Just A Student On The Street?

Michael e-mails to provide some background for a Star Tribune story on the rumors about a military draft that I referenced in this post yesterday:

In checking your blog this morning, I noticed the brief paragraph on yesterday's draft story from the Star Tribune. The story was erroneous from the beginning. I sent the reporter [Libby George] the following email and links as proof at noon yesterday, but have not heard back and saw no correction printed today.

Libby-

In your article today regarding the possibility of a draft, you feature Nathan Mittelstaedt without giving his correct affiliations. Nathan has been a leader of the campus group Students Against War and they have been extremely outspoken against the current war on terrorism and in Iraq. To feature him as a typical college student is misleading.

I had the chance to speak with Nathan last year when Students Against War held a campus-wide vote on the Iraq war. Although he was against the war --one of his reasons being that the United Nations did not support our actions--he admitted that he had not bothered to read UN resolution 1441 (supported unanimously in the Security Council) detailing the actions to be taken against Iraq for not complying with UN weapons inspectors.

I felt the rest of your article was fair in outlining both sides and clearing stated that the rumors were nothing more than rumors, but that portraying Nathan as simply worried about the draft hid his true agenda.

Here's a link on Mittelstaedt's participation in the vote on the war.

This is how the Strib described Mittelstaedt:

Although there hasn't been a draft in more than 30 years, 22-year-old Minneapolis college graduate Nathan Mittelstaedt is worried that he might be forced into military service.

Just an ordinary, every day college graduate. Who also happened to be a prominent member of an anti-war activist group. Might that be a detail worthy of inclusion in your story?