SATURDAY LETTERS / TV RIOT COVERAGE : Sensational TV Gets Blame for Violence

I, too, was appalled particularly by that woman whom Rosenberg identified as Pat Lalama on Channel 2 (“It’s Time for More Heart, Less Heat on TV,” May 6). I had just switched to that channel to see her leaning into the car, touching the hair of the woman driver, and to me it seemed she was using that intrusive gesture to turn the woman’s head to the camera.

Lalama was very excited and pressing the distraught young woman to make a statement. Of all the times I have seen reporters thrust microphones in the faces of victims of various disasters to ask how they feel, this was the worst.

I had never seen Lalama before and hope never to see her again. But, as the cliche goes, “a fish stinks from the head.” Clearly, she must have been doing the job she was hired to do by Channel 2.

VIRGINIA M. DONOHUE

Los Angeles