Tuesday, February 20, 2007

How Do You Explain to Basic Reporting Students That It is Forbidden to do This, Except When It's Not

He returns home after a two-week vacation. He finds a body on the floor of his apartment. The body is apparently that of his cat sitter. The story is meticulously sourced:

San Francisco police said...

... according to a woman who talked to the distraught resident.

Seven grafs in, the reporter adds:

The cat apparently was not greatly traumatized by the ordeal.

This is so wrong, journalistically speaking. This is so funny, otherwisely speaking.

To be fair, a couple grafs later we do get:

"T
he cat is fine," said Animal Care and Control Lt. Le-Ellis Brown. "It's being held for next of kin."

But it's too late.

3 comments:

david silver said...

After returning from a two-week trip to Garberville (Humboldt County), the resident entered his home and tripped and fell on the body...

question: if he had not tripped and fallen on the dead body, would he have noticed it?

jini said...

i thought the cat belonged to the tripping apartment owner. why is animal control involved and are they waiting to notify the cat's kin?

....J.Michael Robertson said...

This is a bottomless mystery. We can only assume that the welfare of the cat was in question and a fracas ensued. So what we probably have here is justfiable homicide.