Castanet

Why you [Canadian Press] decided to crown a porn-actor turned deranged killer as top newsmaker and give him the attention he wanted simply for being mentally ill and making sensational headlines is beyond me. He made no impact on society as a whole whatsoever. He brought no changes to policy or law.

All he did was rip apart lives.

One editor has since asked the question: Who would have been a better choice?

Other top newsmaker choices off the top of my head: Lance Armstrong (doping scandal shines light on persistent problems in cycling), Rob Ford (arrogance becomes the unraveling of Toronto’s controversial mayor), Jean Charest (a champion of Canada amid sovereignty exits Quebec politics), B.C. Premier Christy Clark (standing up to Alberta and the Northern Gateway), Chris Hadfield (Canadian astronaut leads latest International Space Station mission). Of course, there are many others.

This newsmaker decision comes on the heels of another horrific crime: the elementary school shooting that killed 28, including 20 children. The press was roundly and rightly criticized by the public for its insensitivity and sensationalism covering the story, most notably for interviewing traumatized children and splashing the shooter’s name across the headlines. As an industry, we’ve had time to do some introspection about what the public expects of us, and it should have been abundantly clear that glorifying mentally-ill murderers is not among their expectations.

Maybe it’s time for us, as journalists, to make some New Year’s resolutions about how we’re going to handle these stories in the future.

http://davidwylie.ca/2012/12/23/open-le ... -decision/