Sam
 

I was one of Sam's best friends, and upon returning from her funeral in Nebraska am saddened by the media's potrayal of Sam.
I personaly was chased to my car every time I went outside, followed on campus from class to class, heckled at her candlelight vigil held here, literally followed to Nebraska for her funeral service and burial. And immediatly after we watched her casket lowered as we walked to our cars we were photographed and hounded by reporters. Companies that have advertisments in the Denver Post have pulled their advertisments from the paper due to biased and tasteless reporting on the papers part. Her website was a private photo album not intended to be hacked into by reporters.
All who knew Sam knew how amazing and unique she was.

No matter what, the blame cannot be placed on the members of sigma pi or anyone else. When something so tragic and unexpected occurs, people tend to need something/someone to heave their own insecurity and pain upon.
Sam was an amazing woman and I am a better person to have known her.
I hope the good to come from this is people looking at their own lives and reevaluate your own drinking habits and understand this could happen to anyone even your best friend.

dear sweetheart
 

first, please accept my condolences for the loss of your friend, sam. and secondly, thank you for your wise words and your insight into a tragic end to such a promising life. sam must have been a remarkable young woman, to have such a friend as you.

I'm so sorry about the loss of your friend.

Many reporters do not know how to deal well with victims and people who have just expereinced a horrible loss. I remember the media circus up here after the OKC bombing. Jackasses -- at least 99% of them.

It would help if they at least went through some kind of training where they could learn to deal with victims of tragedy. Unfortunately, they're most worried about themselves and their own deadlines.

That's something I've often wondered about too - I know that as a reporter, I was trained in dealing with tragic situations, both by the paper I worked for and in classes. You can never completely prepare for situations like that, but I always had editors and professors who would stress the proper way to act in such situations.

It makes me wonder why other reporters didn't get the same training.

i'm so sorry for the bullying at the funeral of your dear friend. i know she was something special.
as a former reporter, i know we were told to choose decorum when dealing with tragedy.
how sad.

Re: Sam
 

I am so sorry, sweetheart03. I just lost a dear friend too, and it sickened me to see the way that the "journalists" harassed everyone involved.

Please accept my heartfelt condolences. I'm here if you need anything.

As a journalism major about to be unleashed into a sensationalistic and, well, muck raking society, I'm surprised they still try to teach us journalistic integrity.

It seems if you want to get ahead, you just can't have that anymore.

Anyway, my condolences to Sam and her family. This obviously didn't have to happen. I don't know what it's going to take to make people wise up about alcohol. It seems to get more out of control every year.

I suspect this will be an unpopular post.

Whenever something like this happens, there are almost always two things you hear.

The first is what a fine person somebody was, and the second is how crude and uncaring journalists are.

Sometimes both are true. Sometimes one or the other is. Sometimes neither.

My guess is that the only way to resolve this is to take competition totally out of journalism.

How do you do that? I don't know, maybe have it controlled by the government. Good idea? I don't think so. A "Free Press" was considered by our founders to be necessary to a democracy.

So, are journalists all jerks? Well, I don't think so, but some certainly are. But it's also important to consider the other side of the equation which is that in cases like this, a persons very first exposure to the media is at a time when his or her emotions are at their highest. I don't think that most reporters are really anxious to add to the emotional burden in a crisis -- but I'm not sure what they can do not to.

It's very tough, but the same person who has to be interviewed in one case is likely to be anxious to get all of the details of other stories -- and turn to the media expecting the information to be there.

It's really a very tough position for all involved.