There is no tragedy that cannot be turned into a publicity stunt. It’s a cynical thought — and yet, in today’s world of 24-hour news cycles and institutional storytelling, it often proves true. Modern media and government relations have perfected the art of transforming real pain into strategic narrative. In this economy of attention, sorrow becomes a kind of currency.
Consider the 2022 case of a missing child that gripped local media for two full days. What could have been a brief report — a child missing, then found — was stretched into an orchestrated event. The public was made to feel suspense, fear, and relief, all wrapped into a two-act story arc. Yet those who were there remember it differently. The boy was found sitting quietly, soon after the search began, sitting under a tree near his grandmother’s house--unhurt, asking only, “Where’s my Daddy?” It was an ordinary, tender moment — but such moments don’t make headlines. What did make headlines was the performance: the successful search, the triumphant recovery, the reaffirmation of institutional competence. A similar moral theater appears to surround the recent death of Pastor Lester Isbell while in custody at the Monroe County Jail. Instead of being treated primarily as a tragedy that calls for transparency and accountability, it risks being re-framed as a cautionary tale — a warning about the “serious consequences” of being arrested. The message is clear: don’t end up like him... Lester Isbill needed medical attention: Officer Finger Flipped him the Bird.
But that framing shifts focus from why he died to what lesson his death can be made to teach. The story becomes not about a man, but about control... On 10/29/2025 the Family of Johsua Mcleary awarded $2.5 million in a wrongful death lawsuit. Lawsuits Impact on Budgets--Litigation payouts and insurance hikes come from the county’s general operating budget. Since counties have limited revenue sources (mostly property tax and state/federal grants), increased liabilities often force local officials to: raise property taxes, cut public services, road maintenance, and social programs. 
This instrumentalization of tragedy — the re-purposing of pain into message — is where media ethics and governance intersect most perilously. The aim ceases to be truth or empathy, and becomes narrative management. Officials, under the guise of transparency, select which angles to show. Reporters, chasing engagement metrics, favor emotion and closure over nuance and uncertainty. And so, complex human realities are compressed into clean moral lessons. The child’s relief becomes proof of institutional competence; the pastor’s death, a cautionary advertisement for obedience.
But tragedy should not be a tool for persuasion. It should be a moment of moral pause — a disruption that demands reflection rather than spin. When institutions turn loss into theater, they erode not only public trust but also the moral depth of a society. We learn to watch suffering instead of feeling it. We are trained to consume empathy, not practice it.
The remedy isn’t outrage — it’s restraint. To tell fewer stories not because they are inconvenient, but because they are sacred. To resist the impulse to package grief into messaging. To remember that every tragedy, before it becomes news, is first a wound.Because the moment we turn every human loss into a spectacle, we lose the capacity to mourn.
