Horrendous Sights

I would like to comment on Rick Du Brow’s column “In the Eye of the Storm” (Feb. 14):

While I applaud the technical efforts and delivery of the local news stations in their coverage of the Los Angeles weather disaster, I find the content of the televised broadcasts reprehensible. How horrendous for America to view, again and again, the desperation of a teen-age boy being swept away in the Los Angeles River to his death! How unfeeling of any reporter, as was the case on KCBS, to get “exclusive” live coverage of a man returning to his trailer . . . his home, for the first time since the rains, to open his door finding the utter destruction of one’s life’s belongings!

As a former network news executive, I have walked that fine line between hard reporting and plain sensationalism. It is one thing to seize a story and quite another to exploit it.

Reporters’ time would perhaps best be spent helping us prepare and protect ourselves rather than waving the horrors wrought by Mother Nature. And, yes, we salute the helicopter jockeys and other heroes that have emerged, but allow us to grieve a bit more privately for the needless loss our community has sustained.

SUSAN B. WINSTON

Blanki & Bodi Productions Inc.

North Hollywood

Winston was executive producer of ABC’s “Good Morning America” (1981-84) and executive producer of “CBS Morning News” (1986).