Posted 1:49 PM by Floyd

Does the San Jose Mercury News have a policy of fact-checking letters to the editor? From my own experience, the answer is yes. California has an immigrant Vietnamese community which despises the current government of Vietnam in much the same way that immigrant Cubans despise Fidel Castro. Two or three years ago there was some sort of flare-up, I think because an artist was exhibiting portraits of Ho Chi Minh. Someone wrote into the Merc to say that the anti-Hanoi folks were just sore losers, and should get over themselves. I submitted a letter via email pointing out that the Hanoi regime had killed hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, and some people don't get over that treatment in a day or week or even a couple of decades.

I figured that some harassed editor would print my letter, or toss it. I was not prepared to get a phone call from a Merc employee asking me for documentation of my claim! I was momentarily nonplussed; isn't the letters to the editor feature a haven for nuts who claim that God will abandon America, or the world will run out of energy? I said that I would email some evidence.

I Googled around, found some webbed data from Rummel's "Death by Government", and emailed it to the Merc editor. They printed my letter.

But ... I saw this letter in Thursday's Merc:

Race initiative is not what is seems

Now that the Connerly initiative is upon us, it's time we start calling it like it is. For starters, there's no ``Racial Privacy Initiative.'' That ballot designation was rejected because this has nothing to do with privacy. Instead, what voters will see on the ballot is `Classification by Race, Ethnicity, Color or National Origin.''

Proponents want voters to believe this will get rid of those ``annoying check boxes'' on government forms and achieve a colorblind society. Yet, this initiative will make all of us blind to information that protects our health, safety and civil rights.

If this initiative passes, it will eliminate data showing that white women have the highest incidence of breast cancer while black women are more likely to die from it -- information essential to effectively targeting precious prevention and treatment resources. That's why health organizations oppose it.

The state could no longer require data collection that documented anti-Arab hate crimes after Sept. 11, which prompted immediate law enforcement and community response. State Attorney General Bill Lockyer has also opposed the ballot measure.

Maya Harris
Director, Racial Justice Project
ACLU of Northern California
San Francisco

Now my recollection was that agencies which do need to describe people -- such as police forces and hospitals -- are free to collect racial data. It took me two minutes to verify this:

CLASSIFICATION BY RACE, ETHNICITY, COLOR, OR NATIONAL ORIGIN. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT.
Effective January 1, 2005, prohibits state, local governments from using race, ethnicity, color or national origin to classify current or prospective students, contractors, or employees in public education, contracting or employment operations. Does not prohibit classification by sex

...

(f) Otherwise lawful classification of medical research subjects and patients shall be exempt from this section.

(g) Nothing in this section shall prevent law enforcement officers, while carrying out their law enforcement duties, from describing particular persons in otherwise lawful ways.

It's difficult to die of breast cancer without coming to the attention of a hospital, or, in the worst case, a morgue. Harris' statement is a lie, for any nontrivial definition of "lie".

Does the Mercury News letters features have a fact-checking policy, or not? I would agree with their decision whether "yes" or "no" -- as long as it was consistently yes or no.