With the competition for twenty four hour news, the television journalists are quickly on the scene to cover disasters, man-made or natural. There is a trend to put “a face” on the disaster and to personalize it. A microphone is placed before someone who is having one of the worse moments of his/her life. Video is rolling.

It is intrusive and really lacks any civility.

For example, with the recent floods in the midwest, people were returning to find that the flood waters had ravaged their community and destroyed their homes. As people returned to survey the damage, there was the ever-present news reporters with the ‘how-do-you-feel’ questions. Do the questions really need to be asked when a person’s home and community has been washed away by the surging river?

One may question whether such reporting is really news or whether it falls into the category of entertainment. The goal is to keep the viewer on the station and feed the advertising to as large a demographic as possible. These personal interview segments are fillers to add a human touch. Unfortunately, in many cases, these intrusive interviews truly lack any sensitivity to another fellow citizen experiencing an intensely personal tragedy. Stop asking how they feel. It is obvious. Allow the people their private moment.

Catherine Forsythe