Last week an important person in our country died. I have one of his grandchildren as a student in my class. What saddens me, is that I knew before him his beloved grandfather had passed away. I was in my car, finishing an hour earlier as it was in the news. And I still can’t wrap my mind around the fact that due to a press leak, a lot of his close relatives might have heard the news through media channels instead of a personal phone call or something along those lines.
I realize that being closely related to a public person means you have to share that person with the world. But I know I would have been very, very upset if I had been informed of my grandmother’s death through the radio news, simply because my parents didn’t have the time to inform me first. Or, when school was out and a teacher told me very carefully, I would still be upset to discover the whole country knew it before me. It’s as if that personal relationship isn’t valued, considered as less important than a scoop. That would hurt me very, very much.
I haven’t seen the boy since. He might do just fine, but I keep asking myself what world we are living in. Is this the kind of world we want? When I asked the question to my husband, he looked at me in a rather pitiful way and answered: maybe not. But this is how things roll. Look at the website of newspapers. The articles that people read the most are barely news articles. It’s all about the sensational stuff. Everything else is just titles they don’t want to think about.
He’s right. Heck, even I am doing that. How can I ever feel informed if I’m only reading titles? And at what cost those titles were invented?
There were a lot of question marks in this post. Answers, not so much. Maybe the important news can be read in the eyes of a boy who lost his grandfather. Because it tells me more about who he was, than any article can. He was an important man for the country and e was loved by his grandson. Sometimes that’s all what matters.
Sharing with Kathy @ Titus 2 Tuesday linkup
Songs of Home 
Back in the 70’s when I was a kid, a prominent person in my community committed suicide. I knew because I was there, but I remember there being a press leak and his wife heard about it on the radio while driving on the highway and crashed. She survived, but it was horrific. There was much talk about ethics and the media after that – and that was 35 years ago. Hopefully good things about that person will be what the boy remembers, and the only news clipping in his scrapbook are tributes. Xo