“Hard to Watch” Video: Responsible or Not?

Over at the Huntington Post, Jason Linkins praises the edict of NBC News chief Steve Capus to curb network Olympic coverage use of the video showing Nodar Kumaritashvili’s fatal luge run. “I’m glad this decision has been reached,” Linkins writes. “The video of Kumaritashvili’s fatal luge run is difficult to watch and I do not recommend that you do so. …Here’s hoping Steve Capus will remember having made this choice come September and break with MSNBC’s grim and pointless tradition of replaying the events of September 11, 2001 in real time.”

Linkins presumably regards Capus’s decision as “responsible broadcasting.” My question is, “What’s responsible about it?” Continue reading

Wanted: Ethical Teaching Aide to Stop Abu Ghraib, Jr.

Yesterday, I wrote about the disturbing incident at an Ohio elementary school, where a sixth grader was systematically mortified and subjected to ridicule because of the length of his hair. That was bad; this is worse.

A teacher at a New York City public school, P.S. 65 in the Ozone Park neighborhood, turned his fourth-grade classroom into a fighting ring and forced two children to duke it out. Continue reading