Military's Suicide Scandal and Wounded Times

Military's Suicide Scandal and Wounded Times
by Kathie Costos
Wounded Times Blog
May 21, 2013

I am so sick and tired of seeing all the hard work that goes into covering the stories on this site turn into a "go to" to make reporters lives easier but never getting mentioned or donated to. The worst part is, when I ask the reporters using it to return the favor, they don't. They can't even manage to kick in a buck or two for the resource they find so valuable.

Friday I was heading to a meeting in Merritt Island and as usual, I was lost. The street I was looking for was not clearly marked, so I kept passing it. My cell phone rang. It was a reporter "working on deadline" wanting to ask questions on Jim Dao's report on the New York Times because links were not working. The reporter was none other than Nancy Goldstein. I told her some basics as I tried to find the address when somehow as I was not really paying attention to where I was going, I found it. I told her that she could call me later on and we could talk since the meeting was suppose to end at 5:00. I received a text from her saying she found what she needed on Wounded Times. That was the last I heard from her. That is until now when I was reading the article she wrote.

The Military's Suicide Scandal
The American Prospect
NANCY GOLDSTEIN
MAY 20, 2013

It’s time for the top brass to stop feigning surprise and start addressing the mounting mental-health epidemic.

What a drag it’s been these past few weeks to watch the military brass—those kings of accountability, at least when it comes to other people’s behavior—huffing and bluffing and outright lying about what they knew and when they knew it. First we had to endure the sight of them gaping over the news that the sexual-violence crisis they’ve done nothing to squelch since the assault of 83 women and seven men at the Tailhook Air Force convention in 1991 has worsened. Now those same Pentagon officials are shocked, simply shocked, by the military’s spiking suicide rates, despite the fact that those numbers, which have been rising steadily for the past 12 years, come from their own reporting system (and some claim are still an undercount).

The only thing worse than the Pentagon’s faux surprise has been the complicity of news organizations willing to echo its talking points. Shame on The New York Times for last week’s “Baffling Rise in Suicides Plagues the U.S. Military.” Disturbing, yes. But there’s nothing “baffling” about the news that more active-duty troops killed themselves in 2012 than were killed in combat in Afghanistan in the same year, and that the number of suicides has doubled from a decade ago.

As the Government Accountability Office (GAO)—Congress’s nonpartisan investigative wing—and a variety of media outlets attest, there’s been only one thing better documented than the military’s unwillingness over the past 25 years to throw any real muscle into ending its culture of widespread sexual assault. And that’s the military’s unwillingness to acknowledge the prevalence of post-traumatic-stress-disorder (PTSD) and other mental-health issues plaguing service members and to enact serious reforms aimed at curbing and treating mental illness in its ranks. The military’s systemic incompetence on this issue continues despite years of analysis and criticism, not only from service member advocacy organizations, but also from within the Beltway.
read more here

I hesitated to put the link up after yet again seeing my hard work on Wounded Times just being used to make the life easier for a reporter being paid to write their articles. The truth is, it is a good report and should be read.

There are almost 19,000 posts on Wounded Times and they come from news reports I track across the country. Each one of them has links to the reports reporters get paid to write because it is their time, energy and talent. The least thing they can do is return the favor by listing Wounded Times as their resource.

This isn't the first time and it won't be the last time but I no longer put up with just taking and and not letting readers know what is going on. Some may say it is unprofessional for me to point this out but it is even more unprofessional for them to just do it. Plus consider that I do not get paid to do this, so when you think about, I am not a professional. I just have more professional standards to live up to when it comes to doing the right thing.

Yep, my day started off really badly. They write stories but we live with them on a daily basis. They report on the lives being torn apart but we are living with them. They are not just some subject of curiosity. They are our family members. Well at least we know our stories matter to some reporters but it really should make all of us wonder, if they are doing something like this, how much do they really care about what we live with?