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This came into me this afternoon from fight4terri. I do not know how to post well enough to request a major FREEPING of the St. Petersburg Times but thought I would post the letter here. If someone knows how to post this to activism it would be great.Lets all FREEP this newspaper!!!

To: Fight4Terri Supporters Re: St PetersBurg Times Admits Bias From: Cheryl Ford RN Fight4Terri@aol.com

Below is an email from the Associated Editor and Columnist for the St. Petersburg Times, and his response to one of Fight4Terri Action Group Volunteers, regarding the unfair coverage of the Terri Schiavo case. (www.terrisfight.org/times.html).

What Mr. Dyckman is, essentially, saying is that he feels no obligation to do anything to balance out the coverage of Terri's plight because he, PERSONALLY, is not in agreement.

This is a serious, blatant and outrageous encroachment on freedom of speech and no newspaper in this country has the authority to limit editorial or opinion content based on their own PERSONAL set of opinions. This should come to you as an absolute outrage. However, it should come as NO surprise. For nearly a year, the St. Petersburg Times has advocated Terri's death and REFUSED to report on the violations of the guardianship codes and the ongoing neglect Terri is made to endure. If I were of a minority heritage submitting a commentary and were halted by an editor with a dislike of my ethnic background, would you not be outraged? If I were a disabled person submitting a commentary and were turned away because of an editor's personal fear of disability, would you not be outraged?

If I were a poor or homeless person submitting a commentary and had the door shut on me because of an editor's prejudice against the less fortunate, would you not be outraged?

That is EXACTLY what has happened here. The next time you wonder to yourself why the people in Pinellas County, Florida aren't up in arms over what is being done to Terri Schindler-Schiavo, an innocent and helpless woman trapped in the grips of a neglectful guardian and an apathetic system, refer back to what you're about to read here. Better yet, contact Mr. Dyckman and tell him precisely why his response is so outrageous and un-American. ______________________________________________________________________ ----- Original Message ----- From: Dyckman@sptimes.com

To: (name redacted)

Sent: Friday, May 07, 2004 1:57 PM

Subject: Re: Terri Schiavo Coverage Dear (name redacted):

I empathize with your situation. You have made the choices that are right for you. That is all that Mr. Schiavo wanted for himself and his wife until the governor and legislature intervened in violation of the Florida Constitution. However, I must tell you that as a person who knows the names of distant kin murdered by the Nazis, I am insulted whenever anyone attempts to equate the issue of Ms. Schiavo being allowed to die a natural death with the deliberate genocide they practiced.

No reply is necessary. Martin Dyckman Associate editor and columnist St. Petersburg Times 336 East College Avenue Tallahassee, FL 32301 850-224-6394

______________________________________________________________________ THIS IS THE LETTER SENT TO MR. DYCKMAN FROM A FIGHT4TERRI ACTION GROUP VOLUNTEER REQUESTING FAIR AND EQUAL COVERAGE OF TERRI.

I am writing to you to express my disappointment with the manner in which your newspaper covers Terry Schiavo. As a mother of a child who would be described as being in a persistent vegetative state and is also fed by feeding tube, I am fully aware of the needs a person like Terry has.

I think it would be a good idea for your paper to educate its readers on exactly what caring for someone diagnosed as PVS is like. From your reportage PVS could be misconstrued by your readers to be a coma-like state, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth, and particularly in Terri's case. Perhaps you could interview parents of a child with PVS to learn exactly what kind of quality of life such a child has. I would be happy to be interviewed for such a story.

In my case, my child who is 8 would be described as being in a PVS. She was vaccine-damaged at the age of 4 months and her development was arrested. She lost her swallowing reflex and has been unable to eat adequate amounts of solids and so is dependant upon a feeding tube for her nourishment. The past 8 years have been the most intense I have ever experienced; filled with joy, laughter and sadness. The idea that a judge could decide whether my child live or die is just abhorrent to me. My daughters contribution to her family, friends and neighbours, in terms of the love and happiness she brings could never be measured and is priceless.

Like Terri, my child does not communicate verbally, but there is an unspoken communication between us, it is usually easy to determine what she needs or why she might be unhappy. Likewise, it is very easy to know exactly what makes her happy. With therapy my daughters condition has improved and I believe that anything is possible with the right care and attention. Reading Terri's parents testimony to her present condition, one gets the impression that Terri is a very upbeat woman who is cognitive and responsive. I find it incredibly cruel that her life could be used in the way that it is being done so in the state of Florida to encroach on the sanctity of life. It is ironic that we try to preserve the rights of unborn embryos and yet in the case of Terri, we encourage the practise of euthanasia. Is this because her life has no utilitarian function deemed worthy of preserving? And who is entitled to make that decision?

It reminds me of the nazi euthanasia programme that saw the disabled killed because they were not considered useful to society, this was accepted by German society at the time. Unfortunately, this notion of utility did not stop with the disabled but over time grew to include able-bodied humans that society felt were of no value; the chronically sick and elderly, those considered pararsites, political dissidents and finally culminating in the holocaust in which millions of jews were incinerated. The holocaust could never have occured without first convincing society that it was compassionate to kill the disabled because they had no "quality of life".

Admittedly, caring for Terri is going to be expensive, Terri's parents are fully aware of this but they love their child dearly and are battling to protect her from harm because she is very precious to them. If we are prepared to commit euthanasia despite the wishes of her parents, where precisely do we draw the line and say, this life is worth preserving and that one is not?

It is really important that your paper address these issues. Your readers need to understand that Terri does feel. Removing Terri's feeding tube and allowing her to starve to death, when she is in such a vulnerable state, is the cruelest idea imaginable. It has been suggested that she is incapable of feeling and yet she is clearly delighted by the presence of her parents when they visit her in hospital. Michael Schiavo says that removing her feeding tube would allow Terri to die with dignity. However, starving to death would cause her enormous pain, physically and emotionally.

It is said that a society can be judged by how it treats its weakest members. Allowing Terri to die in this way would not reflect well on the state of Florida. I have always found that a good rule of thumb is "what if the shoe were on the other foot". It has been claimed by Michael Schiavo that Terri would wish for the "plug to be pulled". Is it not strange that she would never have expressed this opinion to her parents and best friends?

I really do not think that removing Terri's feeding tube is a line that we who are presently able-bodied, should be ready to cross.

Please endeavour to show the human side of the plight of Terri and her parents. It is extremely sad and troubling that some 60 years after the holocaust that we are ready to embark once more with a euthanasia programme on the very same platform that was used by the nazis - i.e. compassion - and when we know so well the experiment ended in the gas chambers.

I look forward to seeing more positive and humane coverage of Terri in the future.

Yours sincerely (name redacted) If you wish to unsubscribe, please type the words "unsubscribe" in your subject heading and forward to Fight4Terri and your email addy will be deleted immediately.