I can’t bear watching stuff like that, so I don’t anymore. I figure that it’s one tiny thing that I can do to preserve the dignity of victims and survivors of such tragedies. I get the majority of my news from NPR, and from here. Works for me.
Katie Couric is beneath contempt. :mad:
Well, I agree that the ghouls at the sites of fires/traffic accidents, etc should give people some privacy and dignity to grieve.
But when did they start forcing people to appear on the Today Show?
I agree that it was pretty low of Katie Couric to ask that poor child how he felt when he saw his friends slip beneath the water, but there’s plenty of blame to spread around. How about the parents who let their kids appear on national TV the day after this happened? We saw the news clip about the tragedy. We didn’t need to see the kids crying, live.
What kind of parent puts his child on national TV a day after such a horrible tragedy?
Did they (the parents) honestly think they were capable of handling a TV interview? If something like that ever happened to my children, a TV interview would be the LAST thing on my mind.
Kid should’ve responded:
“Well, gee Katie probably about the same as you felt when you watched your husband waste away from cancer. Except for me, it was all condensed into a few minutes. That answer your question, you ridiculous ghoul? Now get the fuck away from me”
Ouch, jk1245! That would’ve made the point. Maybe she would’ve thought about how comments like that make people feel when something like that is thrown in her face.
I like the way you think.
I like to think there’s a special place in hell for reporters who do this kind of shit. I picture them all in a big cauldron of boiling oil while a bunch of demons stand around with microphones and ask them over and over “how it feels”
Back when I was in college, there was an accident & fire in the Caldecott Tunnel under the Berkeley hills. There were about a dozen cars stopped in the tunnel when the fumes lit, and a dozen or so people died. One man had left his mom in their car to go look for an emergency phone and was outside the tunnel when the fumes lit. Nobody made it out after that point.
He was being interviewed by somebody on a live newscast.
Reporter: Sir, if you had known what was going to happen, would you have done anything differently?
Guy: (stares at reporter for about five seconds) Well, I don’t think I would have left my mom in there to die. (proceeds to continue to stare at the reporter like he just grew antennae, until we fade to commercial).
I think is some goddam insane way, people think they’re OBLIGATED to go on TV. It’s part of their lives, the wheel goes around, and its their turn to be in front of the camera.
(My fave TV news moment - small-town TV news broadcast seeking “local reaction” about some Mideast skirmish. They show an interview with a guy, caption under him says “Local Jew.”
Some years ago I knew a woman whose brother-in-law died in a plane crash at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport(It was one of those micro-bursts that pushed it down) He was on his way home to Kansas City so the KC TV stations called the family, asking for interviews. They were told “no can do” and one station, to it’s credit I suppose, backed off at once. My acquaintance said the other was more pushy, calling back to try and wheedle an on camera interview “It will only take a few minutes, we will come to you!” The family had to get rude to make them back off. And as she told me “The only reason they cared was because he died with a bunch of other people”
Way to go!!! I’m trying to imagine the look on her face.
I saw the interview but didn’t hear it (I was at the gym and was watching something else). I saw the kid crying and wondered the same thing. All I can come up with was that they wanted to let other people know about the danger. Perhaps the kids and their families felt so helpless about the whole mess that they wanted to try to prevent at least one other kid from doing the same thing.
I didn’t like the image of a little kid crying on TV either, but I’m sure they all knew exactly what he was going to be asked. They probably even went over it a bunch of times with the kids. Who knows, it might just get one kid’s attention and save him from a similar fate.