The following article was submitted to the Virginian-Pilot Letters Page, in response to a recent Pilot Editorial which marginalized the extent of concern within our community with respect to aircraft operations connected with NAS Oceana. The response challenges directly the Pilot's deliberate attempt in its Editorials to misrepresent facts and mislead the public.

The Letters Page Editor declined to print this particular submission, arguing that the Letters Page has recently printed other letters with a similar point-of-view. Text of the Letter is as follows:

Journalism Without Integrity

The Virginian Pilot editorial staff, in its December 29th editorial, "Navy should release Oceana noise complaints," lowered the bar of journalistic integrity another notch by implying that concern within the community regarding aircraft noise was being overblown to justify the Navy's aggressive approach in dealing with encroachment.

This comes on the heels of a December 16th editorial intended to raise community anxiety by speculating that a Virginia Beach International Airport, hosting commercial aircraft markedly louder than Super Hornets [a known inaccuracy for which there has been no retraction] would be the likely consequence of not allowing developers to have their way.

This most recent piece of pandering impugned the motives of many responsible homeowners currently in litigation with the Navy over individual property rights (as opposed, of course, to the property rights of other landowners and developers).

It also cited the small number of noise complaint responses to two City surveys addressing "resident attitudes" toward City services [not Navy operations] as evidence that aircraft noise is allegedly a non-issue.

Interestingly, the surveys did not ask a single question about jet noise. Only an open-ended question --
: "What is the ONE most important thing the City [not the Navy] could do to make the respondent more satisfied?" -- if it had been phrased differently, might have elicited a noise-related response. However, since none of the other sixty-two questions even mentioned the words "noise," "Navy," or "aircraft," the likelihood of obtaining a noise-related response was remote. And, since the survey was random and City-wide, the majority of respondents likely do not live in a high noise zone.

One the other hand, the surveys did note (but the Pilot did not) that many of the items that residents were dissatisfied with related to growth issues, that there was a desire for the City to "focus more on residents, not business," and complaints that "[t]he Council ignores citizen wishes with
respect to business deals."

And, as a related matter, well over a thousand residents recently Web-polled by the Pilot, did, in fact, indicate broad support (86% to 12%) for the Navy's position on encroachment vis-a-vis the developer/City's position. Regrettably, in this instance, the Pilot chose to ignore its own poll.

The Pilot goes on to characterize the level of concern on the jet noise issue as "public indifference." This is a remarkable flip-flop, inasmuch as the Chamber of Commerce (with Pilot management representation on its Board of Advisors) aggressively promoted its "Oceana, Yes!" campaign -- an effort intended to neutralize the rising concern in the community about Navy aircraft impacts.

Certainly, this expensive "Oceana Yes!" ad campaign in the Pilot was not advanced because of "public indifference" on this issue! To the contrary, the Navy itself -- in the past six months -- has extensively and increasingly expansively acknowledged the depth of community concerns.

Whether one is "with" the developers, or "supports" the Navy in its attempts to curb encroachment, everyone should expect fact-based and honest Opinion on the Editorial Page, rather than the transparent, self-serving misrepresentations which the Pilot editorially has been serving up.

These editorials are an example of journalism bereft of integrity, and they poorly serve the public interest.