Media malpractice

The public never learned about Terri Schiavo's true condition | Joel Belz

When Terri Schiavo died on March 31 from the starvation and dehydration ordered by a variety of public officials, it was hard to feel an emotion other than angry frustration. How could justice have been defeated so bluntly at every single turn in the road?

So last week I sat down with David Gibbs, the attorney who represented Terri Schiavo's parents in their fruitless quest to have her life preserved, to ask him what had gone so wrong. "What single thing," I inquired, "do you wish might have been done differently?"

"I wish," Mr. Gibbs said simply, "that we'd been able to show the American public how very alive Terri was."

Acknowledging the severity of the brain damage Mrs. Schiavo had suffered and the limits that imposed, Mr. Gibbs still insisted that he had come to know his clients' daughter as a person. "There was a dynamic to her. She jabbered. She complained when she was in pain. She fussed at the staff. She laughed when her mother came in, and she cried when her mother left. She teased. Her father, Bob Schindler, would come in with his mustache and beard, and she would—in her own way—play with him about how they tickled her."