Duckett family Essay

The current trend of journalism organizations to hire â€Å"screaming journalists† like Nancy Grace and others is a disservice to the Fourth Estate and threatens the very notion of a free press. Grace and others of her ilk are not reporters seeking the news for its value to the general public nor are they attempting to inform. These confrontational entertainers are more interested in high ratings and controversary than in the news. Furthermore, their lack of general human compassion is endangering the entire profession. Never is this more clear than in the case of the family of Melinda Duckett vs. CNN and Nancy Grace. In September, 2006, Melinda Duckett’s two-year-old son was reported missing and Duckett agreed to appeared on Grace’s show in an effort to promote the manhunt for her missing child. Grace was belligerent and in the woman’s face, screaming at her because she would not discuss her whereabouts when the child disappeared and accusing the woman of having something to do with her child’s disappearance. (Smoking Gun, 2006). Duckett’s son has still not been found, but a day after the interview with Grace, the woman shot and killed herself with a shotgun. In the days following Duckett’s death, Grace not only aired the original interview berating the distraught woman, but she went on the nightly news herself, defending her interviewing techniques. â€Å"Former prosecutor turned talk show host Nancy Grace is unapologetic about her aggressive approach to a mother who committed suicide after an interview about the woman’s missing son,† ABC News reported (â€Å"Nancy Grace says ‘Guilt’). Grace showed no human compassion for the mother in the interview or in the days after her death. Drawing on her history as a criminal prosecutor, Grace attacked in a manner more appropriate for a courtroom than a newsroom. That is not to say that reporters should not ask tough questions, but they should not browbeat an interviewee and speak over them as is reported Grace did. Reporters have a responsibility to seek out the news not make it. In her attacks on Melinda Duckett, Nancy Grace went beyond the level and stepped back into her prosecutorial role, attempting to find the criminal. â€Å"†How is that questioning doing anything but making a person in a desperate situation feeling even more desperate? † said Hub Brown, a professor at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications. â€Å" (ABC News) Grace defended her unrelenting questioning as a serach for truth and said police later agreed with her that Melinda Duckett is a suspect in her son’s disappearance. What police actually said was that in a child disappearance, the parents are always the initial suspect. Almost a year later, Duckett’s son has still not been found. What has happened, however, is that Grace has put all legitimate journalists in danger of having their rights revoked due to her drive for ratings. In November, 2006, the parents of Melinda Duckett filed a lawsuit against Grace, CNN and Duckett’s estranged husband who helped arrange the Grace interview (Smoking Gun). And, in June, 2007, a Florida court ruled that the case had merit and would be tried in federal court because the participants reside in multiple jurisdictions (â€Å"Ruling in†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ). By bringing this kind of unwanted spectacle to the media, Grace is causing a chilling effect that will lead to fewer people wanting to cooperate with the media and could ultimately lead to a restriction in the rights of journalists. Her lack of basic human compassion is more relevant than whether Melinda Duckett killed or abducted her own son. The role of the media is not to determine the truth, but to report that truth after it has been exhibited by others. While some investigative journalists might argue this point, the reality is that even investigative journalists do not draw their own conclusions about the news. They search for facts and report them. Nancy Grace took facts not in evidence and applied them to the Duckett case, making herself judge, jury and prosecutor of Melinda Duckett without giving Duckett the benefit of a defense attorney. Grace, however, insists her line of questioning was reasonable. â€Å"In an exclusive interview with â€Å"Good Morning America† today, Grace said that she takes no responsibility for Duckett’s suicide. â€Å"If anything, I would suggest that guilt made her commit suicide,† Grace told ABC News’ Chris Cuomo. â€Å"To suggest that a 15 or 20 minute interview can cause someone to commit suicide is focusing on the wrong thing,† she said. â€Å" (ABC NEWS) Grace’s attitude in the wake of Duckett’s suicide is another black eye for the face of journalism. Her unapologetic accusations against the dead woman seemed to indicate that she believes her questioning was appropriate even if it did contribute to Duckett’s death. Her claim that â€Å"even the police agree with me† (ABC News), does little to redeem Grace in the eyes of the general public. Instead, she is seen as so concerned about her ratings that she would put them above human safety. That attitude seems to be in evidence on her webpage. Grace actually advertises for crime victims to call her show and become part of the entertainment value of the news (CNN. com) Though she places her calls for tips in the framework of helping crime victims seek justice, her show advocates her â€Å"Cross Exam† and her prosecutorial drive to find the answers to crime. If Ms. Grace believed that rooting out crime was her calling, she should not have left the prosecutors office for the media. Her style of â€Å"journalism† is an insult to those who attempt to keep the Fourth Estate free of bias and predetermined opinions. Instead, based on her experience, Grace makes judgments calls about people’s guilt as she did with Melinda Duckett and â€Å"reports† the news based on her interpretation of events. She had an exclusive interview with the mother of a missing child, a child police still presume to be alive. Instead of carefully crafter questions designed to help authorities and the general public find the missing boy, Grace decided that badgering Melinda Duckett would mean better ratings. For the sake of the industry, one can only hope that the Duckett family attorneys cannot prove that greed and not news was Grace’s motivation. If they prove that she sought ratings over the truth and therefore did contribute to the death of Melinda Duckett, the chilling effect on all media will be extreme. Her unreasonably harsh questioning methods place all media attempts to get to the truth in danger and violates the most basic tenet of the Fourth Estate: to inform. Nancy Grace has no intention to inform the general public of anything the day she interviewed Melinda Duckett except for her own conviction that Duckett was responsible for her son’s disappearance. This kind of action has no role in journalism, but belongs in editorial and opinion pages, not disguised as news. WORKS CITED ABCNews. com. Nancy Grace says ‘Guilt’ Likely Made Mother Commit Suicide† , June 24, 2007. Nancy Grace Homepage. http://www. cnn. com/CNN/Programs/nancy. grace/, June 24, 2007. â€Å"Ruling Made in Duckett-Grace Case† , June 24, 2007. The Smoking Gun, â€Å"Nancy Grace Sued for Wrongful Death† , June 24, 2007.