Death, gloating and the public message boards. Are you ready to be sneered in Cyberspace?

Mrs Bennett’s actions? Yes, they chose not to act, chose to chide her, but ultimately she chose and not they to end her life. Should the public be made to be held accountable for their collective actions? But in all fairness if one goes over those message boards, not one individual ever threatened harm to Mrs Bennett, and yet this hardly changes anything given the knowledge that Mrs Bennett was unable to continue and chose an option that some of us for a split second consider but rarely ever act out.

cnn : Police are looking at an internet posting on the “Crothersville Forum,” referring to a town near Austin, that mentions the late Amanda Bennett’s husband by name. Two posts, both under the heading “Gone Forever,” were published online Friday and contained urgent, heated language.

One of the posts reads, in part: “it’s time to take the pain away … you got what u wanted no wife an no kids.”

Perhaps if there is one thing to learn from this- whether you know it or not someone in some other part of cyberspace someone is reading what you wrote about them (and as a journalist I get this all the time) and are prone to disturbed feelings and reactions, whether logical or not and perhaps sometimes it may make more sense to remain calm, explore the point of view you want to make without having to resort to abject antipathy and vitriol. Hopefully fellow journalists are reading this and thinking this too- after all last time I checked cyber space was littered with vitriol and the carcass of bad faith. In the end Mrs Bennett in her despair finally got what she wanted- a quick exit, a shame there was no one there to turn her back.

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