Des Moines Register
07-15-06
Letters to the Editor
REGISTER READERS
Register should have focused on positive
I’m disappointed with The Des Moines Register. You missed an opportunity to
have positive, heart-warming front-page stories about the successes (and even
failures) of the [Special Olympics] athletes.
You could have done some educational pieces on the various disabilities and the
disorders that cause them. You could have helped abolish some of the myths
and stereotypes about Special Olympians.
Instead, you chose to focus on a screw-up by the Iowa State Daily, the lack of
general public at the games and the flu outbreak. Less than half a percent of the
athletes became ill. Since when is that news?
Schools in Iowa often have 50 percent of their students out during an “outbreak”
of the stomach flu each year and it doesn’t make the paper at all, let alone the
front page.
— Kathy Pinkerton, Boone.