Rocky Mountain News "tweets" dead boy's funeral, now (thankfully) being savaged

Anyone involved should be fired, marching orders or not. I'm a reporter and I've always stood up to higher-ups when I had a problem with a story and I've just about always won that argument. It's been rare, but this is clearly a case I would have said no way, you'll have to fire me before I do that shit. The reporter is just as guilty. Anyone in their right mind knows this is shit. And anyone who doesn't, doesn't need a job.

 

I don't think that anyone should be fired.

It's a brave new world and people are trying things out. If anyone does it again, they should have their tweeter plugged into a 220-volt outlet.

Who knows? Perhaps they insisted that the reporter do it and he was innane as possible to show them just how bad of an idea it was.

If everyone doesn't agree that it was a really bad idea, then toss the pink slips.

And this should be a lesson for covering any other sensitive situation.

 

Re: Rocky Mountain News "tweets" dead boy's funeral, now (thankfully) being sava

Huck,
Not everyone is in the position to just quit on the spot or ask to be fired because they disagree with an assignment. If I'm in those shoes I would fight/argue/scream, but when it came right down to it, my family needs me employed. I'd also be looking for a new job ASAP and get as far from journalism as I could. This is sickening.

 

This is an all-time low for journalism. This is the worst thing I have ever seen or heard of being done in journalism.

That it happened at a very well-respected paper just makes it more disgraceful.

 

You would think at a paper that has had to cover the JonBenet Ramsey murder and the Columbine shootings would understand how to have some tact while covering a funeral such as this.

 

Re: Rocky Mountain News "tweets" dead boy's funeral, now (thankfully) being sava

Tell us how you really feel, Mizzou.

 

Sometimes you get to the point where you think this industry can't sink to new lows and then something like this happens.

As a journalist, this sickens me. As a parent, it makes me violent.

 

I think it's stupid, senseless and insensitive, but it doesn't even make the top 100 of all-time journalistic sins.

(Not hiring me at the P-D is No. 1, obviously, but can be corrected).

 

Mizzou, don't you have a problem with anger management in the first place. I saw that the "who has been suspended" thread was resurrected.

Calm down a bit. No journalists deserves to be physically harmed or yelled at for this. It was tacky, but at least it was discreet.

 

I would put the O.J. Simpson darkened magazine cover, the Jason Blair incident, recreated footage passed off as real in TV news, many of the antics of the publisher/moguls of the penny press, and other screw ups that we seem to all too quickly above this incident.

It was stupid. It was poorly executed. It came off in poor taste.

Sadly journalism and journalists have done much worse in the past.

The non-questioning nature of the press in the run up to the Iraq invasion and even perhaps, closer to home, the blind eye turned toward performance enhancing drugs make the Rocky Mountain News look more like a smudge than a black mark.

 

You think no one should be yelled at for this?

I overreact a lot. I'll be the first to admit that. I come back and I feel bad or embarrassed about it later.

This won't be one of those times. This guy is a disgrace.

 

wrong.