Media should honor military members

Currently on CNN, Fox News, and Yahoo News’ online websites, the top story deals with a violent protest that left nine dead in Ukraine. Scroll down on each site and you’ll find stories dealing with weather conditions, murders, celebrity gossip and a political scandal. However, what you won’t find is a story honoring fallen soldiers.

Coming from a family with military history, I find it disrespectful that the men and women who put their lives on the line for our freedoms die without any recognition. Every day, we’ll read stories about violent murders or what’s new in Miley Cyrus’ life. Why is it that we find it OK that these are the stories being covered by news organizations, but when a young man is killed in war, his story is never written? Instead, another flag is folded up, another front door is knocked on and another family is changed forever.

I realize it would be impossible to name every soldier who has ever fallen while protecting our country. However, I do think that some sort of measure should be taken to acknowledge the losses. On Feb. 12, two soldiers for the U.S. Army, 22-year-old John. A. Pelham and 41-year-old Roberto C. Skelt, died in hostile fire. Those two names might not mean much to anyone in Baldwin City, but those two names mean the world to their families. Military men and women continue to put their lives on the line for people they don’t know so we can live the way we do here in the United States. Yet, we do nothing to publicly recognize them.

It is the responsibility of news organizations to communicate and share information. We choose to hear about all the bad stuff that’s happening in the world rather than the honorable. We choose to hear about the lives of celebrities when every person has a story. It may seem small, but if I were Sergeant Skelt or Specialist John Pelham, I would want mine to be told, regardless of the circumstances.