simply interesting and thus feel you must report them as news, please try to keep them off the front page, as difficult as that might be.

David Stempson, Lincoln

Violence begets violence

On May 8, Gov. Dave Heineman and Attorney General Jon Bruning will be joined by citizens of the state of Nebraska in an act of “becoming the evil we deplore.” This will happen as we execute Carey Dean Moore as an act of pure retribution and revenge and call it “justice.” I, and other citizens who abhor this behavior, will be made complicit with an act of violence that violates our faith and demeans our humanity.

Is it not time to understand that violence begets violence and that we “model what we mold” as individuals and as a society? The uneven hand of a judicial system filled with discrimination and the possibility of false conviction cannot be called just. This is the ultimate act of judicial revenge we are practicing! There should be zero tolerance of error and certainly absolute resistance to assisted suicide, which is a characteristic of the scheduled May 8 execution.

May God have mercy on the soul of Carey Dean Moore and on our souls as well, for we are all guilty of the evil we deplore when we engage in this barbaric action.

It is time to abolish the death penalty and let the Creator of all justice be the arbiter of justice for Carey Dean Moore and those policy makers and executioners who would play God without the credentials of the “One” who is all knowing.

The Rev. Lauren D. Ekdahl, Scottsbluff

Let God be the judge

I’ve been friends with Ricky Turco for about six years now. I just returned to town and heard what happened. I’ve heard the news, read all the news articles and hate letters that he received in the mail. Everyone is judging him with what happened.

Let me tell you something about Ricky Turco. When I got back to town, I sat with him and we talked about what happened that day for about six hours.

Everyone who saw him on the news said that he had no remorse. As he was talking to me, he cried the whole time, saying that he wishes he could change it all back. But now that it happened, he wishes that everyone would understand that it was an accident and didn’t mean to cause any harm to anyone.

I talked to Josh Rice, one of the teens in the car. He said everyone in the car wanted Ricky to go faster and jump the hill. If no one egged him on, Megan Churchill would still be alive.

Don’t judge him; let God do it. God bless all of the victims’ families.

Nick Lane, Fort Myers, Fla. 

A DUI by any other name

I disagree with Melvin Moore, who wrote that there are two kinds of DUIs (letter, April 16). He separates the hard-core offenders who keep repeating the deed, whom he calls “notorious drunk drivers,” and the occasional offenders who “cross the line” unknowingly (ha!) just once in a while.

Moore thinks the latter group should not be treated as harshly by the police as the former. In other words, the “once-in-a-whilers” should be handled with kid gloves. It is OK with him if the repeaters are “ham-fisted.”

If I am killed or crippled by a DUI, I don’t really give a you-know-what whether he/she is of the “notorious” variety or a “once-in-a-whiler.”  I will be just as dead or disabled by either.

The “harshness of the DUI law” applies to any DUI who risks injuring other people. And they should all be treated the same, as they evidently are now.

As Gertrude Stein might have said, “A DUI is a DUI is a DUI.” (Sorry, Gertrude, I know it was a rose.)

Betty Jochmans-O’Connell, Lincoln