Screaming Journalism

The current trend of journalism organizations to hire screaming journalists ' like Nancy Grace and others is a disservice to the Fourth Estate and threatens the very notion of a free press . Grace and others of her ilk are not reporters seeking the news for its value to the general public nor are they attempting to inform . These confrontational entertainers are more interested in high ratings and controversy than in the news . Furthermore , their lack of general human compassion is endangering the entire profession . Never is this clearer than in the case of

the family of Melinda Duckett vs . CNN and Nancy Grace

In September 2006 , Melinda Duckett 's two-year-old son was reported missing and Duckett agreed to appear on Grace 's show in an effort to promote the manhunt for her missing child . Grace was belligerent and in the woman 's face , screaming at her because she would not discuss her whereabouts when the child disappeared and accusing the woman of having something to do with her child 's disappearance (Smoking Gun , 2006 Duckett 's son has still not been found , but a day after the interview with Grace , the woman shot and killed herself with a shotgun . In the days following Duckett 's death , Grace not only aired the original interview where she berated the distraught woman , but she went on the nightly news herself , defending her interviewing techniques (Good Morning America 2006

Former prosecutor turned talk show host Nancy Grace is unapologetic about her aggressive approach to a mother who committed suicide after an interview about the woman 's missing son ' ABC News reported ( Nancy Grace says `Guilt . Grace showed no human compassion for the mother in the interview or in the days after her death . Drawing on her history as a criminal prosecutor , Grace attacked in a manner more appropriate for a courtroom than a newsroom . That is not to say that reporters should not ask tough questions , but they should not browbeat an interviewee and speak over them as Grace did . Reporters have a responsibility to seek out the news , not to make it . In her attacks on Melinda Duckett , Nancy Grace went beyond the her role as a reporter and stepped back into her prosecutorial role , attempting to find the criminal . `How is that questioning doing anything but making a person in a desperate situation feeling even more desperate ' said Hub Brown , a professor at Syracuse University 's Newhouse School of Communications (ABC News . Grace 's attack made it look like she was more interested in the sensationalist aspects of the story rather than reporting a woman 's story . She can be compared to Jerry Springer , who exploits peoples personal lives on television . She is effectively the Jerry Spring of real ' journalists , although with her tactics , calling Grace a real journalist is a stretch of the imagination

Grace defended her unrelenting questioning as a search for truth and said police later agreed with her that Melinda Duckett is a suspect in her son 's disappearance...