NJ Common Sense

By Alonzo Hosford

The Times Tribune reporter Borys Krawczeniuk September 11, 2009 characterizations of Nurse Laureen Cummings 9/10 Tea Party Express speech heard by over 1,000 people at the Lackawanna County Court House and Veterans Memorial Plaza where contradicted by video tape.

Over 1000 attend to hear Nurse Laureen Cummings

Borys hides Laureen Cummings address to crowd about respect for the Office of the President by injecting the crowd comments spurred by President Obama’s Health Care speech impugning those who disagree. Tapes reveal her statements of respect.

Borys, when Nurse Cummings explained to the audience that without a living will it is assumed in the medical field that you want every effort to save your life, stretched her statement to assume she was talking about the President’s view on living wills as something to allow people to die. He did not attempt to clarify with Nurse Cummings before making his assumption and the tape proves she did not mention the President.

Borys Krawczeniuk in a story on September 11, 2009  ignored Laureen Cummings clear message to Tea Party newbies that respectful patriotic opposition deserves respectful responses.

Laureen Cummings of Old Forge Quoted By Borys Krawczeniuk

The  Borys quote of Cummings “Why would a president do this to the American people?”, at time point 1:32 in video below, left an unreferenced adjective ‘this’  not handled. The reader has no idea what ‘this’ means.  Rewind the tape below to 1:13 and you learn what ‘this’ means. Laureen preceded the Borys quote with “And the President had his speech last night. And he decided to call out Sarah Palin, Republicans and us, the American People.” Then she says “Why would a president do this to the American people?”

Borys focused on frustrated crowd members outbursts while discussing Laureen’s presentation. Crowd members were overwhelmingly newbies to protests as shown by a hand poll taken by Mark William; a human interest story The Times-Tribune reporters missed. Folks were there because of their frustration with Government minimizing their voice and are learning how to articulate by hearing qualified speakers like Laureen. Unskilled in messages, they often expressed strong statements from emotion.

Borys omits Laureen’s clear statement to the crowd about the objectives of Tea Party protests by saying “Even though he decided to say something humiliating about us, I’m going to tell him I respect his office and we have been very patriotic and we do not sit here and try to condemn the office of the President”. You can hear this at time point 1:41 in the video below.

Borys goes on to imply that Cummings “suggested Mr. Obama’s support of living wills amounted to allowing people to die rather than resuscitating them.” He was compelled to add another outburst from an unskilled crowd member standing next to him or a teammate who later admitted he was harmless and was apologetic. More so when you listen to the video above, Tom Zenker who expressed the sentiment, was no where near the speaker Cummings. The one sentiment you do hear is “Thank You” at time point 5:06 followed by a welcome from Laureen. That was about it on her interaction with the crowd on her comments about living wills. Cummings was expressing the voice of a qualified nurse. Tom Zenker could have been in another city as far as Cummings is concerned and perhaps so was the reporter.

Laureen, a nurse with experience with life and death, said “a living will  is only good when you are unable to tell someone what you want done for your care. If you don’t have one they do everything in their power to keep you alive and bring you back.” That is it. Nothing about the President.

Borys needs to revisit journalistic use of pronouns such as ‘this’ in quotes. They need a proper reference to the subject.

Further I strongly recommend The Times-Tribune should assign Borys Krawczeniuk to spend a week observing in a hospital where life and death situations occur with someone who cares for people like Laureen Cummings before he comments on living wills. Perhaps there is a story there in Scranton and something valuable to learn.