Editor, the News-Herald:

You are not alone in sensing a major shift in the way people react to news coverage. This is not surprising considering the shift in the way the media covers the news. Your two decades of reporting the news has given you a limited perspective of the subject when compared to my nearly eight decades as an observer of news coverage. One has but to turn back the pages to December 7, 1941, to find a glaring example of just how much the media have changed their reporting.

Read the newspapers of that infamous day and you will find a press rallying to the call; joining in and even leading the nation to a spirit of unity against an enemy who had just attacked us without warning. The newsmen of that day were responsible editors and responsible Americans. They reported the spirit that was alive throughout America on that day, a spirit that you just decried in Sunday’s edition. It is something you called &uot;circling the wagons.&uot; Well, young man, let me tell you that circling the wagons is a time-honored American tradition. It is what Americans have always done when faced with a surprise attack by enemies both foreign and domestic and it is a tradition that we’d best return to if we are to survive another world war. It is a time to stand shoulder-to-shoulder and mobilize all of our resources in a unified effort to defeat the enemy who is threatening us, our women, our children, our homes and our very existence.

Yes, you are right, there is a shift in the way we react to news. That’s because the news we’re hearing from you is not the news we are hearing from the majority of Americans. The news is not that the President should apologize for his actions. The news is that on November 2, 2004, the largest number of voters in history said that the President should not apologize to the UN, France, Germany or anyone else including you.

The news is that the liberal media just can’t seem to read and understand the real news.

Tom Cohoon

Suffolk