The Triangle visit of Cindy Sheehan's get-out-of-Iraq caravan occasioned a good bit of comment from readers, anti- and pro-war, who found fault with The N&O's coverage.

"One sentence would have been enough," wrote Pam Durham, whose son will be an adviser to Iraqi police. "Her actions lessen his chances of staying alive...Don't forget there is much more good going on in the world and in Iraq. Sorry you had to waste so much space in the paper when something positive could have been printed."

And, from the antiwar corner, "your Sept. 16 coverage of Cindy Sheehan's visit to Raleigh did a disservice to your readers. Many more people showed up to support Sheehan than you reported," wrote Linda Watson of Raleigh, an organizer with United for Justice and Peace. "It's your obligation in a free society to report the facts." Her remarks were published in a Sept. 20 People's Forum letter.

Did The N&O miss the facts? Did it over-cover a staged event? Let's look more closely at the coverage.

The newspaper ran three stories and a column about the Sept. 15 Sheehan visit, plus six photos. One was an advance story saying she was coming to the Triangle, followed by two stories covering the visit. In between was a column by Dennis Rogers.

The advance story, played inside the paper, was appropriate. Sheehan's antiwar protest is big news nationally, and readers pro and con would have wanted a heads-up that she was coming.

Rogers' column took a jaundiced view of the whole affair, comparing protests on both sides to a hurricane that he hoped would blow through quickly. "This is not democracy in action," Rogers wrote. "This is not honest debate between people of good faith. This is epithet-hurling on an Olympian scale with both sides shouting past each other for their own amusement."

That brought several letters to the editor chiding Rogers for shushing open debate. If he did, nobody paid any attention. Debate raged on, and the column even angered Sheehan; more on that below.

On the day after the visit, The N&O ran two stories on the front page of the City & State section. One was an on-the-scene account of Sheehan's stops in Raleigh and of an anti-Sheehan rally elsewhere in town. Staff writer Matthew Eisley reported a "modest" turnout of about 100 Sheehan supporters at her rally and "a smaller group of about 25" Bush supporters.

The second story, by Anne Blythe, interviewed local mothers of soldiers killed in Iraq who were decidedly not sympathetic to Sheehan.

Taken together, the coverage was balanced. The stories by Eisley and Blythe included views for and against the war, accompanied by pictures of protesters on both sides. When folks from opposite ends of the political spectrum are unhappy with coverage, that's usually a sign that the paper did a decent job. We're equal-opportunity offenders.

I did find the main headline, "Bereaved mom offers message of peace," too sympathetic toward Sheehan, even if it was literally true. "Sheehan visit stirs protests over Iraq" would have been more accurate and neutral.

And, as Sheehan supporter Watson said, the paper could have presented a better picture of the numbers. While reporting modest numbers at the rally, the story didn't say how many attended Sheehan's speech at N.C. State or an evening fund-raiser that her supporters estimated at 750 people. The N&O didn't cover the fund-raiser, editors said, because it happened too late for deadline.

Before the Sheehan visit, several of us at The N&O received e-mails from Sheehan critics urging us to investigate blog-driven rumors of her alleged failings as a mother and a wife. As I told those folks, it is the job of the newspaper to report the news -- in this case, what Sheehan said in her visit and the dueling protests -- and not muck into her personal life. What's indisputable is that she's the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq and that her protest has sparked national debate over America's involvement there.

Now, back to Dennis Rogers' column. It apparently got under Sheehan's skin. On the day of her visit, she refused to talk to N&O reporter Eisley because of the column, telling her press aide, "We don't want to talk to them." (In fairness, she did let slip a few words to Blythe later.)

Still, I'm surprised. Here is a protester who has achieved national fame because she was stonewalled by the president of the United States, now refusing to speak to a lowly reporter for The News & Observer because of what a columnist wrote. As Eisley says, "richly ironic, I thought."

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