Inside UDJ by Editor K.C. Meadows

So I got a personal tour this week with Ric Piffero of his flag and flag pole in the western hills. As I've said before, one of my main concerns is that if I lived nearby and had to look at that giant flag close up and the lights at night I would be disturbed. Interestingly, the flag is positioned so that really none of the five home sites of that development are looking at it. And there's really no other neighbors up there. From the valley, I don't see it as a problem. I do think it's too bad that the dicussion over it has become a kind of test of your patriotism. If you object to the oversized flag pole, you're not a patriot. That's not fair. I thank Ric for taking me up to look at it. Interesoingly there's no law about the size of the flag itself and I have to say that Ric's flag (which he tells me retails for about $8,000 and he got his used from Burger King) really needs a pole about 75 feet high. The day I went up the hill with Ric was the day we had just found out about the death of Sgt. Jason Buzzard in Iraq. I suggested Ric put the flag at half mast and he said he would except it's so big, if he lowers it he's afraid it will hit the ground.

Our reporter Ben Brown got some nastygrams this week from misguided local tribal members who accused him of being racist since he did not use the word "murdered" to describe the two tribal members who were killed up in Covelo a week ago. For some reason they think that we deliberately didn't say they were murdered because we want the community not to think of them as victims, but rather as somehow deserving of their fate. That is just nonsense. The reason we don't use the word murdered in these cases is that according to the Associated Press style book - a dictionary of usage that the AP has collated over the years in the search for accuracy in our business: "Unless premeditation was obvious, do not say that a victim was murdered until someone has been convicted in court." In this case no one has yet even been charged with the shooting deaths (as of this writing). So it's not that we hate American Indians. We use the eact same rule for any one, any color, any religion any sexual preference, age or ability.

Speaking of tribal members, we had some conversation this week with the Round Valley Tribe - through a non-tribal Covelo resident - and the result was the letter you will read in Sunday's Forum section. The tribe had wanted to also to scold the media - and one newspaper in partcular, not the UDJ - for its coverage of the shootings. The tribe believes that the media should get its permission before writing anything about things that happen on the reservation. I responded that we couldn't do that but that we would be willing to talk to any person in authority at the reservation about their view of the events. I was told that they won't talk to us. I reiterated my view that it is difficult to have stories that present their view as they see it if they won't talk to us. I say here again that we are willing any time to contact tribal members about events on tribal lands, but we can't withhold news reporting if they don't want to speak with us.

Someone asked me the other day how bylines are decided. When does a reporter get a byline and when not. Basically a byline indicates that the reporter did the lion's share of the work for the story. That he or she made phones calls, sat through the meeting, did research, got the quotes. A story without a byline means it was a story that contains information that was sent to us and that we probably rewrote for publication without a lot of extra input. Readers see my byline from time to time and that usually means we are shorthanded in the newsroom. Long time readers will remember that I was a reporter here for six years before becoming editor and I still like reporting. In the case this week of the Odyssey project at Masonite, I wrote the story because I knew the history behiond Rick Derringer's previous activities on that property and our new land use and planning reporter James Arens would have had to do so much research, the story would have been an other of couple of days coming. James will, however, take up the story from here, so call him if you have info on anything happening on the Masonite land. He's also at udjja@pacific.net.

KC Meadows, Editor UDJ