Dear Ms. Lee ... Part II

(After receiving no response from Ms. Lee at KOMU on her fertility story, I sent letters or made phone calls to three other individuals who would have been connected with that broadcast for various reasons. None of them responded, so I then carbon-copied them the following letter, sent to the general manager of the station.)

To whom it may concern:

In February, one of your reporters did a story on couples who are having trouble conceiving. The young lady who did the report, Bonyen Lee, focused on In-Vitro Fertilization and briefly mentioned "fertility drugs" as an alternative at the end of her piece. She did not mention, however, that another alternative exists, which is Natural Family Planning. NFP, and in particular the Creighton Model, is statistically much more effective than In-Vitro fertilization. In addition, it has many other wonderful benefits, including early diagnosis of health problems in a woman. Lastly, it has none of the controversy associated with it that In-Vitro does. I e-mailed Miss Lee regarding my hope that the "Your Health" segment could run a story on NFP. I offered to put her in touch with medical professionals who specialize in this approach. Especially given KOMU's concern to let the viewers be heard (as shown by the new "Your View" segment), I expected some reply, even if KOMU wasn't interested in pursuing this story. However, I never heard back. I then contacted three others at your station and again heard no response.

I understand that your staff is busy, but I would think that if one of your reporters ran a story that was, even unintentionally, one-sided, you would be eager to correct this. So, again, I extend my offer to put KOMU in touch with those who can help to do a story on the benefits of Natural Family Planning, both as a means of limiting children and as a means of helping couples conceive. In addition, I can put you in touch with many couples, such as my wife and myself, who have experienced great benefits from this program.

Thank you for your time.

Spencer Allen

While I didn't hear back from the station manager, this e-mail caught the attention of two of the individuals I contacted, including the news director, Stacey Woelfels, who wrote:

Mr. Allen,

I apologize for the lack of response earlier. I’ve searched my e-mail files and can’t find any earlier e-mail from you. It may be that the University filters kept all of us from getting it.

In any case, I looked back at Bonyen Lee’s story to review your criticisms. I’ll disagree that her story was one-sided, since it focused on specific medical treatments being done by the clinics she mentioned. Having said that, I am still interested in NFP as a possible story. It’s fairly easy to find on-line resources as background for the story. So my question to you would be whether there is an active NFP community in mid-Missouri where we could find couples and counselors. I’m guessing you’re involved with this approach personally, so you probably have those names readily available and can send them my way. I’ll review and see if we can develop a story.

Again, sorry for the apparent snubbing on your concerns here. They were unintentional.

Sincerely,

Stacey Woelfel
News Director

It is interesting that our definitions of "one-sided" differ so much. Mr. Woelfels is implying that the fertility story was not one-sided because it looked at the treatments done by the clinics she mentioned, and since those particular clinics don't offer Natural Family Planning as a treatment, she could not include it in the report. I would argue, however, that her selection (even if it had been done unintentionally) of only those clinics was a one-sided presentation of the options available as a whole. After all, by what criterion would one exclude clinics that offer a natural means of achieving pregnancy? However, in the interest of picking my battles, I responded back to Mr. Woelfels that I was interested in assisting with a story, and current progress (supposedly) is that this story is somewhere on the queue for the news team.