Heartless question

years ago I was coming out of Church , there had been a very sad happening in our Village the evening before , suddenly a microphone was shoved in my face and this stupid man asked if I knew the deceased and had I been praying for them . I was so shocked I just pushed him aside and strode on !.It was on TV later that day It was chopped to bits and it looked as if I was in the wrong !

I'd have said 'What the hell do you think?'
The reporters are so intrusive (and thick), it's a pity someone didn't push him in the water.

Yes, such a b##### stupid question.

I saw that too on the 6 O'clock news and shouted at the stupid interviewer! What an idiot. I also don't ever want cameras present at funerals on the news. We switch off when they show these. So intrusive.

It's a good job they didn't interview DD's MiL. She has been flooded in Carlisle again. She is definitely a woman who doesn't suffer fools gladly!

I think such apparently heartless questions are used purposely because the enormity of the disaster on an individual person scale is then clear for all to see and this in turn generates more sympathy and more help in the way of donations and other offers.

Just a thought. I really don't think the reporters are being callous for the hell of it.

I am not so sure. The media can be pretty heartless in pursuit of a story - My editor used to get really excited when there was a death to report, or an accident - it made me sick. The whole tear-jerking bit from interviewers is part of the same thing. We see it all the time on TV - the cameras are only happy when they get a tear from someone!

Maybe the truth is somewhere in between, lucky?

Geologists I knew used to get very excited about earthquakes in what could be seen by others as a callous way, but they really weren't callous people, it's just that the study of geological happenings was their fascination and, more to the point, their jobs.

It's their job to generate interest and excitement, but yes, I would love the person to turn round and say " well, what do YOU think!" To them.

Wouldn't that be great!

That particular interviewer tonight seemed particularly crass. I was not impressed. The poor people are suffering enough without having to go through that.

Admittedly, I didn't actually see the TV report. It might have coloured my (hypothetical) interpretation.

Years ago my niece wanted to be a journalist and she went to a careers evening where there was a newspaper reporter. He talked to her and told her that unless she could go to people at the very worst time of their life and ask intrusive questions it was not for her. She gave it a great deal of thought and decided it was not for her - she became a teacher instead.

These questions get asked because, as a society, we are meant to be all feeling, empathy and understanding. Coucillors galore ask tenderly how their clients feel about whatever subject it is they are being councilled over. Children are taught to empathise with children like them who climbed chimneys went down mines etc.

It is inevitable that this desire to get people to express their feelings should have moved into public discourse and you get these intrusive questions in interviews. All over the country their are viewers and listeners who get a nice warm feeling when they see people expressing sadness and distress, they can have a little sympathetic emote in front of the tv, feel good about themselves and then forget about those who are in such distress.

God help anybody who doesn't want to express their emotions in public when they suffer some disaster. They immediately get branded as cold, unnatural and uncaring

I spoke to my neighbour about this (he is a journalist). He told me he once worked for a national newspaper and was told by his editor not to come back with good news, only bad.

The best TV journalist I ever saw was when a man who had been taken from UK to Australia as a child having been lied to that his mother was dead and was describing what had happened to an Australian journalist, he suddenly broke down, the journalist put his hand on his shoulder and the cameraman turned away - that showed not only the enormity of the man's suffering but also the compassion of the interviewer.

Totally with you sunseeker I tend to switch off as soon as the cameras zoom in on someone's face watiing for tears. They ask similar inane questions on radio - I blame the stupid reporters who don't know how to ask the questions in a less inane way.

welshwife that is why Hugh Jackman swopped from a journalism course to a drama one, he wasn't prepared to upset people. Luckily for us

My cousin lives in the street near Staines that got flooded last year (?) and the water was lapping at their front doorsteps. The last straw for the neighbour's garden wall was when a 4x4 full of reporters zoomed along the road, setting up a wave that sent the water higher and knocked the wall over. That newsteam weren't very popular.

I've never forgiven Kay Birley for asking "Were there any dead babies in the water" at the Zeebruger desarster.

Ugh. Horrible woman.

I think most of us get angry at the inane questions some reporters ask, especially in such awful circumstances. What equally annoys me is that in so many interviews they obviously don't listen to the answers, because their next question asks something that has already been answered.

It's their job to generate interest and excitement, but yes, I would love the person to turn round and say " well, what do YOU think!" To them.

I wouldn't be surprised if some of the interviewees do answer like this. These are doubtless the responses that don't get televised.

We once had a house fire. This was my first husband and I, when we lived in a Pennine cottage. We had dogs and cats, and one of the dogs didn't like being left behind when we went out. I went to work in a neighbouring town, my husband went out to do some shopping and the dog apparently threw cushions around and one landed on a little electric fire which may or may not have been left on. Even if it wasn't on it would still have been hot. So....quite a bad fire. The dog was found on the floor above with her face against the bottom of the front door as if she'd been trying to get out or get some air. The cats escaped at the back when the windows blew out.

Later that day a journalist from the local paper arrived. The fire service had informed them without telling us. He stood on the doorstep and told my husband he knew a dog had died and 'how do you feel?' I'll always remember those words. And also my husband's response. Suffice to say, it was very down-to-earth, what you might get from an ex-serviceman. 'How the blankety-blank do you think we feel, how would you blank feel, now blank blank off' and slammed the door in the guy's face. I always thought, that's really the only appropriate response to such a stupid question. Well, how would YOU feel? How does anybody feel?

When my 1st dh was killed in a road accident 20 years ago I had a journalist from the local paper call. Fortunately my neighbour was there and he answered the door and told the journalist where to go! If I had answered the door the response would have been unprintable!!