Oct 16
385567509
Last night I got into a fairly tense row with a friend of mine over TV coverage of the massacre on Bali. I made a comment about an interview with a young man on a beach. He was in his swimming trunks on a towel with a young lady next to him. He described the horror of this experience whilst smiling in the the sunlight. I thought it was a bit tasteless, since he was describing the death of a friend. I wonder aloud if the family of the deceased would be as charitable as my friend.
In the end, we came to agreement, after his noting I said nothing like this after 9/11, which, by the way, was not true. It was the fault of the reporter who interviewed someone still in shock, most probably on auto-pilot. The reporter showed the same abysmal level of tact as the CBS reporter who stood in the way of those fleeing ground zero, asking them if “anyone was hurt or bleeding.” Most people ignored her, fleeing in terror; however, one stopped. When asked again if she were hurt, the woman in question simply opened her skirt to reveal gore-covered legs.
I am the first to condemn mawkishness, but surely a bit of tact would be in order?
+ + +Addendum: MommaBear was asked by Andrew to add her thoughts to this post; she agrees completely that today’s ‘media-types’ have no sense of propriety, no sense of value of privacy, no sense of seemly behavior, no sense of what is abusive treatment of those who are psychologically traumatized; in other words, they are both cruel louts and lacking in decorum.
