Sensationalism

The June 4 publication of a series of front-page photographs showing a flood victim trapped, and ultimately killed, in his car was insensitive and irresponsible. This "news" could have been better presented without such journalistic sensationalism. Margaret Westfield Haddon Heights, N.J.

All of you at The Inquirer who were in on the decision to run the photo of R. Budd Dwyer jamming the barrel of his revolver into his mouth should hang your heads in shame. You way overstepped the line that separates the responsibility to report the news from sleazy sensationalism. This was a human being who cracked under stress. Have you no sense of propriety? Robert S. Ingersoll Philadelphia.

"Is every grisly detail necessary," we asked our readers last Monday. In stories like the Willie Smith rape trial, the Milwaukee serial murders and ghe Pee-wee Herman arrest, is it absolutely essential that all the facts be included? "How much," we asked you, "is included for the sake of sensationalism, rather than information? Where does candor end and titillation begin?" These are some of your responses: As you say, without candor, it would be impossible to adequately confront the social problems we face today.

Directed by Marco Kreuzpaintner, with Kevin Kline, Paulina Gaitan, Cesar Ramos and Alicja Bachleda-Curus. 1 hour, 59 mins. R (violence, sexual violence, profanity, drugs, adult themes). Distributed by Roadside Attractions. Playing at: Ritz at the Bourse. Other times, however, Trade comes off like TV-movie sensationalism, sidetracked by distracting backstories and hard-to-swallow plot twists. Although Kevin Kline, playing a cop on a personal quest for a missing girl, gets top billing, the strongest acting here comes from a pair of teens: Paulina Gaitan, as Adriana, a Mexico City kid kidnapped by Russian sex-traders as she's riding the new bike she received for her 13th birthday, and Cesar Ramos, as Jorge, her older brother, a street hustler who follows his sister's abductors across the border and all the way to a house in New Jersey.

A free, alternative newspaper with a puzzling name has cropped up recently in Bucks, Philadelphia and Mercer Counties. It's called Whole Wheat. It's a four-page tabloid, but, unlike some tabloids, the "ism" it purveys is not sensationalism, but holism. Whole Wheat's motto does make a playful reference to the slogan of one of the purveyors of supermarket sensationalism. Beneath the large, black letters spelling out Whole Wheat at the top of the front page is the phrase "Because Aspiring Minds Want To Grow.

We are extremely upset with the misrepresentation of Vare Middle School in the Daily News on Dec. 10 in the article "Unsafe at Any Grade. " To name Vare Middle School the third-most-violent middle school based on numbers of Serious Incident Reports, in isolation from what the nature of the incidents are, was unconscionable. Your mathematics severely skewed the data. This series was irresponsible journalism, sensationalism at its worst. The members of the Vare community have spent six years restructuring our school to benefit students' learning.

The Inquirer began a 10-part series last week entitled "America: Who Stole the Dream?" that will attract attention. The thesis is simple: Big Government and Big Business are relentlessly reducing living standards and job security for most Americans. The series by Donald Barlett and James Steele portrays living in America as a constant hell for all but the superwealthy. This seems overdrawn, because it is. It's junk journalism, and the intriguing question is why a reputable newspaper publishes it. I call it "junk," because it fails the basic test of journalistic integrity and competence: It does not strive for truthfulness, however impossible that ideal is to attain.

INDIANAPOLIS - You have officially become a phenomenon when Madonna mimics your end-zone celebration salsa. Victor Cruz's undrafted-to-all-pro story is one that has been oft-told in the NFL: Small-school prospect gets overlooked by teams, scrapes his way onto a roster, gets a break when a player is injured, and goes on to capitalize on his opportunity. But Cruz's tale is no less worth retelling. In fact, it may prove to be the best of the lot. His season has been that special and is still a game away from being over.

Is President Obama poised to become the next American Idol -packaged musical sensation? Obama proved his warbling prowess when he surprised guests at a New York fund-raiser on Jan. 19 by breaking into a rendition of Al Green 's classic "Let's Stay Together. " Obama has inspired a nation to take another listen: Billboard says sales of the 1971 tune increased 490 percent last week with 16,000 downloads, while a YouTube clip of Obama's performance has drawn more than 4 mil hits.

