a) It annoys me that Golf Week even made a journalist a story. That seems self important. Journalists tell the story, they aren't the story.
b) But if Tilghman's comments were insensitive, hurtful or brought up painful memories for a large portion of America, how do Golf Week's images not?
And I'd wager to say that more people saw the Golf Week cover than heard Tilghman's TGC passing comments.
It seems this is silly adult "tattling" to me. I picture a kid running to his mom, "Mommy, Jimmy said a bad word."
Perhaps Tilghman's comments were inappropriate and more importantly painful. Assuming we as a society believe that, and I am willing to defer to the minority members of this board in believing they were, then other journalists repeating them over and over, even in quotes, is equally hurtful and therefore inappropriate. Because the more the words are repeated, the more people hear them, and the more people are hurt by them.
So I suppose she should have silently been suspended and no other outlets should have reported the non-story. That would seem to (a) give her the punishment she supposedly deserves (Im not saying whether I agree or not) but (b) also protects those potentially hurt by those words from hearing them again.