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They say the media is dangerous, but some parts of it are more dangerous than others. Reporters routinely lie for stories, but how about killing as part of a story?
Last Sunday, The Boston Globe published a powerful front-page centerpiece story: “Dying on Lynda’s terms.”
It chronicled the story of Lynda Bluestein, a 76-year-old retired nurse who had terminal cancer. Unable to die by assisted suicide in her home state of Connecticut, Bluestein filed a lawsuit to be able to go to Vermont to have her life ended there. She died by assisted suicide on Jan. 4.
With a media assist.
Last July, Cullen was reporting on Bluestein while she was meeting with the doctor who was going to help her end her life. The doctor explained that Vermont law required Bluestein to get signatures from two people who would say she was in a clear state of mind when she made her decision. Furthermore, the signatures could not be from family members, beneficiaries or anyone associated with the doctor’s clinic.
Cullen wrote in his story that Bluestein asked a “Globe columnist” and an unaffiliated documentarian who also was chronicling her story to sign the form. The “Globe columnist” clearly was Cullen. He signed the form.
And therein lies the issue. Cullen signed the form that helped Bluestein to proceed with the plan to end her life.
While Poynter uses it to debate journalistic ethics, to paraphrase the old Seinfeld line, there are no more journalists and they have no ethics.
To me the scene harkens back not to the contemporary postmodern media in which any lie or smear goes, but the really old school hacks who were willing to do anything.
Ben Hecht, before he went to Hollywood where he wrote The Front Page (no relation) and His Girl Friday and rewrote everything else, was a bare-knuckled journalist in Chicago where he actually did that kind of stuff. And described plotting to halfway hang a murderer and then later inject him with adrenaline to bring him back from the dead. The plan goes awry when the hanging is too effective and there’s no one left to bring back. Where Hecht tried to raise the dead, Cullen helps make them.
(Now that I’m revisiting Ben Hecht, it puts me in mind of his story about a transvestite butcher who murdered his wife and disposed of her body by putting her in some sausage. Before his execution, the butcher wanted to dress up like a woman. Hecht titled it as, “Fred Ludwig lived as a cowardly man but he died as a brave woman.”)
Then there’s Ace in the Hole (1951) (that’s where the scene above comes from.) in which Kirk Douglas plays a sleazeball reporter who turns a man being trapped in a hole into a circus by dragging out the rescue and leading to his death.
Back then reporters didn’t pretend to have any kind of moral high ground. There were no discussions about journalistic ethics. Now we have endless discussions and no ethics.
“hang a murderer and then later inject him with adrenaline to bring him back from the dead”
They used to do that for treason in England. Hang from the neck until almost dead, then cut down and drawn (impaled with red hot poker). Supposedly one such got up and boxed the executioner’s ears.
Sometimes poker has a wild card.
Good one! Grim humor is still humor.
Good for the boxer! Fuck being impaled with a red hot poker! Hanging is bad enough, even if it isn’t fatal.
My personal experience with “journalistic ethics” came from CBS and the Catholic Church, who were seemingly in a contest each to outdo the other for dishonesty. Well, God IS COMING BACK, and as Ricky Ricardo used to say, “Somebody’s got some ‘splaining to do.”
And your dishonest hatred and not backed up claims against the catholic church and journalists proves you just want to argue and defame and have no real point.
Since when do “journalists” deserve anything but hatred and contempt?
Euthanasia is evil — the pressure is on the weak of body and mind to exit, those who have family who wish to acquire their homes and assets, those who are special needs, those who need God and not a poision injection. The insurance companies push for this for profit and in socialist medicine programs euthanasia is the treatment of choice for the elderly and those born with problems and in need of operations. Globalists see its utility in killing many thousands using the medical field.
Not everybody who wishes they were dead at some point has anything to take. I’ve hit bottom plenty of times and I don’t have a pot to piss in but the next day I always wised up. Suicide my ass. Fuck that shit.
Good thing I don’t live in Vermont. The state might help me along just because I was sad.
When it pertains to reporters;
Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius!
Say ten Hail Marys and go whack it.
So, a woman suffering and dying from a cancer that can’t be cured chooses not to suffer up to her very last, inevitable gasp and decides to decide her own time of death. A death without all that pain and suffering. WTF is wrong with that? Why should she suffer until the inevitable bitter end if she can find a way to die quietly and peacefully with help from medical staff? Are you people trying to say that God would prefer she suffer until her body finally stops? Really?
I’m not making an argument on her case one way or another. Her situation sounds horrifying.
I will say though that legalized euthanasia tends to sweep up people who are not suffering or fatally ill, as it has in Canada.
The argument from conservatives was never as dogmatic as the left tried to bracket our intent, for most of us it was the slippery slope and the acceptance that we are not gods or that everything is fixable.
In any case, I do not think that “journalists” should participate in the stories they’re covering. And, yes, in college I was a journalism major.
What do you predict?
Me? I predict six more weeks of winter.
Ha ha! The groundhog didn’t see his shadow but what does a big, fat rodent know?
Nobody will heed your prediction, of course. Not if your name holds true. But they’ll listen to the fat rat, sun or shine.
What does God have to do with free will? And what “people” do you refer to, you bigot? Greenfield may be polite but I’m not and I’d like to punch your evil head off. And then kick it into a pile of dog turds.
As if you feel real empathy for suffering people. My ass.
Currently I’d say about 98% inthe profession should be referred to as Jhorenalists.
I hope this haunts them all their life.
That’s doubtful. Conscienseless people have few regrets. I’ve dealt with them and I know. They don’t even seem human to me.
There are two very distinct things going on here. If the obvious assumption by the author that the reporter signed the form to further his own career is true, then the reporter is a scumbag. But did anyone actually quiz him about his motivation? The original Boston Globe story is behind a paywall, and that aspect isn’t important enough to me to pay for. Just asking.
What IS important is glossed over – the question of who owns my body. My answer is NO ONE but myself. My life is my own, to do with as I please as long as I do not harm others.
That most certainly includes ending it.
This is a personal absolute. It is not debatable. Full stop. Period.
No. Your life is not your own.
… And your manner of ending it, in particular, is not up to debate.
When people become so selfish that they want a “right” …
… they give no thought to the effect upon others.
As has happened in Canada – and in Belgium – where both nations have not only executed women for being depressed … both have executed women for being victims of violent sexual assault.
Never mind the fact that suicidal people often choose to take others with them – committing murder, mayhem, or manipulating others to achieve the result.
None of the above gets to the real problem …
… which is that euthanasia is always the first step to euthanizing life unworthy of life …
… once the plenary power of the State cannot be used to stop suicide, there is no moral, ethical, or legal obstacle to taking the lives of those who do not need to go, do not want to go, or who should not go …
G-d love ya’
Nazi Germany used to execute retards. Could you imagine that? Killing a poor sweet retard? I sure can’t.
Tell that to the January 6th political prisoners in Dirtbagocrat gulags.