Good Grief

While watching the unfolding drama of the missing, and now officially presumed lost, Malaysian airliner, I was a little put off to see so many pictures of grieving family members shown by the news media. What actually constitutes good taste in such coverage?

As a news reporter, I was often called upon to cover the aftermath of tragedy – fatal traffic accidents, house fires and the like. The last thing I ever wanted to do was approach a distraught surviving family member and try to get a comment – but I took it to be part of the job. A lot of the time, as perhaps you’d expect, the answer was, “No thanks,” – and usually more forceful expressions thereof.

But I began to notice a distinct difference in the responses I got from different groups of people. If the survivors were white, they usually wanted nothing to do with the news media. They made us feel like vultures (easy in my case). But Latino survivors seemed to have little compunction about talking. It almost seemed as if the survivor wanted to talk about the departed. What was unpleasant to one was therapeutic for the other.

Now this is an impression – I don’t really have the standing to draw some well-researched ethnic or cultural conclusion. But am I completely wrong in my suspicion that attitudes toward response to death may differ accordingly?

Memorial services in some cultures aren’t subdued events, what some of us would judge as quiet and respectful. People make noise! In some cases, people attending such events are actually hired to make it. You don’t get any points for a stiff upper lip.

In our ultra-connected world, the trend seems to be shifting toward the public end of the spectrum and away from the private. When someone dies accidentally, it’s the norm now to see candles and flowers pile up at the site of the tragedy, depending on the esteem in which the deceased was held, and even see crowds of mourners gather, who are happy to let their grief show. More and more, it seems to be a shared experience -- and media consumers expect it to be.

I am one of those people who don’t do death very well. I am not good at words of comfort and tend to be very careful when dealing with anyone who has suffered a loss. Usually, if I try to say anything profound, it sounds silly and blows up in my face. The worst was trying to get that comment out of that survivor and be “sensitive” at the same time. Nobody was ever fooled about what I was doing.

But it’s like any exercise in human relations: you have to let the other person guide you. And when it cones to grief, there are indeed different strokes for different folks.