In both cases, the news coverage was heavily slanted towards the perspective of outsiders -- generally white male outsiders.

In the case of major league baseball, the Post told this story from the beginning from the point of view of those who wanted baseball to come here -- mainly the white suburban males who will be able to afford tickets on a regular basis, and will use baseball as a tax-deductible backdrop for doing business. Only when DC Council Chair Cropp forced the issue did you recognize that this was in fact, for a large group of your readers, a story about how D.C.'s scarce resources should be used.

In the case of Fallujah, you have told the story almost solely from the point of view of the U.S. military, and almost never from the point of view of the people of Fallujah. The U.S. troops entering Fallujah have been treated as unique individuals facing a situation they have never faced before. The people of Fallujah, whether the small group of insurgents or the large majority that was expelled from their homes, have been treated as objects of the process in most cases.

In years to come, and even for most of the world's population today, the historical context of these events will be central to the story. The crimes being committed in Fallujah have precedents, and those precedents are known to everyone involved except perhaps the younger U.S. soldiers. Yet this part of the story has been avoided completely. We would not know from your coverage that French troops carried out much the same process in Algeria, as did U.S. troops in Hue, Vietnam, establishing that defeat is the likely outcome for the U.S. military. And we would certainly will not get any parallels in your coverage to events like Ben Tre and Lidice, where civilian populations were destroyed because a community was declared "hostile," to universal moral condemantion. Nor do we have any parallel to the treatment of American Indians -- yet the plans for a future Fallujah pretty much are for a high-tech reservation, though every American now recognizes that our treatment of indigenous people was a great wrong. This ignoring of the clear lessons of the past will be the story of Fallujah in years to come -- that in full knowledge of what history has taught us, the U.S. went ahead withillegal activities that were doomed to fail, leaving only resentment and guilt behind.

I realize that newspapers cannot provide the same judgment as historical overviews in years to come. But there is no doubt in my mind that history will judge the Washington Post of this era as complicit both in war crimes in Iraq and in the continued racial domination patterns in the Washington area.

The facts are there to tell the other side. The historical perspective, the spokespeople, all the players are there. The only rationalization you have to defend your behavior is that it is easier to find a potential baseball fan, or a U.S. military spokesman to interview. That might be an acceptable excuse for a high school newspaper. It doesn't work for a multimillion dollar business run by supposedly educated adults who claim to have ethical standards.

Larry Yates, December 2004