So two helicopters from competing TV stations in Phoenix crashed while filming a police pursuit of a guy in a stolen car. Can't say this is surprising. I've been waiting for this to happen for over ten years, when police chases became vogue on local news.
Hopefully a wake up call will emerge from this accident. The skies are jammed up enough without dueling helicopters battling it out to film relatively meaningless pursuit stories. What I love is that someone--I think it was a law enforcement person in Phoenix--said they may try to add charges of murder to the car thief because of this crash. Puhleeze. I'm no lawyer but I don't think that'll stick. I know that technically anybody who dies during the commissioning of a crime, it's murder end of story (to quote from "The Pope of Greenwich Village), but I can't imagine this is what the creators had in mind with that law. It's not this car thief's fault that the quality of local news has so deteriorated over the last twenty years that now their idea of covering the news is dangerously filming police pursuits. Under that theory, a guy who robs a store could be held accountable if a reporter gets into a crash and dies on the way to cover the story.
Theses chases are trivial. Covering them gives them greater meaning and leads to unnecessary accidents and in this case death. If this turns into a focus on whether the thief should be charged in those deaths instead of a debate on whether television stations should be engaging in this kind of coverage than there will have been a real travisty of justice.
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2 comments:
i thought that opening line was a joke until I saw they crashed...
Off the topic but women can be so catty. Just had to tell someone.
Pope is one of my all-time favs. The book is good too.
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