“IT’S JUST TOO MUCH!”

This last Saturday and Sunday, Texas City families
opened their homes to friends and family from Santa
Fe because the media was so thick “You can’t even
go to the grocery store without someone sticking a
microphone or a camera in your face. We just had
to get out of there.” “It’s all over the tv, all over social
media – people tearing into each other and they don’t
even have a clue what happened! My kids don’t need
to watch people screaming at each other.” said another
mother. “Don’t they understand that every kid
in that school is traumatized by what happened? Every.
Single. One. I just don’t get it.” I understand the
importance of covering stories, I do, and when it is a
story of such significance as the Santa Fe incident,
people are anxious to hear what happened and want
to follow closely as facts emerge.
All that aside, I cannot shake the vision of that
young girl walking down Hwy 6 crying ; so upset
that the media would not leave her alone in her grief.
“What were they trying to do? They were scaring me!
One guy asked me if I saw any bodies! I wanted to
hit him!” Mothers were asking reporters to please not
talk to the kids; just, if they must, direct their questions
to the parents. One student got a call at home
from the New York Times – fortunately the mother
was there to intercede.
Santa Fe ISD administration staff scheduled a
press conference each day at 1:00 pm to keep the
media up to date and still the media was scattered all
over this small town, looking for someone, anyone, to
“show the human side” of this tragedy. I feel compelled
to ask though, if this
kind of behavior by
the press is humane?
Or is it, like
one mother said,
“just too much”?
I heard the press
referred to as “vultures”
numerous
times; as if they
were feeding off
the pain and horror
of the victims
and their families.
Certainly there are
those who want to
tell their story and
that is a good thing.
I just wonder about
the impact this kind
of intrusion into the
lives of those trying
to make some
kind of sense out of
something so very
senseless, is ever the right thing, the humane thing,
the professional thing, the honorable thing to do just
to get a story.