It sounds like Mason though he was taking a shorter route back to return more quickly and that Acerno feels all hikers should head downhill, no matter what. Is it possible that Mason felt he was making the more responsible (less negligent) decision, even though it turned out to be less effective than the alternative? Yes, it is possible, but I don't know. I think we need to know a lot more. For instance, where did that bolded phrase come from? It is not a quote. We know the action of the decision is attributed to Mason, but we do not know what he actually said. And why were the normal helicopters not available? And how much responsibility can we place on him for not knowing about the spring thaw?

This isn't what happened. There are 4 (and 1/2) peaks in the Northern Presidentials. His route was to go up starting at Pinkham Notch, so some route up the side of Tuckerman's Ravine to the summit of Mt. Washington. Then from there along the Gulfside Trail over the range to Jefferson, Adams, and Madison and down a choice of trails out to the road. He hurt his ankle on the ascent of Mt. Washington. When he hurt it, turning around would have been the quickest way down by far. He continued on, and was over on Mt. Jefferson when he decided to take his "short cut". He was taking it because it was getting late, most likely, not because of the ankle which he hurt miles before. If it was his ankle at that point, he could have gone back up to Mt. Washington where he could have been taken down (the way he was after the rescue). At some point after he'd been down in the Gulf, he "built a shelter with rocks" (meaning he was back above treeline). There was an open overnight hut over the ridge on Mt. Adams. He had much better options. Most of them marked on the map he was supposed to be carrying. Two of them with the capability to call off the search. People who hike up there are generally aware when a search is going to result, and they generally try to end it quickly, for exactly this reason. The only really good judgment he exercised was that he knew not to end up above treeline at night exposed to the cold.

The price tag is high and that is really what people are reacting to. But he really didn't exercise good judgment, over and over again. The law is there to discourage bad judgment and reckless behavior. Several people die up there every year, most of the deaths are due to negligence or recklessness. The state wants that to stop, hence the harsh measures.

Almost all the people interviewed by the papers and TV crews could have told you exactly what I just told you. But you didn't read that in any of them, did you? While we're talking about journalism, how about that you think you've got the information you need to make an informed judgment about this particular rescue episode. Then you find out you really don't. Your first clue is that you find yourself asking, "Is it possible that he..." and having no way to answer your own questions. But there are people who feel you should form an opinion on the information they did give you.

In an informed society, you need all the information needed to make decisions. Granted, your opinion won't matter in this little case, but it could have been a bigger issue. The press made this case look like a feat of Eagle Scout derring do, then they made it look like the state was picking on the kid. But you really didn't get from them why the state said he was negligent, did you? They entertained, not informed.

It is quite unfortunate that my consumeristic, gossipholic, America the beautiful land of the free home of the brave feeings and thoughts are placated to especially with regards to local television. I feel inestitized and force fed stuff that I should not be worried about especially when there is global chaos lurking around the world. Does anyone know how much money there is involved with the destruction of people, nature, plants and animals? There are individuals making boat loads of cash creating wars and calling it self defense, pillaging the earth for viable resources, more then likely in some less privileged part of the world and calling it imminent domain displacing their peoples in the process too, and wiping out all signs of trees, frogs, snakes, birds etc. And what about Afghanistan? Taliban? I ask are they really going to blow up the world? Really , there are people that heartless? I guess if I look closly at our own peguin suited leaders I get my answer. I think we should educate, teach, and discuss over making war. This cannot happen though until the majority stops enjoying their placation and steps up to the advocating, rallying call of justice for all.

When he said "To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past" he neglected to inform people that he was the chief optimist. He was as big a mindless stenographer on Vietnam as anyone and changed his mind only because he found out what any ARVN conscript could have told him, that the VC had the strength to mount a major offensive. The fact that that offensive was the biggest defeat in North Vietnamese history he seemed to miss. He was useless as a source of information on anything but what mainstream opinion in journalism thought.

We're all spending a lot of time this week gnashing our collective teeth over the passing of Walter Cronkite. He deserves it, although personally, I think he would find some of what's gone on to be over blown.

We all have Cronkite envy. Everyone wants someone like Cronkite again.

The really sad thing is that, eschewing the process of war and experience that made Walter Cronkite who he was, in the time he was, there could be another like Cronkite, in fact, a whole crop of them. But no one has the guts. Plain and simple.

They all blame the changes in the medium of television, and broadcasting as a whole as the principal devil in the details of carrying on where Cronkite left off.

But in doing so, those who say we can't emulate Cronkite have been, and continue to ignore changes in the informational and news medium as far reaching as the Apollo 11 mission shared by a generation forty years ago this week, thanks to Walter Cronkite.

We have the Internet. Apollo had the Saturn Five, and both vehicles have power beyond any modern imagination.

So the next time some odious, nickel-nursing media mogul decides that his News and "Info-Tainment" division interbreeding is the only way he can pick up an extra dime, everyone with a single ounce of technological know-how or on camera presence ought to just stand up on camera, and emulate Howard Beale, of "Network" fame.

Of course, it won't happen. Because the people who make what passes for mass media television and cable news have to much money and ego invested in the way things are, to invest the courage, or the principal to try to live up to Walter Cronkite, or Ed Murrow for that matter.

There are those who try to shout down the wall of opinion that has been morphed like a latter day Frankenstein into what passes for fact in this day and age of the Net. But in this day and age, even facts are labeled and "re-branded" as opinion where and when it seems to fit the outstanding requirements of around the clock sensationalism that is fed to all of us as vital information that effects our lives.

Anyone, anywhere, on camera this week who has said or thought that they should, could, or ought to bear more faith and true allegiance to what Walter Cronkite so often professed, ought to stand up, and stand out, on camera, and say so, or simply quit, right there and then, on air.

They have alternatives, or perhaps that ought to be "alterNETives."

Many major media outlets, in print and on air, have been casting off veteran reporters left, right, and center. More and more of them, and those who trust them, have found outlets on the Internet.

So, there is an another outlet for what Walter Cronkite believed. This medium we are in, this Internet, has already helped to make, and re-make history, from day to day, and hour to hour. So much so that our technology often outstrips our own limited abilities to sort and process the flood of which we make ourselves a part.

It is incumbent upon us, the generations of Cronkite and Murrow, to stand up for what they stood for, or stand down, and live with the ease and grace of noting but our memories, while Cronkite and Murrow die the only death that can kill them.

So, who is it that will step up, not to fill or refill shoes, but to carry forward a principal that is the true legacy that belongs to all of us, and to freedom itself, along with our fond memories?