Respected soldier/gun-crazed sniper? Let the SMH decide...

Private Jacob Kovco was around guns for much of his life.

This is how Chantal Rumble and Cynthia Banham from the Sydney Morning Herald chose to angle yesterday's story about Australia's first military death in the War on Terror.

According to military reports, Kovco accidentally shot himself while cleaning his pistol in Baghdad last Friday.

Here is Brendan Nelson's media release

The media release states that there will be a Board of Inquiry to investigate the matters surrounding Kovco's death.

It also says `there are no confirmed details available yet about the circumstances that led to PTE Kovco's death`.

I'm not saying there's nobody out there who has speculated the possibility Kovco committed suicide, but I have to ask:

Is it responsible or ethical for Rumble and Banham to write a story, three days after his death and with no credible evidence, about the fact that Kovco had been around guns all his life?

I don't think so, and as Crikey! put it:

`Jacob Kovco is the first Australian casualty of the Iraq war. The second should not be the truth about how he died`

Here's a few more quotes from the story:

• `As a student... he spent his weekends shooting deer on the Gippsland high plains;`
• `He also got work at the local slaugherhouse, where one of his jobs was to shoot suffering cows;`
• `He became a highly trained sniper and ended up in Baghdad;`

(Wow, he should be a pretty experienced with all this shooting, hey?)

• `He has left behind his childhood sweetheart, Shelley... and two young children;`

(What, he left them behind in the same way Michael Hutchence left INXS behind?)

• `Two other soldiers were in the room when Private Kovco shot himself`

Ambiguous statements like these should not be welcome in Australia's oldest newspaper, particularly the day before we remember the fallen Australian and New Zealand soldiers of war.

What will people be remebering about Private Kovco when they attend their local ANZAC march?

Tragic death of a respected Australian soldier; or gun-crazed sniper who probably shot himself?