Other People's Families: A Simple Request for the Press

Tragedy is always easier to understand, or to empathize with, when it's the people we care about. That's why the press pays more attention when reporters are hurt in Iraq than when military people are.

I get that, we all get that.

And you treat your own different, which is why you won't see these wives pulled onto the GMA couch for "grief TV" anytime soon, much less, God forbid, doing their turn with Katie.

Fine.

But now that this has brought this closer to home for the press, all terrorist propaganda value of these tapes aside, you would think the press would now realize that all that terrorist-provided file footage they've got is somebody's family, somebody's loved one, getting blown up. So maybe all the networks -- although, ironically, by my count ABC is by far the worst offender -- could stop stuffing their pieces stemming off the injuries to ABC's team, particularly the news pieces on the importance of the roadside bomb, with as many separate segments of footage showing an explosion at, on, or under a convoy as possible.

Is it just beyond the ability of the people who put these pieces together to comprehend that every one of those explosions probably represents the deaths or injuries to other Americans?

I will ask again: if footage exists of the attack on the convoy Woodruff and Vogt were in, do you think it will ever see the light of day on American television?

Here's a standard for the networks: if you won't do it to your own, don't do it to somebody else's.

Comments

[Ron Hardin]

Of course concern for the families is itself soap opera.

You can't shame the media.

You have to shame the audience for it.

In particular, it is reprehensible to be entertained by the misfortune of others, which is what soap opera is.

``Entertained'' means not ``made happy,'' but engrossed, exercising natural interests meant for other circumstances, for instance when you actually can do something to help, say it's in your own neighborhood and not something on TV.

So, for instance, the hostages' families' plights are also entertainment to media reformers that take the angle that it's the families that matter.

Shaming the audience would involve, probably, pointing out why those instincts are there in the first place. They bring you to step in and help in circumstances local enough so that your help helps.

The instinct is strong enough that the media can build a business model on hooking into it to attract eyeballs, where no actual good whatsoever is done by it.

None of this is meant to disparage ``Crash Photos Page 4,'' the corresponding excellent feature for men.