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Just telling the story?

Our understanding of the Haitian earthquake is enabled by today’s communication technology. As soon as the earthquake hit, everyone in the world could access information and pictures. As soon as the journalists got there, we had the reports, the maps, the statistics, the individual human stories of suffering and loss.

Yet, on arriving in Haiti, the journalists were faced with appalling choices when they got to areas of devastation before aid agencies and found injury, homelessness, the demolition of infrastructure, scarcity of medicine and electricity. What job were they there to do?

Guilt for journalists

Matthew Price was one of the BBC’s first reporters in Haiti. He spoke on Radio 4’s The Media Show about what it was like being a journalist in a place that seriously needed help, any help, from anyone. He said: ‘I can tell you that the guilt started setting in very early on. I had all these people around me needing help and there was nothing I could do in the context of my job. The Haitians would be giving me an interview and towards the end of it they would say, “Right, now what are you going to do for me?” My initial answer was, “Look, I’m not a doctor or a builder, but a journalist and I hope that by putting the interview out on air around the world, there will be people who will see it who will give money, and politicians who will be led to give more aid from their national government. And that in its turn will make a difference”. One woman I reported on and whose story went out around the world said, “Both my legs are broken, please help me”. I told her that her story would be seen by millions and she just gave me a small smile’.

Detachment impossible

Journalists are taught to be stay detached from a situation that they are covering in order to allow the reportage to be as fair and unbiased as possible. In Haiti, journalists found this to be impossible. ‘No one on my team was emotionally detached’, says Price. ‘It was a deeply distressing week’. Although he was able to drive individuals to get life-saving help, such as a heavily pregnant woman fainting with exhaustion and on the verge of giving birth, he felt that he did not depart from his primary role: to tell the story.

US television went a step further and sent out doctor-journalists so that they could give medical aid to those that they found in need of instant help. The NBC network sent Dr. Nancy Snyderman, a doctor-journalist who has reported for over ten years on disasters. ‘This was the worst level of need that I have ever experienced. I lost a lot of sleep at night wondering how the two lines of my profession blur. I could not stand by. Any other situation, yes, but when someone asked me, “Are you a doctor? Can you help me?” I had to help. I worked as hard as I could in the time frame to help people and then left. Should I have done that? I thought that the best thing I could do was to say on air to 11 million people, “If you are an orthopaedic surgeon, nurse, paediatrician, whatever, get on aeroplanes and get here”. If it brings in donations and more help then it is worth it.’

Grandstanding?

However, questions were asked when Snyderman and others became the story. Their help at a moment of crisis seemed to be at the centre of the news bulletin. There were charges of ‘grandstanding’ and an implicit marketing angle for networks when they replayed clips of the doctor’s heroics, performing instant surgery on small babies and children. They seemed to be saying, ‘Look at me! Look how I’m helping!’

Is it possible to reach an ethical middle ground? Like the one, suggested by Gary Schwitzer, that says: ‘Physician-reporters should render care if they are so moved but they should not report on themselves doing so’?

Compassion and the gospel

This dilemma is an interesting one because it raises questions about self-aggrandisement, guilt and a clash of duties between doing your job and doing what you feel needs doing. It also has profound undercurrents for Christians as they consider their own need to ‘tell the story’ in a world that has desperate needs and that constantly calls for their help. Jesus’s commission to ‘go and make disciples of all nations’ commands and motivates us to take on the journalistic role of reporting the Story that everyone needs to hear. As we do so, we come across many situations where we could be distracted, abandon the storytelling and spend our time moving the rubble from people’s lives.

Thankfully, we are given the example of Jesus’s own life to see the level of compassion which accompanied his teaching. ‘What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him?’ asks James (2.14). Would we trust a journalist who told us the story of Haiti without sympathy or passion? Who was not moved and conflicted as he guided us through the tragedy? Who made himself look more important and heroic than the story he was telling? It helps, doesn’t it, to reflect on the dilemma and duty of journalists in Haiti as we look for our own opportunities to ‘tell the story’ of God’s grace with purpose and compassion.

Examining the role of journalists in disaster situations

Just telling the story?

Guilt for journalists

Detachment impossible

Grandstanding?

Compassion and the gospel

Eleanor Margesson

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