It is as a pit bull owner and advocate that I write to you regarding the Oct. 5 article “Marines tighten leash on pit bull policy.”

This article is extremely one-sided and does not in any way explain both sides of the issue at hand. The policy that the Marine Corps has implemented does not only affect pit bull owners but also owners of Rottweilers and wolf-hybrids, yet your headline only mentions the pit bull and the photos included with the article only show the pit bull. Surely a photo of a Rottweiler could have been found.

This article continues to be one-sided when Stars and Stripes does not even bother to contact a Marine Corps family that owns one of the banned breeds to obtain their reaction or to see how this will affect them. I find it terribly hard to believe that out of the thousands of Marines located throughout Japan, there was not one family willing to defend their family pet. Stripes did have no problem finding the webmaster of the extremely pit bull-biased Dogsbite.org.

For this article to be nondiscriminatory, Stripes needs to do some real journalistic research. If it had, it might have found the American Temperament Test Society, which has plenty of data that show the pit bull scores better on temperament tests then many popular dog breeds.

If this is the type of journalism that Stripes is going to continue to print, I am thankful to be able to read the New York Times and Washington Post online.

Lea OrrOkinawa

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