Did the Post publish two different versions of reporter Jessica Coates’ Jan. 21 article about the local impact of a presidential directive ending TPS status for nearly 200,000 people from El Salvador who’ve lived in the U.S. for more than a decade?

That’s all I can conclude after reading the Jan. 24 letter indicting the article as a blatantly one-sided attempt to gin up “sympathy” for those who entered this country under government auspices and now face summary deportation.

The article I read was thoroughly reported and even-handed, and it provided the broader context framing how policies decreed in Washington have an impact on people here in Rowan County.

Putting a human face on abstract issues isn’t bias; it’s what good newspapers do.

If you support this TPS decision, then so be it; but don’t try to deny the impact it will have — is already having — on individuals and families whose only “crime” was to flee hardships elsewhere in hope of finding safe harbor here.

As for the letter writer’s claim that the article had a subversive motive, one might as well argue that the Post’s recent series on the opioid epidemic was designed to present drug abuse in a favorable light, or that coverage of house fires constitutes advocacy for arsonists.

— Chris Verner

Salisbury