When news broke yesterday of actor Heath Ledger's untimely death, everyone, including myself, started searching for answers. When? Where? How? And, for God's sake, Why? When someone so young, so full of talent and so adored by his peers leaves in this type of fashion, the immediate reaction is to find out how such a tragedy could occur.

But turning to CNN, MSNBC or Headline News for answers, as many of us did yesterday afternoon, proved to be an exercise in frustration. While I understand that these 24-hour news stations need to fill every second of the day with something, the oft-ridiculous banter that filled hours of coverage on Ledger's death yesterday left me with a bad taste in my mouth, as well as a certain level of embarrassment and regret. I'm paraphrasing here, but here is a sample of the "reporting" that I heard on Headline News yesterday:

Reporter #1: Well, I've seen Heath looking discheveled from time to time...he always looked somewhat unkempt.

Reporter #2: Yes, that's true - he was somewhat of a dark personality. Unkempt people tend to sometimes be unhappy...

Reporter #1: So true. I guess we never know what's going on behind the scenes. Maybe he was as unhappy as he looked.

With this 1-minute long exchange, the reporters are insinuating that A) Ledger was an unhappy person; B) He may have committed suicide; C) People with messy hair are generally unhappy and suicidal. There is no doubt that many viewers were nodding in agreement with this asinine assessment from two people who are barely anything more than pretty, talking heads.

And even those stations who brought in psychiatrists to comment were doing a huge disservice to their viewers. I heard Dr. Drew Pinsky (media whore that he is) on one of the stations, commenting about sleeping pills and mixing them with various prescription drugs...I didn't get the full point because there was none. As with everyone else who was commenting on his death, he had no real knowledge of what happened. At that point, even the coroner hadn't showed up yet.

I felt embarrassed because I am guilty of doing the same thing. Well, I've done the same thing in the past. Though I have never reported on any celebrity deaths, I've certainly created images and emotions of celebrities based on nothing. As a reporter for certain entertainment magazines, I've manufactured all kinds of false notions. "[Big Hollywood Actress] was walking down Robertson, smiling and laughing and obviously having the best time with her gal pals." Yes, I've written crap like that. And yes, the person was laughing and smiling, but how the hell do I know what type of time she's having from a two-second glance? Maybe she was fake-laughing with her agent, who she was on the verge of firing. Or maybe she was having gas and was laughing to cover it up. In any case, I created that moment and readers everywhere smiled to themselves because they felt they knew [Big Hollywood Actress] a little better than they did before, which is a complete and total lie.