MILWAUKEE - Ruben Amaro Jr. couldn't see the Yoennis Cespedes YouTube video before it was removed from the Internet. But his scouts in the Dominican Republic, where the Cuban outfielder is training in anticipation of becoming a free agent this winter, said a closer look was warranted. So the Phillies held a private workout for Cespedes on Tuesday at the team's Dominican Republic complex. The priority, Amaro said, was simply due diligence. But there was enough curiosity to send former GM and current adviser Pat Gillick to check him out. Whether the Phillies would even consider spending at least $30 million (the reported starting point in negotiations)

Contemporaries of former Dobbins Tech girls' basketball sensation Linda Page, who broke Wilt Chamberlain's individual local high school scoring record when she scored 100 points against Mastbaum in February 1981, reacted with shock and fond remembrances Wednesday to her death. She was 48. The circumstances of her death were sketchy, but several sources close to Page and her family said she died in her home in Yeadon, Delaware County, possibly of a heart attack. It was unclear, however, when or how she died, and police in Yeadon did not have anything to officially announce Wednesday night.

PETRONELL-CARNUNTUM, Austria - They lived in cells barely big enough to turn around in and usually fought until they died. This was the lot of those at a sensational scientific discovery unveiled this month: well-preserved ruins of a gladiator school in Austria. The Carnuntum ruins are part of a city of 50,000 people 28 miles east of Vienna that flourished about 1,700 years ago, a major military and trade outpost linking the far-flung Roman empire's Asian boundaries to its central and northern European lands.

LAST AUGUST, a week before former Philadelphia Housing Authority chief Carl Greene disappeared for five days after the revelation that he was facing foreclosure, Housing and Urban Development officials showed up to inspect some of PHA's scattered-site properties that had been rehabbed with federal stimulus money. The audit by HUD's inspector general focused on a portion of the $126.5 million in Recovery Act funds PHA received in 2009. The report, released this week, highlighted the $27.4 million PHA spent on scattered-site housing repairs and found that the agency lacked supporting documentation of how funds had been spent and had failed to comply with local codes and contract requirements.

Sometimes - just sometimes - a geniune pop culture phenom breaks through the media's nonstop, hyperbolic droning. So it happened when Kathryn Stockett's debut novel, The Help , was released in February 2009. Rejected by 50 literary agents, it went on to spend 103 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list, six at No. 1. There are 3 million copies of the hardback in print, and the novel even has been adapted into a film, due out Aug. 12. ("It's fantastic," Stockett says of the film, starring Emma Stone, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Viola Davis.)

Young actor and singer Gregory Smith attributes much of his success - including his 2010 role as Oliver Twist in the Walnut Street Theatre's Oliver! - to good old luck. "Really I've just been at the right place at the right time," the 11-year-old said, explaining that he was the perfect height for the role of Charles Dickens' protagonist. But it took more than luck for Gregory to win the opportunity to sing with 10-year-old piano sensation Ethan Bortnick, beating out almost 800 other contestants in an online contest.

Using a cane, a blind person can easily detect obstacles at ground level. But what about something at waist height or above, such as the caution tape surrounding a construction site? "It's insidious," said Suzanne Erb, a blind resident of Center City. "By the time you've reached it with your cane, it's way too late. " Unless you happen to be wielding a one-of-a-kind electronically enhanced cane, the work of University of Pennsylvania engineering students who consulted with Erb. The cane is equipped with a device that projects a cone of ultrasonic waves in front of the user, allowing it to detect obstructions and then warn the person by making the cane vibrate.

LANDOVER, Md. - As a morality play, Monday night's football game between the Eagles and the Washington Redskins might have come up a moral or two short, but as theater, there couldn't be many complaints. At least not in Philadelphia. The Eagles revisited former quarterback Donovan McNabb in his new home, and on the very day McNabb signed a contract extension with his new team. What could have been a monumental game for McNabb turned into a monumental disaster, however. By the end of the drubbing, the Eagles had won, 59-28.