"Violence in the News" Special

[ƃuɐɹǝɯooS]

New here, so I hope I'm not violating protocol by putting this in the "Episodes" section. My questions regard the prime-time special that aired in, I believe, 1981, that dealt with the topic of violence in the news. I remember seeing this special when it aired, and the absolutely incredible, anomalous instance of a death in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. If I remember correctly, it had to do with a magic tree that could talk, and that got a lot of attention from the neighbors as a result. At some point, a larger, more clumsy tree became jealous and struck the little tree, causing its death. The lingering image I have is of Handyman Negri carrying the dead tree with a grave expression on his face.

My questions:

1) Am I the only one in the world who saw this and remembers it? Because no one I know knows anything about it, and the Family Communications people denied any knowledge of it when I was in a position to ask them. (Was a television journalist dealing with children's programming for some years.)

2) Does ANYONE have a recording of this? I think there's an excerpt on the official Fred Rogers site, but it's only a short clip with virtually no sound.

Thanks for any insight on this.

ƃuɐɹǝɯooS

[ladyelainefairchilde]

I know which special you are talking about which aired in primetime way back in 1981. Only information i have on that is the following listed here.

Mr. Rogers talks with children about the violence they see in the news. He suggests discusing scary things with adults.
In the NOM, on Lady Elaine's news program, Harriet Cow tells about a walking talking tree. After the tree is stolen, Lady Elaine and Producer Edward look for it. Producer Edward finds the tree dead. Lady Elaine reports on the news about the tree. Producer Edward learns that a big tree killed the smaller tree. The killer tree is jailed. Mr. Rogers emphasizes that this has been makebelieve. He talks about the importance of verbalizing feelings and not doing harmful things.

[ASchuelke]

Here's a video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EFe9Vpd3ps&t=13s

[ƃuɐɹǝɯooS]

ASChuelke:

Thanks. For decades, I've been telling my brother about this episode and he just thought it so incredible an occurrence in the Neighborhood that he didn't believe it. The Internet didn't cooperate for a long time, presenting no information on it. I'm just hoping that at some point it will resurface. It isn't as if the news has become less violent over the years.

Again, if anyone out there has a full recording of this episode, please let me know — even if it's 2025 when you stumble on this. : )