Among Trib Papers, 'Hoy' Is Unique 'Voz' on Iraq

By: Mark Fitzgerald Some Spanish-language dailies and weeklies publish English translations of their unsigned editorials. Hoy does not, and perhaps that's why the national daily has attracted little notice for editorials about Iraq that differ sharply in tone and policy from the general line followed by other Tribune Co. newspapers.

Hoy opposed the Iraq invasion from the start, arguing that United Nations weapons inspection teams had not been given sufficient time to do their jobs, that the U.S. had failed to forge strong international alliances, and that Saddam Hussein posed no imminent danger. That's not unusual for a Tribune paper. The Los Angeles Times, for instance, has referred to the war as "this ill-considered foreign adventure."

But it is Hoy's views in the aftermath of the invasion that make for remarkable reading -- especially in contrast to its Tribune peers around the nation.

Consider the editorial reactions to the grisly events last week in Fallujah, where a mob dismembered the burned corpses of U.S. security contractors and hung two bodies from a bridge. E&P's Charles Geraci compiled editorials from the English-language Tribune papers. They make for similar, almost interchangeable, reading. A Chicago Tribune headline summed up the general tone: "Why America won't cut and run."

Speaking of the pro-Hussein forces as an "endangered species," the Tribune wrote, "Over time, they will be defanged -- provided Americans resist the urge to cut and run." The Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel urged the Bush administration to "round up more international help" in the Iraqi occupation, but concluded: "Even if there are more days like Wednesday, a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would be a terrible mistake." Newsday of Melville, N.Y., summarized its April 2 editorial this way: "The slaying and mutilation of four American civilians at Fallujah demands a forceful military response, but it is no basis for changing U.S. policy."

Hoy struck quite a different note. In an April 1 editorial headlined "The big guilty ones," the paper first condemned the "savage" mutilations that "can only be imputed to beasts." Quickly, though, the editorial focused on the American invasion -- caused, it said, by the administration's "obsession" with Saddam Hussein -- and occupation: "(T)he reality is that there is no moral reason to maintain a military or other type of presence contrary to the desires of Iraqis, which is expressed by such fanatics as these bloodthirsty beasts, by religious leaders and by other prominent personalities in Iraqi society."

The editorial said the Iraqi war looks more and more like the Vietnam War. "How many more people are going to have to die before the administration realizes that Iraq is a mortal trap?" the editorial asks.

It concludes: "President Bush and the secretary of defense have no right to sacrifice Americans on the altar of their private obsessions."

"Yeah, I thought that was a pretty good line, eh?" says Hoy President and Editor Louis Sito. Editorials are decided after meetings of the editorial page editors of the New York, Chicago and Los Angeles editions of Hoy and by other members of the paper's editorial board.

But Sito makes clear who steers editorial policy: "At the end of the day (the editors) report to me, and I am the keeper of the voice of the paper, basically."

Tribune papers are independent editorially and not compelled to follow any editorial line, Sito adds, and the Fallujah editorial flowed naturally from Hoy's previous positions. "We're not saying cut and run," Sito says, "but we are saying that sooner -- much sooner -- rather than later we've got to internationalize this thing, we've got to de-Americanize it."

Hoy isn't backing off its war opposition. Indeed, in its very next issue, an editorial condemning U.S. "censorship" of the Iraqi media referred in passing to the war as an "imperial adventure." So how does it feel to be so out of step with other Tribune papers on this issue?

"To be honest with you," Sito says, "unless I'm visiting the city where the paper is published, I never read the editorials of other Tribune papers."