Mother’s Judgment Questioned For Announcing Child’s Death On Twitter

Shellie Ross was Tweeting from her Florida home at 5:22 p.m. Monday about how foggy it was. At 5:30 p.m. she called 911 saying her son Bryson was lying at the bottom of the pool.

At 6:12 p.m. she tweeted again: “Please pray like never before, my 2 yr old fell in the pool.” And five hours later, she wrote that she was “remembering my million dollar baby,” posting photos of the little boy.

Shortly thereafter, there was strong reaction from the Twitter community about the timeline, and whether the mom was too busy communicating with the rest of the world to pay attention to her child.  Florida Today quotes a woman who lives hundreds of miles away who attacked Ross:

Madison McGraw, who does not know the Ross family, tweeted about the incident and also posted an item on her blog, at www.madisonmcgraw.com, titled “Mom Tweets While Son Drowns.”

“The person that I have compassion for is her son — who might still be alive if (Ross) interacted with her son like she interacted with people on Twitter,” McGraw wrote. “To me, that shows the repercussions for social media gone awry.”

But Lisa Belkin of the New York Times puts it in perspective.

…Ross’ tweets are not an example of the misuse of the internet, but rather of its potential and power. It’s the critics, not Ross, that show the technology’s dark side. As Peter Post, great-grandson of etiquette expert Emily Post and director of the Vermont-based Emily Post Institute, told Kimberly C. Moore, a reporter from Florida Today, “I’m not sure this is the appropriate time or place to be chastising anyone.”

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.