I get it, don't think that I don't. Our news media needs to splat items onto the screen with essentially zero reflection or thought or context because to do otherwise would remove it from the category of news and put it into that of "information". And that category doesn't garner "GASP! DID YOU SEE THAT?!"
The latest to catch my eye was an ABC Good Morning America Yahoo News combo. The title? "911 Dispatcher Pleads with Nurse Who Refuses to Perform CPR." You can view it here if you're so inclined.
What I wish I'd been taught as a kid, and what I should have taught my kids, is to respond to items like this with "That seems strange and, on the face of it, hard to believe. So I WON'T believe it until I've dug a little deeper. There's probably a good explanation for what seems odd at first."
Here's what's odd. The old woman is at a nursing facility. And there's a nurse there. And the nurse won't perform CPR. That would seem to go against her training. Unless there were a good reason for the refusal. And what could such a reason be? Perhaps the old woman signed a statement directing the facility to NOT perform resuscitations on her. Is this common? Of course! The right to die and all that. Called a DNR. If she had, and if they resuscitated her anyway, perhaps bringing her back but now in brain-dead mode, they would have been liable for a HUGE legal penalty. And the nurse would, of course, have lost her job for failing to follow the dictates of her patient.
Of course, if that's the case, and ABC news found it out to be so, then there's no outrage. No story, in short. And THAT would be a tragedy, wouldn't it?
