In light of all of the talk about Ferguson, it should be noted that reporters' job is to get the news out to the people. They should be allowed into certain areas of a crime or an investigation or a movement because they need to let people know what is going on in the world around them. Police shouldn't try to get them away from everything, they should try and work peacefully with them in order to forge a better communication system between the two groups. They should both have some sort of trust in each other that allows them to work in coexistence with each other.
However, this does give us a little problem. While it is the reporters' job to go out of their way to give us the news, they should be careful not to become the news themselves. It can end up happening to anyone, a person can try to go out of their way to retrieve a story when all of a sudden they can get attacked and become the story itself. Sometimes the story can be tragic, as with what happened last month with those two reporters in Virginia. Sometimes the story can be unexpectedly humorous to some But it all leads to the same thing, they became the news itself.
Never do they ask for it to happen to them, but sometimes it just does, and it's a danger of reporting. Now the examples that were put up may try to show the humorous side of this, but at the same time reporters could be put into some dangerous situations. A person may be outside of a burning building and after a few moments that same building could blow up and kill the reporter that was right by it.
In war torn countries, no one is truly safe from the chaos that goes on around them, and in the process, several people could become casualties no matter if they have the right to tell the news or not.
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It can be truly amazing that they would even want to have this job at all.
Then again, that's why some people enjoy being journalists and reporters because they allow those who really want to get inside the heart of something the opportunity to do just that. Sometimes it has to be done to get into the deep parts of a story that may have never been known about if someone didn't decide to get into some dangerous aspect of it.
In the end, the job can truly become like a balancing act of sorts. You need to figure out how to tell the story in a way that doesn't make you part of the center stage.
I think you have some good points here, Robert. I know one of the reasons journalism appeals to me is that I could travel the world and get inside the news as it's happening. You are right, though, that there is a balance we must strike between being in the middle of what's happening and becoming the news. It is easy to push a little too hard when in search of a good story, and this week's readings really made me question how far I'd go and what is appropriate for a reporter. - Isabella Andersen (kb244809@ohio.edu)
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