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Freedom of the Press

By Bekki

While perusing the Oakland Tribune, I noticed an article about a 10-year-old boy who had been shot during his piano lesson. A stray bullet, shot during a robbery of the gas station across the street, had gone through the wall of the room he was in. This raises all sorts of wonderful questions about gun control (in response to the incident, Peralta is sponsoring a buyback program) and the Second Amendment (exactly, what do those, pesky commas mean, anyway?). I'm sure we'll debate it all to death when the Supreme Court rules on the DC gun control case.

According to the father,

"His heart twinged, he said, when he overheard Christopher telling a nurse he played center on the Crocker Highlands Elementary School basketball team. Afterward, "He said, 'Daddy, I don't want to be paralyzed,' and I didn't respond to him.""

I can understand wanting to wait to tell the kid he's going to be paralyzed for life until he's recovered a little more. What I don't understand is letting the national news media know before the kid does. Bad enough that he'll never play basketball again. How do you think he'll feel when he finds out that his classmates knew he before he did?

Then again, in a society where we frequently compete to see who can air the most dirty laundry on television, it doesn't surprise me much that common standards of decency are suspended for the sake of a good story.

Full post as published by Nuts & Boalts on January 19, 2008 (boomark / email).