Members of the media see bad news every day. After awhile it has a numbing effect. You tend to brush off the robberies and burglaries, shake your head at the drug arrests and related shootings. Chalk it all up to a harsh world and the fact that your job is caught in the crossfire.

Friday, December 14th, was a hard day for America. Instead of buying presents, the families of 20 children will be buying coffins. And aside from those families directly affected by the senselessness of this tragedy, no one felt the horror of that day more so than the media - forced to watch the tragedy unfold all day long.

We'll be criticized for the way we handled our coverage. We always are in these situations. We'll be called insensitive, tasteless, emotionless. But in all truthfulness, we were just doing our jobs -- and there is no easy way to cover these situations.

Doctors and other experts will diagnose Adam Lanza as mentally ill. The media will dutifully relay that diagnosis to our viewers because it's our duty. We won't call this man what we really want to - a monster, evil.

I'd be lying if I said stories like these don't affect us.

You can turn the channel when you've had enough of a particular story. We spend the entire day, sometimes weeks and even months, reliving these stories over and over again.

We may not call these monsters out for what they are. We may not shed tears while we're on the air. But that doesn't mean we haven't been affected, that we don't feel the heartbreak.

Maybe I'm reaching, but our jobs are one of the hardest in the world. We may not relay bad news one-on-one to those who are directly affected by it. We don't take on that huge responsibility.

We just have to relay the news to everyone else.

It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.
Buddha