Hi Mary,

We had a similar situation a couple of years ago with our local paper. I'll
descibe for you what happened and what I did.

 There was an article written about families whose children were only able
to consume very expensive govt subsidised formula. Someone wrote a letter
stating that she didn't think that it was very fair that they didn't get
their formula subsidised. A friend (NMAA counselor writing under her maiden
name) sent a letter basically suggesting that parents had a better, free
option in breastmilk. Well it was on for young and old. There were letters
publlished from a heap of women saying how they couldn't breastfeed (you
can only do it if you have full time help at home, breastfeeding is
incredibly painful, my baby was getting more blood than milk etc), how
healthy their children were (formula fed children are as healthy as
breastfed), how dare someone make them feel guilty, what about lactose
intolerant babies (they can't breastfeed).

It went on for months. Then they stopped publishing letters. There had not
been one positive BF letter sent since the first. NMAA had sent an official
response but it had not been published. Two months passed

Eventually I sent two letters to the editor. One that was an accurate
stement of the facts involved in the case, as brief as such letters must
be. A second, accompanying it was only for the letters editor to read. I
outlined each inaccurate piece of information that had been published
(included photocopies from the paper highlighted) and detailed what the
latest research said for each point (including the stacks of refs). I
further stated that THEY were responsible for what they wrote and they have
a duty of care to publish accurate information in their paper. I concluded
that they therefore needed to publish at least one last letter that was
accurate and that either my letter or one from NMAA would be appropriate.

They published my letter AND the one from NMAA (received 4 months earlier).
And that was the end of it. Perhaps a similar approach from someone in your
community might work. There's nothing like the facts and references to the
research to make newspaper guys think you know what you are talking about.

Karleen Gribble
Australia

By the way. Our local paper also had the bad article about co-sleeping.
They published the letter I wrote in reply on firday but mangled a couple
of sentances in the middle. I spoke to the letters editor over the weekend
and he promised to publish another letter if I wrote one. So at least we
get a positive slant in the letters. When I told the letters editor of the
impact of that story on the community he was very supportive, volunteered
that his kids shared their bed when they were little.

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