Talking to the media after/during a family tragedy

As in, “I’m Bob from KXYZ TV. How did you feel when you heard your son had been vaporized?” I can’t imagine why anyone would put themselves through this, unless there is a chance it would help resolve, say, a kidnapping. I also excuse the guy whose son was killed in a school shooting - he was speaking to what he believed to be the cause of the shooting.
Why would anyone want to put themselves through an interview with strangers under those circumstances?

…15 minutes…

Under any circumstance, I don’t see “How do you feel?” as ever being a legitimate question to be posed by a reporter. But especially after a tragedy, it’s beyond stupid - how do you expect someone to feel when their loved one has been murdered, or committed a murder, or plunged from a bridge while trying to rescue a kitten, or impaled by a jealous lover… or winning a big tournament, or finding a lost loved one, or discovering a cure for cancer? Stupid meaningless question. [/rant]

I don’t think I could speak to anyone after a tragedy, especially not the media, unless it was to plead for information or some such thing.

It wasn’t a family member, but I had the privilege of kicking the media out when they were intruding inappropriately.

About six weeks into my freshman year at university, a student under the influence of LSD, jumped from the 7th floor of our dorm. His suicide was late at night and I was already asleep.

Early the next morning, a bit before 7am IIRC, I was briefly awoken by my roommate as he was talking to his mother on the phone explaining the previous night’s incident. As he hung up the phone I rolled over a muttered, “What happened?” “Joe jumped. He’s dead.” my roommate replied.

Joe lived in the room at the end of the hall, diagonally across the hall from my room. It was only a few weeks into our freshman year and not everybody knew each other’s names. My roommate and I were in the small group who knew Joe by face and by name. Joe’s roommate was gone for the weekend. As we pieced together the events of that night, it seems Joe used LSD with some friends and Joe was having a bad trip. His friends left Joe alone in his room.

No sooner had I mumbled, “Oh shit!” than I heard a knocking on our door. “Hi! I’m Mr. Shiny Teeth*, reporter with channel 27! Can I ask you questions about last night!?”

I donned my robe and stumbled out to the hallway where I escorted the reporter to the elevator and back to the lobby. I tried to be as absolutely “helpful” as one possibly could be given that I knew virtually nothing about what transpired. I put on a helpful, almost cheery, demeanor which only grew as we passed every door that locked behind us. All the while I wondered how he managed to make his way into our locked-down building and up the secured elevator.
Years later I told this story of the death of Joe Sicherman to my nieces and nephews and my step-daughter. Joe’s father was Al Sicherman, a columnist with the Minneapolis Star tribune. Al wrote a heart wrenching article about his son’s death.

  • Name changed to protect the insensitive clod (or maybe because I can’t remember his name after all these years).

I don’t watch a lot of local news, but does this really happen a lot? I mean, I know the news will definitely show grief-stricken family sobbing in the street (I hate them for this). But it seems to me that news reporters often end up talking directly to a family spokesperson.

I imagine that family members who do talk to the cameras do so because they want their loved ones remembered as human beings. I’m thinking of kids who are innocent bystanders to gun violence. If I had a child that was killed through no fault of their own, I might be compelled to talk to a news reporter, just so that everyone could see that my kid wasn’t a gangbanger…that they were very much loved and valued. I would do so in hopes that maybe I could put a face on a serious problem.

Not a family tragedy but several years back when a tornado went through our small town we had the news crews of several area tv stations and newspapers on hand. (No one died but several were injured and many houses destroyed) The police had barricaded our neighborhood off (along with other areas of town) as worst hit and no one was allowed in there beyond folks who lived there or emergency workers/cleanup crews. All of us “legitimate” people had badges we had to wear to show we could go in. The reporters were all made to stay outside the area - albeit just outside. They camped in a parking lot with all their little trucks and satellites and camera guys. There was no way out or in without going past that mob. They would shout and scream for us to come over and talk to them. We didn’t - we just kept on about our business, sometimes having to RUN to get away when a reporter would try to catch us. We all noticed though that the “eyewitnesses” they did talk to - were all from parts of town that didn’t get hit. Looking for their 15 minutes of fame I guess. Those of us involved wanted nothing to do with it - we had enough trouble to deal with and talking to reporters wasn’t going to get the job done.