When I was browsing for news items to base this blog post on, I came across these two short blurbs from the 9News website. This first one concerns a body that was found in here in Boulder county and this second one concerns two children finding a frozen body in Loveland.
Seeing these, I immediately flashed back to our class discussion of the tragic Texas A&M Bonfire collapse of 1999 which Professor Stevens had incorporated into his lecture. He prompted the class for a specific ethical principle of journalism (to which only one other student responded) that a journalist should never identify the deceased until their family has been notified by either the police or the local hospital.
This had me comparing my two news items to the Texas A&M story. My two stories didn't mention any names and yet the Texas A&M story took a different approach. The LA Times piece from the day(s) of the incident only reported "at least 28" were injured without naming names in that regard. However, this article on the tenth anniversary of the tragedy does mention specifically that the accident took twelve lives including that of then Texas A&M student Michael Ebanks.
Now, obviously a decade is more than enough time to identify victims of any fatal accident and subsequently notify their families.I'm sure the media had reports containing the names of the victims in the days and weeks after in careful tribute as they were identified. They took very a very ethically sound to reporting on that tragedy.
However, the two 9News items are examples of what I find to be more questionable ethics in reporting. They are not even reporting death, they are reporting found bodies. It is good that they aren't giving out names or conditions at this stage, but isn't it a little bit premature to report to an actual news station that a body has been found missing if it can't be confirmed that the person is dead? At this stage, it would be better served in the local police blotter than being reported by a TV news affiliate.
These two stories from 9News violate one of the "minimizing harm" guidelines of the Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics. They aren't showing enough passion towards those whose news coverage they may affect. Now, it is reasonable that the families of missing or presumed dead persons may be monitoring the news for such a report of an occurrence like this, but this early in the case it's too premature for such a story to reach an outlet as big as 9News. Before even reporting it to the newspaper, the families should've had a chance to be called in to identify the body. Other than that, the reporters seemed to do all they could to minimize such harm and adhered to the rest of those guidelines that applied to them. The second article mentioned children finding a frozen body and I felt like it was handled sensitively enough.
It appears that journalistic ethics may be in decline when it comes to covering death. They could use some close reexamining before they slide too far.
Casey-
ReplyDeleteI agree with you 100% that news coverage of death needs to be handled with the utmost sensitivity toward the victim, their family and their friends. There have been lots of instances where news outlets did not reflect the journalistic integrity that is consistent with ethical coverage but I do not personally have an issue with the article you emphasized.
The last line that admits the next of kin has not been notified yet is the only part that presents an issue in my opinion and there could be many exterior factors that lead to this.
If 9News had covered the missing man to begin with I don't think it is unreasonable that they would want to follow up on their report once new information has been released. Therefore, while I agree with your post over all, I do not see as much harm in the first article as you do.
I totally agree with you on the point of death coverage in the media. I followed the Jessica Ridgeway case very closely this last year and if you remember, they took at least three days after finding her body to identify here. I believe what you are getting at is that the actual reporting of any death, whether identified or not, should be handled more sensitively than it currently is. We treat death stories very sensationally in these days simply because it makes for more viewers. Everyone wants to know who died and if they know them or what the story is because people are naturally curious.
ReplyDeleteSaying that, I don't think it is wrong for stations to report on deaths because, like you also stated, what if a family member or friend was watching to see if there was any coverage of it? Granted these people would hopefully have found out through another more personal source but if they hadn't...?
I do agree that journalistic ethics are slipping or coming close to slipping with the sensationalism given to these types of stories and I believe this is something worth attempting to change.
Good post. Of course, very good topic. And you handled it well. The external application was solid. Personal voice is a little lacking, but it is present.
ReplyDeleteGood use of links. It's important to provide context and you did well to include each of the links above.
In terms of content, there is an argument to be made that when a large scale amber alert is in effect, letting the public know a body has been found can help draw down the search efforts. In this case, it was somewhat obvious about the identity of the body, even though it wasn't reported for three days. I'm suggesting there might be a role for this kind of disclosure in a much-read medium.