Greetings. I've just finished -- courtesy of CNN -- hearing the wife of recently deceased 50-year-old TV pitchman Bill Mays sobbing in anguish as she spoke to a 911 operator. (Speculation on cause of death in this case has now moved from airliner-landing head injury to heart disease, though the fact that he reportedly had two hip replacements by such an age may raise other health-related questions.)

A few days ago, I heard a similar upset 911 call splattered across the media as Michael Jackson's death was reported.

In fact, news organizations seem to increasingly be treating their access to 911 recordings as what I would call "911 Porn" -- playing these materials to their audiences in most cases solely for their "prurient" ratings value.

The news media's response to this criticism no doubt will be that these recordings are public record data, and hell, if they so desired these municipalities could post all of their 911 calls routinely to public Web sites.

But must this necessarily be true?

In specific situations where 911 conversations have probative value in courts, for other legal proceedings, or in related investigations, the recordings (and/or associated transcripts) should obviously be made available to the relevant parties.

But it strikes me that their essentially immediate release (the recordings for sure, and perhaps the transcripts as well) to mass media for broad dissemination, basically to sate morbid curiosity, is truly obscene in the worst possible way, in a manner that two people making love could never be.

With all due respect to my friends in the news media, it's time to stop releasing 911 materials on demand for publication or broadcast, absent clear and demonstrated necessity for the public good in any specific case.

--Lauren--