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A kiss, a prayer: The last hours of MH17's victims

16 Comments
By KRISTEN GELINEAU

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16 Comments
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Jesus.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

How could he have known? How could she have known?

What rubbish. Nobody knew anything. AP needs to yank this Gelineau hack.

-5 ( +3 / -8 )

Some people apparently know when death is near. Sounds like Miguel was one of them. RIP, boy.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

What rubbish. Nobody knew anything. AP needs to yank this Gelineau hack.

Kid was on a Malaysia Air flight; you don't think previous disaster was on his mind? Not a "realistic" possibility for you?

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Don't know if it got any coverage in Japan, but here in the states today, CNN had live coverage of the arrival of the first 40 coffins in the Netherlands, the motorcade of the 40 hearses going to the location where they will be examined, and the memorial service for the victims. Impossible to watch that and not be touched by it and not feel sympathy for the families of the victims and their families. Thousands and thousands of folks stopped their cars on the roadways/overpasses to pay tribute to them. Truly a country in mourning.

4 ( +6 / -2 )

This sort of article is of questionable ethics. Most readers know none of these people, and had no connection to their lives. Why is it necessary to make a tragedy personal for the masses? While we feel sympathy and our heart aches when we read this, we are also being entertained - as on is when reading a tragic piece of fiction. But this isn't fiction - they are real people.

If it were me on that plane, or someone close to me, I wouldn't care to see their lives "dramatized" to provide entertainment to complete strangers around the world.

Or is there some purpose to this that I am missing?

4 ( +8 / -4 )

Or is there some purpose to this that I am missing?

commanteer -- I think there is -- to make sure that these folks are not thought of simply as 298 nameless/faceless victims (unfortunately shown all over the world in black body bags), but individuals who had so much to give, and that can never happen now. Not to mention the thousands of people who's lives will never be the same becuase of their senseless deaths,

8 ( +9 / -1 )

Kid was on a Malaysia Air flight; you don't think previous disaster was on his mind?

Of course it was. However, to then conclude that what would have crossed anyone's mind getting on any Malaysian Air flight was premonition is just confirmation bias. Ridiculous.

1 ( +4 / -3 )

The details are obviously provided by the families to journalists. If they choose not to provide such details, that's also OK.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

@jerseyboy

make sure that these folks are not thought of simply as 298 nameless/faceless victims

I understand that idea, but can't really accept it. Many 1000s of good people die prematurely every day around the world. We will never be aware that most of them ever existed, though they may have been very precious to those who knew them.

I mourn when people I die, often even when they are not immediate friends. It would be impossible, a kind of grief overload, to feel something about the countless strangers who die every day.

When I read this article. I felt horrible. It makes us feel as though we know the persons involved - though we don't. It's a manipulative psychological trick that takes advantage of human nature. We care, we feel bad, we think of how awful it is. But we will forget these stories tomorrow in most cases. And what of the majority who go unmentioned?

You could say it's harmless, but it's not. The parasites who cover these stories are often highly intrusive. They stick their cameras into peoples' faces at a moment of intense grief. All to get viewers or readers. You can say that the families provided the info willingly to the media, but in what emotional state? People may want to let out the grief, so they talk to a reported who pretends he is there to help. The reporter first manipulates the families in grief, and then manipulates his readers into feeling a superficial sense of compassion. The usual next step is to ask for donations, which would at least give the whole exercise some purpose.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

The reporter first manipulates the families in grief, and then manipulates his readers into feeling a superficial sense of compassion

Yes, this is a superficial, manipulative piece with a supernatural cherry on top. AP is actually running this tripe under the headline: "Young MH17 victim has eerie premonition of crash".

-1 ( +2 / -3 )

It's a manipulative psychological trick that takes advantage of human nature.

commanteer -- It is unfortunate that you have such a jaded view of this. I don't think humanizing victims in a world where the value of life is increasingly becoming less and less can possibly be a bad thing. In fact, as a society, we lower ourselves to the moral level of the criminals when we choose to just treat the victims as just nameless/faceless numbers.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

Oh my god, truly heartbreaking! May these families find peace and may the murderers get what's coming to them.....soon.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

How macabre. I hate that the press likes to write this stuff under the guise of "human interest"

0 ( +1 / -1 )

It's a manipulative psychological trick that takes advantage of human nature.

Exactly. Besides, two civil jets crashed after MH17, in Taiwan and Africa. Yet nobody has written similar stories about passengers and their relatives.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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