A tragedy's emotional impact can engulf journalists, too

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06356/748091-80.stm

"I feel the need to share something with you, and I'm sort of loathe to do it for a few reasons. One, it feels very personal but it is something I've shared with you before so it seems like I have to tell you the rest of the story ..."

With those words, local radio talk-show host Lynn Cullen told her audience last week that Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Clark -- the love of her niece Leah Nuetzel's life -- had been killed in Iraq.

Through her tears, Ms. Cullen relayed the suffering his death has brought to the two families involved. At times her voice was so filled with pain and despair that it was almost too much to bear auditory witness to.

The host had never met her niece's boyfriend but she and her audience felt they knew him via her niece Leah and Leah's mother, Susan, who comes on her sister's radio show weekly.

"Now, he's dead in this senseless, insane war," Ms. Cullen intoned on her broadcast last Friday. "We don't want any more of these wonderful young people to die in something so stupid," she said banging the desk. "So damn stupid."

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06356/748115-51.stm

Radio talk show host Lynn Cullen spoke with the Post-Gazette Wednesday about her emotional broadcast last week on the death of her niece Leah Nuetzel's boyfriend, Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Clark.

"I think everybody has their job, and you journalists are supposed to remove yourselves emotionally, generally," she said. "I never made much of a journalist because it was very hard for me to do that, and as a talk show host I don't remove myself. I want to connect, intellectually, emotionally and mostly, honestly."

She said she has received nearly a hundred positive emails and letters from folks who listened to her tearful broadcast last week.

As she describes the aftermath of Cpl. Clark's death, her voice trembles as it did that day.

"I talk about this war all the time; I've been opposed to it since day one, since before day one. Then this wonderful, wonderful young man takes me closer to it than I'd ever want to be. It's the most hopeless feeling you can have."


Lynn Cullen