It’s been a week since the Sandy Hook Massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, that took the lives of 20 children and seven adults, and residents are now asking for just one thing: for the media to leave them alone and respect their privacy.
Many people who live in the town of the shooting are getting fed up with the media that flocked to the area upon news of the tragedy last Friday. At first, residents seemed to understand that the event was huge and that they would be in the spotlight for a while, but a lot feel that enough is enough when mourners were constantly caught with cameras in their faces.
“There are people who should be able to get to these funerals,” Janice Butler of Newtown told Yahoo News on Wednesday, standing a few hundred yards from the entrance to the school where Friday’s shootings took place. “But some of them can’t because you all are here.”
On Tuesday night, a man walking up a street in the Connecticut town held a sign that read, “Dear Media, GTFO!”
On Monday, the town’s newspaper, The Newtown Bee, posted a comment on its Facebook page asking members of the media to stay away from those who are grieving.
On behalf of the entire staff of The Bee — we are imploring ALL our colleagues and journalists to PLEASE STAY AWAY FROM THE VICTIMS. We acknowledge it is your right to try and make contact, but we beg you to do what is right and let them grieve and ready their funeral plans in peace.
Newtown police have also been focusing on dispatching officers to remove media representatives from private property that is constantly being overrun by news reporters.