News That Stays News

Someone call the Ombudsman December 11, 2010

Mark Madoff, Bernie Madoff’s oldest son, has died, a suicide. He had apparently been unaware of his father’s fraudulence. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal published two lurid articles about the death that were more financial muckraking and gossip mongering than heartfelt obit; this has to be a case of journalistic (or ethical) malpractice.

Is this a trend, part of the shifting standards of civility? A lot of obituaries these days try to be about more than the person who died. Often the death is used for some argumentative purpose, the way a book is often an excuse for an essay in a book review.  C.f. this obit of Elizabeth Edwards in the Atlantic, which also aims an elbow at political wives, and this Time obit of Robert Byrd, which takes his death as an occasion to shovel scorn onto the Senate.