Media Spotlight on Victims’ Grief

Regarding “Public Grief: Seeking Peace in the Media Ether,” Opinion, Oct. 6: While Neal Gabler questions victims’ reasons for grieving on television, he thinks it’s pointless to question the media’s obvious motives in covering such public displays. He points out that reporters are “simply doing what they’ve always done.” If the media are doing what they have always done, there must also be victims who are doing what they’ve always done--that is, provide grief for public consumption.

While it’s tempting to believe that the undeniable increase in televised grieving is largely attributable to the breakdown of decorum, the accessibility to television coverage plays a greater role. More victims publicize their grief because they can.

Today’s news camera is omnipresent, ready to cover not only the likes of Jacqueline Kennedy, who chose restraint, but any victim who won’t. The nature of today’s news coverage simply magnifies behavior that has always existed.

JENNIFER HENDERSON

Los Angeles

Gabler laments the rise of “celebrity victims” who fail to display self-composure and instead exploit (and are exploited by) the media. But he fails to recognize that if these victims don’t make themselves heard, we too easily forget their suffering--and make the defendants celebrities instead.

Ignore the voices of Marc Klaas, Fred Goldman and the families of Oklahoma City bombing victims, and what are we left with? Polly Klaas’ killer giving us the finger, O.J. Simpson golfing or throwing a party for jurors and Terry Nichols’ lawyer presenting his client as the victim of an overzealous government search.

By shining a spotlight on defendants and their lawyers, the media snuff out what they should be focusing on--the loss of human life and its terrible, irreversible toll on the families and friends of victims who cannot speak for themselves.

Gabler admires the stoicism of a Jacqueline Kennedy, but I salute the painfully honest anger of a Klaas. We need to constantly be reminded of that pain.

KAREN LINDELL

Hacienda Heights