Idealogian

Intervention

When I was a kid, I used to wonder why the photographers for those nature shows never dropped the camera and came to the rescue of the poor zebra falling victim to the lion's chase. (This was long before I became a vegetarian.) A little maturity and some elementary-school biology taught me that that was the way things had to be; predator and prey are an important part of probably every ecosystem.

I'm still a little disturbed, however, by a story carried on CNN, ABC News and elsewhere. Well, it's not so much the story, which is horrible but not unusual, that first struck me. What caught my attention was CNN's photograph and caption:

An attorney is stunned after being shot, while the gunman walks away.

Photographs on other sites indicate that the event was captured on film from multiple angles, which means there were multiple film crews watching as a defenseless man tried to hide behind a tree and was shot several times, and as the gunman calmly walked away. It took a brave deputy to take him down:

David Katz, the reserve deputy, said Saturday he was around the corner when he heard five or six shots. The camera crews were all pointing at the man walking away and were whispering, "He's the shooter," Katz said.

"I took my jacket off, dropped my briefcase, turned around and figured that the only opportunity I would have is one chance to hit him hard and take him down to hopefully prevent him from shooting anyone else," Katz told NBC's "Today" show.

He said the man didn't say anything as he and some of the cameramen pinned him down.

So the crews did help, eventually. And granted, the guy did have a gun, which is a reasonably scary obstacle (though it doesn't seem to have actually sent anyone running for cover, so they couldn't have been all too scared). But as the shooter was walking away, couldn't someone have put down the camera and gone over to help the attorney? Apply some first aid? At least give him a tissue or something?! Or would that have compromised journalistic integrity by crossing the line between observer and observed?