A journalist's lament: Of breaking news, and breaking hearts

Well, I face a career conundrum, one increasingly hard to ignore.

A couple years ago, through the vagaries of the shrinking, constantly morphing newspaper business — and through no choice of my own — I found myself returning to reporting on crime, fires and other "breaking news" that comprises so much of the new "online journalism" model these days.

 

This past week reminded me of why I was so relieved to have left that aspect of my profession — or, so I thought — 16-plus years ago when I quit The Associated Press for the flagship newspaper of my region.

Every day, I am reporting on someone's crisis or grief. A death by accident, or crime; loss of a home to fire; critical injuries in a crash that, if not fatal, leave the victims crippled or in a coma.

It just never stops, this well of our species' pain and suffering seemingly without bottom, refilled every day with stupidity, greed, rage, avarice and hubris.

You get hardened to it all. Gallows humor thrives in the newsroom, a tool to maintain your sanity in having to report such events day in, day out, week after week, month following month, year after year.

Then, a "routine" story turns on you, taking a chunk out of your heart.

We do dozens of "missing person advisory" type stories in a month's time. Kind of a public service, in cooperation with police, to help locate people in crisis -- runaway teens, seniors with dementia, people with urgent medical problems, etc.

Usually, it ends well: someone sees the photo, calls 911, and the person is safely recovered.

This past week, a missing 14-year-old girl was the subject of such a story. But there was no happy ending.

She was found, having apparently hanged herself, near an irrigation canal.

In most cases, our paper does not report suicides unless they are accompanied by a SWAT standoff or are highly public, such as someone jumping off a downtown building as hundreds watch.

But this young woman had been the subject of a major police search effort, so we had to followup. Reporting the cause of death, suicide, could not help but further traumatize the family. 

I did not name the child, though her name had been out there from earlier reports when she was "missing." The grieving family wanted to insist it wasn't suicide, despite the clear and overwhelming evidence that it was.

"Denial," is a stage of the grieving process, after all.

Police initially provided some incorrect information, too, which didn't help. That was reported, though clarified as soon as the details changed.

Still, by doing my job, I added to the pain of this grieving family. Intentions mean little in such situations. Sure, the door was opened, so to speak, by the public appeal for help finding the girl, the extensive search, etc. Professionally, we had to to report the outcome.

But in my gut, I wonder how much longer I can do that particular job.

What is more important? Getting the beat on a tragic story over others just as determined to air dirty laundry? Or, even if you cannot be a healing hand, at least not being the source of more injury?

It's not the first time I've asked myself this question over the years. And, I sigh, more deeply each time, as I consider it likely won't be the last.

 But I wonder. Will there come a time when it is?

Faith: A choice, a yearning to be more than an evolutionary dead-end

Take an evangelical, fundamentalist preacher's kid and mix him with a liberal arts education. 

Season him with more than a few decades of living, and you either come up with an agnostic, a metaphysical schizophrenic, or a believer, stripped down the basics of his faith.

I confess to, at times, flying like a confused, sometimes angry or at least disheartened moth, too close to the flames of the first two fates. The journey to faith — my own faith, not necessarily that of my parents — has been occasionally exhilarating, often painful, and all too human.

It has been, philosophically, an eclectic odyssey. That likely was inevitable, considering my History and Journalism double major and a minor in Psychology, followed by a career in journalism (a petri dish for cynicism, as professions go).

Ultimately, it is human nature that convinces me my faith — albeit skinned of what I concluded were doctrinal and theological assertions created not by an infinite God, but by finite human minds — makes more sense than pure secular humanism.

I could (but don't worry, I won't) write reams on why I find this so. Let a couple observations suffice:

— The fact that our species has not ceased warring with itself since it began, committing genocide on ever-larger scales, makes me bitterly laugh at the idea we are the pinnacle of sentient evolution on Earth. 

 

We may boast how much more sophisticated and civilized our high-tech, educated society is now compared to our stick-wielding, tree- and cave-dwelling ancient ancestors, but we continue to produce the same rotten fruit.

It's still about territory and resources, and who has the right — or might — to claim them. And since such brutal calculus always makes our "better angels" wince, we still use politics, religion, culture and racism as excuses and justification for dehumanizing and dismissing the Other.

— Yet, we desire to be more. I would argue that we were created for more, but are broken. Despite all the pain and madness humankind inflicts on itself and its planet, goodness persistently bubbles up within individuals, and reform movements. 

Changes for the better, history teaches us, are as finite as our bodies . . . yet we continue to reach down to the fallen with one hand, even as we bludgeon our enemies with the other.

So, faith. Because without it, without the saving grace of our Maker, we will remain stuck, either as an evolutionary dead end, or a creation to be ultimately redeemed, reborn and perfected.

I prefer to believe the latter.

Nancy Grace: Is she fanning the flames of racial hatred for ratings?

Nancy Grace (CNN/Google)

Nancy Grace continues to repeat the claim -- which her network reported early on concerning ZImmerman's profanity laced 911 call -- that Zimmerman used the term "f'ing coons."

Justifiably, folks were enraged, arguing that was solid evidence of his racial profiling, even hatred.

But what Nancy missed, or chose to ignore as she fanned the flames of outrage over Zimmerman's acquittal (which has plenty of other, legitimate reasons to question, BTW) is that the FBI said that was incorrect, and now CNN has since acknowledged their initial analysis was wrong.

A new, enhanced analysis by CNN shows what was said was "(it's) f'ing cold."

I bring this up NOT to in any way justify what happened with Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman, at all. I bring it up to show the irresponsibility and arguably lack of professional ethics by Ms. Grace in continuing to fan the hate with claims she knows, or should know, are just plain wrong. 

The FBI report, for what it's worth; I make no judgments based on this one small part of the puzzle. It is what it is (click on the hypertext link to hear for yourself).