Thursday, January 05, 2006
A Quickie
No time to write, but annoyance is making me sit here anyway. I'm having a thought with the TV news on in the background as I get ready for work this morning. They only do two things when covering a tragedy/disaster (in this case the mine collapse in West Virginia): interview people who are grieving and interview people in an effort to establish blame. The poor people who have lost loved ones, their livelihood, or such are suffering enough. Leave them alone; don't make them go on national TV when they are hurting and at their lowest. And there's not always someone to blame when bad things happen. Sometimes that's just the way it is. But even if it is someone's fault in some way, the media shouldn't be stirring up a mob mentality, leading the finger pointing charge. Yet that's all they seem to do. And we wonder why we have such a litigious society . . .
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5 comments:
I concur. Pointing fingers at the cause of the miscommunication or putting the drama everyone is going through on national telivison isn't news.
The fact that it happened, who was lost, and how it was resolved is. Later, after the investigation, tell us why it happened and what's being done at all of the mines so that it doesn't happen again.
No one forces the grieving to agree to be interviewed on national TV. You can refuse to let the media into your private grief. The people you see on TV sharing their tears with the camera choose to do so. Believe me, because this is an area I have unfortunate experience with (and no, I am not going to elaborate on that point), you can refuse to become part of the circus.
But I love the circus! Except for the clowns. And the elephants. And all the other animals. And all those weird people. And all the acts. So what does that leave? hmmm. Anyway, my poiint is, I love the circus.
Interesting. But in that situation is anyone really in the proper state of mind to be making decisions on whether or not they want to be featured in the media circus? I have always gotten the impression that the circus was forced.
Not addressing your point, but adding--I saw this story this morning on the news too. I'd been following it for a few days because my initial thought was that this isn't an isolated incident. There have been other mining accidents. This time I thought that I should try to ignore the news media coverage because they always seem to blow these things out of proportion. No, I'm not saying that it's not tragic. I do think it should be reported, but I don't think we need to have every angle analyzed. The average American does not need to know what happened and how the families feel. The audience needs to know it happened. It's news.
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