Many of you have already read or watched something about the slaying of five family members in the small town of Beason Illinois. Last time I looked there were over 1,100 stories on the tragedy in the newsgroups. It has been on most television newscasts around the country as well.
I am quite aware of the story as the tiny town is in our county only nine miles outside Lincoln. I am a reporter covering the tragic event.
The entire affair is so sad and frustrating to me because news gatherers from around the country have been coming, or calling, or both, to get their share of a tragic story. To many of those who come, the story isn't important because it is tragic. They come because the story is horrific and anything horrific deserves front row copy. I know that is disparaging to colleagues but when you pursue children and ask them how they feel about their friends being murdered, I ask where information has ended and sensationalism has begun.
The story of an entire family being killed Monday evening has made the national and international headlines. The senseless killings of five members of a family has spread along the wires and the Web until every news source in the world now has seen the horrendous story come across their desks. It has turned quiet into loud, the unknown into infamous.
Beason is a small town of two hundred and some residents tucked just west of Illinois Route 10 East nine miles from Lincoln IL. When the corn gets high, only the Beason road sign pointing south keeps a traveler from motoring on past.
The town is so small that most maps refuse to recognize its existence. As of 4:30 pm Monday evening September 21, the world now knows its name and where it is located.
The town stretches for a mile on the Beason Chestnut Blacktop. Through the town, the blacktop is called Broadway. East and west of the main drag, the town stretches for a little more than a half mile and that is the extent of the town of Beason.
There are street signs. North St., South Street, a Walnut Street as well, but there is little need to have them in a town so small that every neighbor is within a fair walk of each other.
There are farms surrounding the little unincorporated township that carry a Beason mailing address but with no businesses left open on Broadway, there is little need to come into the town save to pick up mail or spend volunteer hours at the Beason Fire House.
For many years, the stores along Broadway have been shuttered and abandoned. Beason is quiet indeed. A town where everyone knows each other and visitors are rare.
That is no longer the case. On Wednesday the town was crowded with people. The next several days there will be even more.
There are many law enforcement and emergency personnel in the town. They are going about an investigation in hopes of finding clues to the person or persons who could be so evil or so sick to slay five people, including three children in their home.
The words among those volunteers and law officials were the same as those echoed by residents. There is disbelief, there is shock. Often, someone said that this was something they saw on the news somewhere else: but never here in Beason Illinois, never in Logan County.
Those words were said again a dozen times or more as people went about their jobs or their daily lives almost numb from the realization that the worst had now visited them. They were now members of a town that no one had ever heard of before now on the nightly news across the country.
The television crews are everywhere in this tiny town: parked without regard to traffic as if they were so special that the fact they are blocking a road is all right. After all they are television and television doesn't have to follow any rules of common decency or respect.
There have been press conferences and, like in most, the media doesn't get what they want as authorities try to protect their investigation. Could perhaps more be shared? Of course. But if you allowed some in the media to draw the line on what information should be given and what shouldn't, they wouldn't draw a line at all.
Besides the press conferences there has been a deluge of calls to all area media as well as local authorities. This deluge requires our local sheriff to have daily press conference to tell us something more, something pertinent, something comforting in a community fearful of who might lurk outside their doors. To date those words haven't been said and so the media clamors and yells and asks questions that if replied to confirm some point they desperately want to have made. Only then will their story be different from the hundreds already published. And so authorities say little and the furor over lack of information grows stronger
There are press from Chicago and St. Louis here. Five murders in both those towns occur how often: weekly, surely monthly. But they come here to cover our tragedy because this was in a quiet sleepy town and this is something that never happens here. Not in Beason Illinois.
I was appalled when the media found a pair of youngsters who attended the press conference. They were there to find out if anything new had been discovered about their friends' murders. In a minute these young girls were surrounded by microphones and television cameras and tape recorders.
The inane questions rolled at these youths, "How do you feel?" Are you scared?" Were your friends in trouble?" These and more intrusive questions rained down on the girls while the youngsters cried. But hey, a few seconds of this fifteen minute torture of kids will make a good five-second sound bite on the news. And when media decided they had more than enough to print or to roll on tape they walked away and chatted about where was the best place to get lunch and how the baseball season was going.
There were redeeming moments by some of my colleagues that I am grateful for. At a church service where young friends and classmates cried, photographers and camera men ran over to make sure they recorded their despair and grief. One young reporter from a competitor said, "I won't take a picture of that". I agreed and thought journalism 101 be damned, I won't either.
An old pro at another paper said she was disgusted with some of the inaccuracies being thrown out onto the wires and thus into print. I agreed and we smiled at each other knowing we would say what was said, write what had happened and add nothing that we didn't know was fact.
In a display of how amazing the internet is, I received a call from a FOX News New York producer only a half-hour after my last story had hit our publication. She asked for some background and then asked if I had interviewed any surviving family members regarding the tragedy. I said I was leaving them alone right now and she said "I understand". Chalk at least one up for the televised media.
As Wednesday wound down, out of area media began asking where they could find lodging. They are preparing to stay as long as this story runs the electronic waves of information.
Others will come and the news across the nation will continue to tell of a great sadness that occurred in the quiet town of Beason Illinois.
And across the nation people and families will read and watch and talk of what a terrible thing this has been. And they will all say "Thank goodness this doesn't happen in our town. Not here. Not where we live"
Until the next time: until the next place is their home town.
Freelance writer, columnist, author and writing coach, ex-Chicagoan Mike Fak presently resides in Central Illinois. More information about Mike's services are available at his home website www.mikefak.com
Mike currently writes primarily humor columns for searchwarp bi-weekly and is the managing editor of www.lincolndailynews.com
Mike now offers a 26,000 word e-book on making money as a freelance writer for only $10.00 at this page. http://www.mikefak.com/id45.html
» left by Crystal Pratt(333) Crystal Pratt (36 days 1 hour ago.)
I'm not terribly far from where you are. (Champaign area) I actually try to avoid the news as much as possible, but this story is hard to miss. I'm sorry for your town's suffering.
I've had the same media experiences. I lived two doors down from a Sheriff's deputy who was shot and killed during a chase/robbery a couple of years ago. I was approached by reporters from two different news stations as I was leaving my house, only to disappoint them with the news that I didn't know the man personally.
I'm glad to hear that you are being so sensitive to the town and not sensationalizing the situation just to get a headline. Thank you.
Very sensitively and expertly written. thank you for showing the more humane side of this story. thanks for writing with balance and, well, a heart. Marijo (Mary Jo is how it is pronounced)
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