Is it OK to send short updates via Twitter from private, solemn events?

That's the question being asked over the case of reporter Berny Morson, who recently went to the funeral of Marten Kudlis, who was killed when a pickup truck slammed into a Denver area ice cream shop where he was waiting for a snack. Here, Morson didn't take notes for reporting later: He sent real-time updates of the event to the world via Twitter, tapping them out on his cell phone.

The public response has been overwhelmingly negative, calling the incident "repulsive" and going to "staggering low depths." Others have come to Morson's defense, saying he did nothing wrong. 

You can see the entire Twitter stream here. As you can see, there's nothing inherently offensive or distasteful about the updates. They are simple and unembellished accounts of what happened that morning, almost minute by minute.

But in fact, that might be the problem: The cold nature of the "tweets" are what personally bother me the most. The reporter adds nothing to the event at all, just a hollow series of chilly facts that play out like the news crawl on CNN. One gets the sense that Morson is a robot, with no emotion in his body. That final update of "family members shovel earth into grave" is perhaps the most unsettling thing I've read in a long time: Over Twitter, Morson's updates have all the sympathy of the stock listing page or the baseball box scores. They simply add nothing to the coverage of the event, turning the tragedy of a slain toddler into a textbook entry.

Another issue is one of simple respect: Just as I would hope not to have to explain to readers that checking your voice mail is really not cool in a funeral setting, neither is it appropriate to be texting away on your cell phone the entire time. I would imagine that even Morson would find it in poor taste to Twitter, say, the plot of a film for an hour in a crowded movie theater. Shouldn't an even stricter standard of decency apply to a funeral?

But I'm letting too much of my own opinion creep into this post. I actually wanted to get some reader opinions on the subject. Is Twittering a funeral going "too far?" Or is this a case where etiquette is simply behind the tech curve? Vote here!