etee's Blog

This morning, Polimom posted an article titled Broken bridges (a follow-up post) about the whole cluster---- surrounding the on-again, off-again search for Tynesha Stewart. I won't go into the details of this case. If you really want to know, go read the articles in the Chronicle (which I am sure you will also find plastered all over the news media.) To put it mildly, I have read about as many of the details of this subject as I can stomach - and, quite frankly, it may be awhile before I regain my appetite.

But, what I intended to write about was the topic Polimom chose to explore: what caused this story to develop and break the way it did. She attributes this to the involvement of local activist Quanell X:

The role he’s filling, though — a go-between for law enforcement and accused criminals — speaks to the distrust between the legal establishment and the black community. In spite of his often divisive — even racist — rhetoric, he’s often trusted where the police are not.

And in this tragic tale, that underlying distrust and suspicion blew up in everyone’s faces.

While I don't entirely disagree with her, I think Polimom may not have dug deeply enough to find the root cause. Or, more to the point, she may have discovered only one of the multiple root causes for what happened here. Because it appears to me that we as a society (and this isn't just limited to the USofA, either) have such an insatiable hunger for 'the news', that it has become like an addiction. Whenever something is happening, we need to know everything there is to know right now - and, the more gruesome or salacious the details, the more intense are out hunger pangs.

Is some celebrity couple having marital problems? We demand to know what is going on, until the resulting publicity results in a self-fulfilling prophecy as they announce their divorce. Is some pop tart in rehab for 'addictive personality'? We send in the paparazzi, who proceed to blind this person with a million flashes all popping, possibly driving her over the edge for good. Did some young woman get the wedding jitters, and take off? The media, attempting to meet our demands to know what is going on, keeps the case alive, and we insist the authorities do "whatever it takes", so that when she is finally found, and the truth is known, they end up filing charges against her - as much a result of our sticking our noses into a situation where we didn't really belong as anything else. Yet, she (and the others in these examples) are probably the ones that pay the price.

In the case of Tynesha Stewart, it is her parents - and also the parents of her alleged killer - who are having to pay this terrible price. It is a price which, in my opinion, they shouldn't have had to pay - because we didn't have the right to intrude in their lives in this manner, and if we had stayed out of the way and let law enforcement do its job, they just might have solved the case, and spared these families several days of extreme emotional distress in the process.

And, the damage doesn't stop here. Somehow, I wouldn't be surprised to hear somebody make the argument that there has been too much publicity for the defendant to obtain a fair trial (could you honestly grant him the presumption of innocence, if you found yourself in that jury pool?) Was the satisfaction we received from getting "the breaking story" worth possibly compromising the ability to hold this individual accountable for his actions?

Polimom ends her article with this:

...the media shouldn’t have to be part of the law enforcement process. If there is a lesson to be learned here, it’s that this broken bridge needs fixing.

Badly.

Unfortunately, I don't think the bridge is broken: I think we burned it out from under ourselves. And, I don't know if we can rebuild it or not. All I do know is, we need to try.

And, if we succeed, maybe we can remember Tynesha Stewart for something other than the horrible details of her passing.