by Alexandra Corsi
We live in a world that is rarely unplugged, and
smartphones, tablets, and laptops make it incredibly easy to read the news,
even if it’s just in the form of a 140-character tweet. That is why getting
news fast is so crucial to the upkeep of the news industry – there are so many
ways to spread news around that a news website, newscast, or newspaper is far
less likely than social media to be the first place people hear about a story.
This has contributed to the stereotype that journalists are worse than telemarketers when it comes to harassing their subjects.
Intrusion
According to the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics, journalists are expected to “minimize harm” by “[treating]
sources, subjects, colleagues, and members of the public as human beings
deserving of respect.” One of the greatest connections we have as human beings
is our ability to feel emotions – grief, love, anger, and more. Journalists
often forget about the emotions that people have – that even they have at times
– and come across as cold, unforgiving, and even intrusive. In the end, this
causes more harm than it does good.
Personal experience
Coming from Connecticut, I empathize with the families who
feel they have been harassed by the media during the aftermath of the Sandy
Hook tragedy. I live only about 20 minutes from Newtown, so I have several
connections to people who were directly affected by the school shootings. One
of these connections was through my club swim team. Ever since I started
swimming in fifth grade, we competed against the Newtown Torpedoes at least
once per season. The entire league was grief stricken when we heard about the
Sandy Hook tragedy, especially when we found out that one of the victims was a
young boy on the swim team.
The team, obviously upset, just wanted closure and to stop
the constant flow of attention they had been receiving since the shooting. In
return, they asked the league not to have any kind of ceremony for their
swimmer at the league-wide qualifying meet.
Though this is clearly on a smaller scale than the media
harassing people during a funeral service, it is a reflection of the attention
people from Newtown didn’t want. Yes,
they were very upset. Yes, they wanted to honor the victims. Yes, they were
grateful for the donations and gifts that were sent. But they just wanted to
stop being reminded of the tragedy and to grieve quietly and privately.
There is a way
There is a way, however, to get people to tell their stories
without waving cameras and microphones around in their faces or sneaking around
to get a story.
Brandon Stanton, the creator of Humans of New York (HONY), runs a blog in which he takes pictures of people on the streets
of New York and interviews them. Stanton uses such a casual, sensitive
interview style that he gets complete strangers to tell him some of their
deepest secrets and most poignant stories.
Stanton makes it clear that they don’t have to answer his
questions or be featured on his blog. They may ask him to take down the post
they are in at any time, and he will honor these requests. In return for his
respect of his subjects, Stanton receives incredibly thought provoking and
meaningful quotes.
Isn’t that the purpose of journalism, to show us the meaning
when we can’t find it for ourselves? There are journalists who show the same
compassion for their subjects that Stanton does, but there are many who could
take a lesson from him. And in the end, that compassion is more meaningful to
everyone – the subjects, the audience, even the journalists – than any
exclusive story or breaking news could ever be.
Examples of Stanton's HONY work
No comments:
Post a Comment