Major newsrooms have installed a Grief-Proximity Alarm following the recent indictment of a man accused of murdering his prominent parents, apparently after discovering that ordinary editorial judgment had been discontinued during the streaming era. The charges remain allegations to be tested in court; the bereavement, inconveniently for producers, is already real.
The alarm is calibrated to sound whenever coverage wanders from verified legal developments into lurid speculation, amateur diagnosis or breathless discussion of which actor might eventually play the prosecutor. It does not protect the accused, the victims or their surviving relatives from publicity, but it does emit a stern electronic cough while everyone ignores it.
“Our instrument can distinguish public-interest reporting from a trailer narrated over ominous piano,” said a spokesperson for the entirely fictional Department of Turning Tragedy Into Content. Early trials were abandoned after the alarm remained continuously active and melted through the assignment desk. History, as ever, declines to take notes.
