ABSTRACT
A decade ago, in August of 1997, cultural critics claimed to be appalled by the collective weeping of news media around the world, or rather by the conveyance through news media of the collective weeping of millions of people, simply because a popular and beautiful person had died tragically. Two years later, Time columnist Roger Rosenblatt, a gifted cultural observer himself, took issue with such criticism when he considered why people (including journalists) were so upset at another tragic death of yet another beautiful, popular public figure, John F. Kennedy Jr.; Rosenblatt argued that it was time for us, including those in elite news organizations, to acknowledge that “there is a news of feeling as well as fact.”2 Only eight years have passed since then, and yet it seems quite a long time ago. Today, feeling is all around us, in public culture and in journalistic coverage of that culture. One dimension of the presumed tabloidization of journalism is sensational-
ism, the inclusion in news of elements meant to shock and provoke strong emotional responses among readers. Conventional wisdom tells us that displays of raw emotion, from sorrow to outrage, are to be avoided by journalists and, if expressed by news subjects, not to be exploited by journalists. And yet current journalism is saturated with tears and trauma. Whether the news is about a natural disaster with mass casualties, a local police officer killed in the line of duty, a young woman murdered on a college campus, or a child struck and killed by a drunk driver, it will be reported and produced in news media as a story of the living who grieve, a story about public ritual. The focus will be on mourners who erect spontaneous shrines, who stand outdoors holding candles or American flags, and who very publicly pay tribute to the dead. Increasingly these stories are told in journalistic prose and pictures that,
themselves, express grief and pay tribute to the dead, a ceremonial representation of public ceremony. Such news content has escalated along with casualties of the war in Iraq. In May of 2007, The New York Times visually marked Memorial Day with a front-page photograph of a young woman, her shoulders bare in a sundress, weeping, prostrate on the Arlington National Cemetery grave of her fiancée, who had been killed in Iraq three months earlier.3
