Reporters as soothers a poor kind of reality TV

Stick to gathering facts, not amateur counselling

This undoubtedly is stating the painfully obvious, but there is something wrong with me: The more the first world emotes, the more reticent I become, the more I love the stolid, the private, the downright uncommunicative.

I realized this most recently when I woke up two mornings after the slaughter in Las Vegas. I’m on the road this week, and that means I watch an unusual amount of television.

This particular morning, it was CNN, the network which some time ago self- righteously decided not to name the perpetrators of such mass violence, supposedly in honour of the victims. For the record, in this case, the shooter was one Stephen Paddock.

In any case, I don’t name the reporter to pick on him; he’s merely the person I saw.

But there was anchor Chris Cuomo interviewing a succession of witnesses to the horrific attack which saw 59 people mowed down at a country music festival and more than 500 others injured.

Well, I say “interviewing,” but what Cuomo was doing wasn’t interviewing. Rather, he was functioning as a sort of roving therapist, delicately probing the psyches of those before him, offering instant diagnosis and dispensing comfort and hugs.

Between now and the last time I watched one of these maudlinfests, many TV reporters appear to have morphed into professional soothers.

One fellow, a photographer who’d been onstage when the shooting started, was speaking about how he didn’t know what to do but run, and now was purportedly stricken with guilt and fear that he should have done something more.

( I say purportedly because, to be perfectly honest, some of this strikes me as people merely fulfilling the expectations of television. If you’re to get your Andy Warhol 15 minutes, you’d best know how to feed the beast.)

“You got outta there,” Cuomo said, eyes moist with empathy. “You started to heal.”

He told the fellow that whatever else, his job now was “to spend your time taking care of yourself. Know that your best days are ahead of you,” Cuomo concluded. He patted the man on the shoulder.

On and on it went like this, through the morning and later in the day, with anchor after anchor and reporter after reporter doling out wisdom to one another and their subjects.

Wolf Blitzer, for instance, pointed out that the trauma wasn’t going to be confined to those who had been wounded, but to the much larger pool of the 22,000 at the concert “who heard that killing field” and “are going to be haunted by that,” possibly for years.

“No question about it,” said Cuomo. Then he added, “We’re here just to listen” and reminded the concertgoers that “the burden will be a blessing in time.”

There were tremble- y talks with groups of witnesses (one that stuck was with two men and two women who’d been at the concert, emerged physically unscathed and told their stories while holding hands), heartfelt murmurs about life being short, and countless protestations about there being no words, as if.

Every act of ordinary common decency, albeit in these extraordinary circumstances — stopping to help someone bleeding from the head, trying not to step on a body on the ground, calling 911, looking for your friends — was almost inevitably pronounced heroic. Virtually everyone was thanked for not having been killed, and often, thanked for their service, too.

When the occasional person resisted the label or was merely stoic or non- responsive to the quivering voice of the reporter, the disappointment was palpable. The modern expectation now is that every person shall share her feelings and thoughts.

It reminded me of the recent fuss about Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders, who Monday underwent a kidney transplant.

He broke the news himself late last week when he and his wife, Stacey, who was his donor, gave CTV News an interview, mostly to promote organ donation, because few are as lucky as he was to find a match close to home.

There was in the press an undercurrent of shock and dismay.

How and why had Saunders managed to keep his illness private, even throughout 15 months of nightly at-home dialysis?

It was as t hough he had breached one of the governing tenets of life in 2017: Thou shall over- share. There were even murmurs that perhaps he owed a greater duty of disclosure as a senior public servant, that perhaps the city was now unsafe, that perhaps he should step down permanently.

It was akin to watching Chris Cuomo speak to Dr. Stephanie Striet on Tuesday. She’s one of the surgeons who operated on some of those wounded in the Vegas massacre.

She was perfectly polite, but resisted the siren call of Cuomo’s clear expectation that she be at least a little verklempt. She didn’t last long on screen.

She was, in short, terrific. She was professional and tough. She didn’t seek praise or thanks. She did her job.

I expect that of doctors, just as I expect that most ordinary citizens will rise to the occasion and do the right thing, as so many did in Las Vegas. I am rarely disappointed in them. I was not disappointed that Chief Saunders chose to keep his private life private, as opposed to opening it up to the preening, mawkish scrutiny of the new mourners.

THE BURDEN WILL BE A BLESSING IN TIME.