FROMONLINE | 2013-05-10

  • By Tami Lange
  • May 10, 2013
  • 320
                        
It was a very odd way to offer breaking news. I was tooling down the street toward home last week, listening to the Indians pre-game show on a Cleveland radio station when the breaking news tones rang out. Not particularly unusual. But then, the reporter came on and said – slowly and somewhat incredulously – “We have breaking news, incredible if it’s true.” Because, I thought sarcastically, it would be incredible for you come on the air with breaking news that WASN”T true. Geesh. And so, the announcer went on, they were getting reports that missing Clevelanders Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus had been found … He paused. Alive. He said it slowly, as if he wasn’t completely sure such an event could happen, not after a decade. It was truly a moment, a moment so unbelievable even the reporters didn’t know quite what to say. It was unusual, I thought. It was unusual because it was so … genuine. So the night wore on, as Husband and I flipped from station to station to see if it was true. Could two (later it turned into three) missing girls actually be alive? Let’s face it, who among us (except for families and close friends) hadn’t just figured they were long dead, never to reappear? It was a moment when cynicism turned to pure joy. One Cleveland news reporter, who had covered the story through years of false leads, anniversary vigils and ridiculous psychic visions, actually broke down into tears. “It’s been so long,” he said. Whoa, I thought. This is real. No faking the tears. No faking the emotion. It was so … genuine. The on-the-spot interviews with rescuer Charles Ramsey had the same feel of reality – not the reality in “reality television” or the reality cobbled together with four or five sound bites. It was so … genuine. In the 21st century, we crab about the “drive-by media,” the “lamestream media,” the headline-grabbing-sensational-anything-for-a-story media. And yet, here was the media at its best – rushing for the story, trying to capture the joy of something they thought would never happen. It was a media with heart. It was a media who let the story tell itself: the 9-1-1 tape, the Ramsey interview, the throngs of neighbors crying and embracing, the dispatch tape of a Cleveland police officer reporting to dispatch, “This might be for real.” It was a “wow” moment that continued for a while – the “thumbs up” from Gina DeJesus as she was escorted back to a home she’d not seen for years, the tearful phone exchange between Amanda Berry and her grandma in Tennessee, the balloon launch from hundreds of people for Michelle Knight – a woman most of them didn’t even know but refused to forget. Well played, media. And then – it all turned back into crap, as if the media couldn’t leave a tender moment alone. What had been so wonderfully objective, now turned into snarky conjecture – particularly on the part of the out-of-town news outlets: the 9-1-1 dispatcher was criticized for hanging up (even though the police already were at the scene), Charles Ramsey had a criminal record (which meant he couldn’t still be a hero?), the Cleveland police just never looked hard enough for these girls (his own neighbors and family had no idea, but the police were supposed to figure this out?) And my personal favorite: an article in The Daily Beast, “Cleveland a Great City for Monsters.” This was based on kidnapper Ariel Castro living in the same city as serial killer Anthony Sowell. C’mon. Don’t pile on the entire city for the horrific acts of two men. Don’t pile on the cops for being imperfect. Don’t pile on 9-1-1 because one operator wasn’t warm and fuzzy. The national media doesn’t need to blame anyone for what happened except Ariel Castro. What happened in Cleveland could happen anywhere, because monsters lurk everywhere. I don’t care what Nancy Grace thinks. I’m not going to let outsiders rob all of us of a few days of unfettered joy, when even reporters cried.


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