As someone who has been a journalist for a long time, I have rarely been as offended as I was by the suggestion in the Georgia Straight that the media "love" the Hirji murder story ["Media, race, and Hirji murder", July 19-26]. That is a total insult to all reporters who have covered that tragic event.

In fact, the media hate the Hirji murder story, as anyone would hate the murder of a bright, popular, accomplished woman five days after her wedding. Added to the terrible murder itself is the mystery of why she was killed and the fact that police have, for all intents and purposes, singled out her new husband as their only suspect. This is not a story worthy of intense media coverage?

To write that the South Asian community is being culturally stereotyped by the media for focusing on a series of recent fatal assaults against women from that community shows no understanding of the role of the media. Was it the media that prompted hundreds of South Asian women to attend a community forum earlier this year, outraged over the patriarchal violence they had witnessed and experienced? Was it the media that prompted Attorney General Wally Oppal to lament the "cancer" of male violence against women in the South Asian community that needed to be faced up to and addressed?

Give me a break.

> Rod Mickleburgh / Vancouver