🚀 go-pugleaf

    Thank you all for you comments on my previous post.  My apologies if my
very brief comment seemed insensitive and/or offended you.  It was my
intent (in the fewest words possible) to make a statement on how far
overboard the national media had gone in covering Littleton incessantly for
two weeks, not to trivialize the affects of Monday's horrible disaster in
Oklahoma and Kansas.  Everyone apparently missed that point, so I guess I
should have been more wordy in my post.

    A few years back, I worked in Little Rock for over 5 years and SW
Missouri for a year, and covered the aftermath of tornadoes many more times
than I would like to remember.  I've never seen an F-4 (and wouldn't want
to), but I have repeatedly seen many of the tiniest details of how a
tornado destroys people's lives far more than it destroys property and
kills or injures.  I didn't enjoy being a witness to such tradgedy back
then, and I'm sure I wouldn't find it exciting or "fun" work now either.  I
don't think that tornadoes, death, or destruction such as happened Monday
night are a joke -- far from it.  I do think that too many PJs and other
journalists get a bit too much of a thrill out of observing the misery and
suffering of others -- the job needs to be done, but perhaps not with quite
so much obvious pleasure.

    I work my normal 40 hours a week as a PJ (plus up to 20 hours of OT),
often watching the worst of what happens in this world.  During the rest of
my week, I work as an EMT-D on a volunteer ambulance (and I am currently
the Chief of that service).  I can truly appreciate what the victims and
the rescuers might be going through in many of the disasters and tradgedies
I see on the national news, because I have been a rescuer for 15 years.  I
am painfully aware of the terrible things that victims must go through, and
although I am often proud of the work we do, I am also often disgusted and
ashamed at how many in the media make things so much worse for the victims
of tradgedies like Littleton and these tornadoes by hounding them
incessantly.  I try to give something back to my own community by going out
on an ambulance and attempting to help people, and I only hope that what I
do away from work with the volunteer ambulance somehow helps to make up a
bit for all of the harm we often do in our business.  What do you do after
your work day is over ?

    Again, I'm sorry if my few words bothered you.  They were meant to
enlighten, not to be hurtful.

                                        Ken



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                                    KENNETH D. HAZLETT

                           Television News Photojournalist
                             Emergency Medical Technician

          E-Mail :  hazelnut@frontiernet.net  --OR--  FreckleLvr@aol.com
           SnailMail : P.O. Box 603, Henrietta NY 14467-0603
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     Shakespeare wrote, "First, kill all of the lawyers".
                   Forget the lawyers . . . . . kill the damned consultants !
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