Dilemmas when reporting tragedies

Death is inevitable; it can happen, just like that, to anyone, at any time. But as a journalist, how does one extract oneself from the implications of such a tragedy, laid bare right in front of one’s eyes – especially when one has become deeply-invested in a story and its sources – and still be able to continue with the work, and objectively at that? Do you back off periodically, give people room to breathe? Or do you push on to get the information, quotes you need, and just wrap up the story as soon as you can?

When the drowning occurred, I was thrown, as can be expected. The banks of the river were soon dotted with others from the village, and we were engulfed in the crowd. Half an hour later, I wondered if I should leave, although I still had things to ask the young fisherman. But then I looked at him. Rajan Majhi was staring at his father’s body, his face pale, no words leaving his lips. I remembered an interview with his sister, married now, who told me that their mother had left the family three years ago, and that Rajan didn’t go to school because his father – the man now lying prone on the ground – was a big drinker and didn’t care particularly for academics, refusing to buy his son any books or school uniforms.

I came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t be right to probe at a time like this. Rajan might have been a source, and he might have been vital to my story, but he was also just a 13-year-old kid who had just lost his father. And I couldn’t bring myself to disregard all that and forge ahead with my questions; it would have been much too callous.

Of course, each incident is unique, as are the responses these elicit from individual reporters. This was just what my instincts told me was appropriate in that particular case, but who knows what will happen when something like that occurs again? What if one’s source passes away, for instance? I know of quite a few journalists who have been through this in the context of covering wars, protests and other violent events. And I’m sure that like me, they too dwelled on the line between being indifferent to tragedy and being affected by it, questioning over and over again which side it was they should belong to.

Major journalistic institutions set out codes of ethics that generally take this point into consideration. “Be sensitive when seeking or using interviews or photographs of those affected by tragedy or grief,” says the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics, for example. “Use special sensitivity when dealing with children and inexperienced sources or subjects.” The Dart Centre meanwhile suggests that one should always “treat victims with dignity and respect – the way you want to be treated in a similar situation”.

It is often assumed that journalists, by definition, are meant to possess the capacity to detach themselves from the sentimental aftermath of tragedies, able to pull out at will, and push on with the story, do it justice. We see the result of this sort of detachment in the graphic images shown on television and newspapers following traumatic events. But it’s important to remember that we are not machines, and we are not dealing with machines either. The human element, one’s emotions, these might convolute matters somewhat, but they still count for something. 

I was fortunate to be in the presence of peers at the news camp, where we struck up discussions on the subject – the revelations therein were exceedingly helpful to me, and more such conversations need to take place in newsrooms everywhere. But ultimately, nothing is set in stone; a reporter’s approach to tragedy will always depend on the context and the temperament of both the source and the reporter himself – it is more a matter of instinct than anything else.

 

Rajneesh Bhandari is the multimedia editor of the European Journalism Centre’s ThinkBrigade.com