Monday, August 08, 2005

The Press and Journal joins the lowest of the low

This blogmeister thought it would be business as usual as he headed up to RsMcColl’s to buy the P&J and read the usual ‘excuse’ to the press for NCFC throwing the game away on Saturday but outrage was to ensue at the front page banner headline:
‘Cook’s widow ‘hysterical’ as she gave the kiss of life’. The P&J had printed an account of the 49 minute call to the emergency ambulance centre with information from a certain Heather MacKintosh (complete with Mrs Mackintosh’s picture) on how she tried to help the ‘very distressed’ Gaynor Cook.
'He was very calm but she was quite hysterical. She was crying and it was very difficult because she asked where he was going to be taken.' Oh poor Mrs Mackintosh, it was very difficult for you.
Well it can’t be fun to watch life ebb away from your loved one at the best of times, especially on top of a remote mountain, and if you happen to be hysterical then you are only being human. It can only compound this woman’s suffering that her conversations with the emergency service and her state of mind during her husband’s death have been made public: is this normal? Shouldn’t this type of thing remain private unless the information is needed to be exposed in a court case or similar arena?
It is perhaps interesting to know that there was a 49 minute call made from the hill and efforts were made to help Mr Cook’s party but why do we have to me made into voyeurs with this sort of information? I hope when Mrs Cook starts to recover from the immediate shock of the death of her husband she considers with lawyers the information revealed by Mrs Heather MacKintosh and her organisation.
Surely we should be safe in the knowledge that if we have to phone the emergency services in a tragedy then intimate details of the conversations will not be revealed to the press the following Monday morning?

2 comments:

Nairn said...

This seems to be a low point of the year for news, so an event such as the demise of Robin Cook was jumped upon by certain rags. I don't condone the P & J's coverage of the sad event, however we can all protest either with our feet (don't buy the paper gain), a letter to the editor, or put our comments in the public domain as Craisg has with this blog.
For what it's worth I thought Robin Cook was a 1st class b****** for the way in which he dumped his 1st wife, but respected his political career for dropping the Labour party for their stance (war) on Iraq

Garry said...

The P&J is owned by Northcliffe Electronic Publishing Ltd which is part of the Daily Mail organisation. It seems that the P&J is morphing into Daily Mail, North-East edition.