Neil Richards: You really should think about trying to make yourselves into a credible news source

The title of the article is NATURE AVENGES by Dmitry Chirkin. It is about the recent earthquakes in Afghanistan. The information includes where they happened and when they happened. It includes statistics about the number of people killed and the number of people left homeless. It talks about relief efforts under way by the UN, Russia and America. Seems like a good hard news article, yes? No, because all of the information presented is rendered suspect because the author included this: "Nature is avenging the drug manufacturers." Now I, the unsuspecting reader, have to take into account how the author feels about poppy farming in Afghanistan and am left to suspect that the author feels that the earthquakes were just payback for the opium trade.

Can I now believe the statistics he offered or were they exaggerated in order to support his claim that Nature is exacting the justice he feels is correct? I choose to find other news sources at my disposal that do not tolerate this kind of editorializing if I want to learn more about the earthquakes in Afghanistan. Sorry Pravda.Ru, but you really should think about trying to make yourselves into a credible news source and stop allowing your correspondents to make fundamental mistakes like this if you value your credibility. Neil Richards USA