It's the Cameras Stupid!

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

That’s all you really have to know to be able to judge one’s own participation in the death watch for Mrs. Terri Schiavo.

Already there are the somber conversations about what’s appropriate and how to get the news that people have a right to without trampling everyone’s rights in the process. I thought I’d weigh in early on this one. I’m going to keep it simple ‘cause I don’t think some of the people responsible think very deeply.

I’ts the cameras stupid!

The circus goes wherever you point the damn things!

You chose to set up right in front of a hospice. Inside are around 70 other patients, and their families, going through a sad, somber, inevitable, difficult, PRIVATE experience.

By setting up right in front of the hospice, you chose to trample on that process for all of those families as well as Michael and Terri Schiavo and their families.

There is no possible reason that we need to see the front of the hospice as a background for these shots. You could just as easily have put the cameras and the microphones and the satellite trucks and the Porta-Potty’s and the tents and the cars and the cables and the noise and the signs and the cops and the fences and the hazard tape and the noise and the protesters and the noise . . . . . . . .

. . . . . somewhere else!

How about a strip mall parking lot or a sports facility parking lot or a vacant lot or a field outside of town? Yes, you probably would need to pay some rent but your profits would surely cover it. And, you could have performed a public service at the same time.

How did we come to accept your presence in the middle of any and everything you deem ‘newsworthy? Your presence outside the Woodside Hospice House in Pinellas Park has been an obscenity and an affront to the entire hospice movement.

No amount of post-production de-briefing or on-air breast-beating will absolve you from this ugly, ugly incident.

Shame on you all!