I decided to be brave and turn on the computer, despite my reservations otherwise. I knew what I might be exposed to online. I should have listened to my gut feeling. It was on Drudge Report and I made a bad choice to click on the link.
What did I expect to find? A small part of me still has faith in human decency. I was hoping to see the opposite of what I saw. Again, I am a total idealist. I ought to know better than to expect anything more of the media:
CBS NEWS: HAD TO BE DRUGS THAT KILLED BRITTANY MURPHY... <----BULLSHIT SLANDER!!!
Did they somehow defy the laws of science and reason? NO. There is absolutely no proof of this. But CBS and many of us out there don't need proof. Guilty! Now, she must be proven Innocent.
CBS News, desperate for the hook, decided to spin the story hard into the court of public opinion with one objective in mind: increased web traffic, ad sales and feeding the audience what they presumed would keep them from changing the channel.
They won the day. While not misrepresenting any facts or technicalities, they carefully produced coverage that made circumstantial evidence appear deceptively as fact. Their medical expert could not help but bask in the spotlight as he spoke with gleeful gravity on the prescriptions found in the home. Everyone spoke of the "tragedy," in solemn tones and with serious concern for how it happened. Of course, their only concern was for keeping the facts limited to the agenda.
Without a hint of moral and ethical decency, they conveniently left out the information that would have produced reasonable doubt. Why bother? So what? If it could have been any number of legitimate medical conditions, the audience doesn't care. And so what if it is too soon to speculate on what really happened: the need for ratings and staying employed remains paramount.
And the audience is too stupid or lazy or busy to write a letter to the FCC.
Congratulations CBS NEWS! DOUCHEBAG AWARD IN JOURNALISM
The cause of her death has NOT been declared. But that doesn't matter because CBS NEWS declared it and no other media outlet has the balls to argue otherwise. Even BIG HOLLYWOOD couldn't resist putting the link to the story on the front page of their site. Damn, I thought you were better than that, Andrew.
According to every one in the media and the people who make up the court of public opinion, there is no doubt that it was prescription drug abuse.
What if it WAS NOT due to prescription drugs?
When the official autopsy results come back in six weeks or more, what they prove will make no difference. If it was not prescription medication, CBS NEWS won't apologize to her family or admit they made a mistake. They won't retract the coverage and apologize to their audience. And people in the court of public opinion will simply shrug their shoulders and say, "Oh." We'll just all write it off as we will and not think for a moment about what that says about us as a society.
We're all getting too comfortable with cruelty, disrespect and assumptions. It does not bode well.
I'm still foolish enough to think that their is hope for us. That somehow we are better than this. Ironically, all the evidence in front of me proves otherwise. There is little room for reasonable doubt.
Today, I grow up a little more and lose a little more faith in the world I live in. Brittany, may you rest in peace and someday, I'll see you on the other side and we can laugh about all this. Until then, it makes me sick to have even had to write this, even sicker to experience it.
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