RE: Reaction to two recent Seattle Times articles.

 On July 01, 2008, members and supporters of the "Death With Dignity I-1000" initiative committee traveled to Olympia to turn in over 320,000 signatures of those in Washington State who have signaled their support of a law that will allow Doctors to write lethal prescriptions to terminally ill patients. Unfortunately, The Seattle Times followed up the event with two articles that projected subtly inaccurate perspectives of the Death With Dignity initiative.

The first article, by Times writer, Carol Ostrom contained the headline: "Death initiative petitions filed." As one of many thousands of supporters of this initiative, I am personally offended that MS. Ostrom decided it was appropriate to shorten Death With Dignity initiative to "Death initiative" in the title of her article. I can only conclude that her decision was motivated by a personal bias against this initiative.

This initiative is admittedly a hot-button topic and there is a lot of misinformation out there masquerading as fact. Newspaper writers are allowed to have their personal opinions about such topics but when it comes to reporting the facts, I believe there should be a concerted effort to avoid projecting bias. The term "Death Initiative" obviously contains a more negative connotation than the proper title (Death With Dignity) and someone of MS Ostrom's experience and expertise is expected to understand the power of words. I hope that in the future, staff writers at The Seattle Times will make a stronger effort to stick to reporting the news rather than manipulating it to support their own personal agendas.

The second article; written by Former Governor Booth Gardner (Properly titled: "Death With Dignity" initiative deserves dignified consideration) was well-written, factual and informative. However, someone on the staff of The Seattle Times apparently decided it would be appropriate to insert a sketch showing an elderly lady about to receive a lethal injection, presumably from a Doctor. Anyone scanning the paper would notice this sketch and if they didn't bother to actually read the article, would immediately assume that this proposed new law would allow Doctors to inject patients with lethal doses of some material to cause death. This is NOT the case. The proposed law would authorize Doctors to issue prescriptions for lethal medication to patients who are of sound mind and terminally ill but THEY will be required to administer the medication themselves. This subtle inaccuracy is yet one more example of biased, manipulation in reporting on this sensitive issue on the part of the staff of The Seattle Times.

The coming months leading up to the election in November will contain many more opportunities for The Seattle Times to make an unbiased effort to report the facts to the public. For the sake of that public, who depends upon newspapers to provide facts that will enable them to make well-informed decisions; I sincerely hope The Seattle Times is up to the challenge.

Michael James Jaquish

Gig Harbor, WA

Starborn1@yahoo.com

(253) 265-3561