Off the Sidelines

American Journalism Review ^ | October/November 2005 edition | Rachel Smolkin

[baystaterebel]

A convoy of trucks delivers food to a crowd of starving, frantic people in a Somali village. A famine-relief coordinator turns to you – the reporter – and a photographer. "I'm afraid there'll be a riot if we don't get these trucks unloaded quickly. Could you two please put down your notebook and camera, and help us? It might save a life." What do you do?

In November 2004, G.D. Gearino, a columnist for the News & Observer in Raleigh, presented this scenario during a journalism ethics symposium at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. A group of professionals, myself included, met with journalism professor Edward Wasserman and his students to debate real and hypothetical ethics quandaries.

The students – and as I recall, they were unanimous – looked surprised at such an easy question. Of course they would help. Why wouldn't they, if they could save lives? One enterprising future reporter even proposed telling her cameraman to shoot footage of her handing out food to the needy.

I was appalled. I informed the students that a journalist's job is to bear witness to history, not participate in it. By pitching in to help, the journalists would compromise their objectivity and insert themselves as actors in a situation they should be chronicling as detached observers.

[baystaterebel]

I fell that some reporters use the "detached observer" theme as a crutch. Some use common sense and manage to both report the facts and assist those in need. Those that get conflicted are so by choice.

The funny part is that they have no problem advocating in political matters when the "detatched observer" theme really should be in play.

[wbill]

then where's the line between permissible help and unacceptable activism?

I didn't read the entire article, but this quote struck me as funny. I guess cheerleading for the Democratic party, or against President Bush, doesn't count.

What I read of the article was pretty bad. Sounded like if the 'help' required little or no effort (borrow a cell phone?) then it's OK. But, if it actually required some work (help distribute food, give a ride somewhere) then it's 'unethical'. Punking out on work, then hiding behind 'journalistic integrity' makes for poor ethics, where I come from.

Articles like these make me rank reporters somewhere between defense attorneys and used car salesmen.

[baystaterebel]

Do yourself a favor and visit http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=45 often. read the letters to Romenesko and the Feedback. You get a great look into the world of journalism.

[rock_lobsta]

"Unacceptable activism" usually occurs when reporters begin writing...

[TalonDJ]

I decided to read more because the excerpt seemed so outrageous. That article is the most disturbing thing I have read in a long time. That included the abortion one yesterday that was rather graphic. The arrogance and elitism of the journalism profession, apparently in its entirety, is so horrifying to be I can't find the words. That someone would neglect to help the individual suffering in front of them out of some twisted sense of objectivity and not wanting to 'change the outcome of the story' is truly astounding. It is like the Prime directive in StarTrek but applied to EVERYTHING.
What could make someone give up basic human compassion like that? Apparently some sense of duty to tell the rest of the world an 'unbiased' story. That anyone could thing letting saving flood victims is biasing a story is truly stomach turning.

Words fail me. I will never EVER fully trust anything someone claiming to be a journalist, as a profession or a mission, has to say, about ANYTHING. This article has convinced me they have mutated into something truly inhuman.

Whent he bias of the media is so starkly obvious to even casual observation it is mindblowing that anyone could claim moral high ground of lack of bias. And the fact that they want to claim it because of THIS is completely sociopathic.

[stylin19a]

G.D. Gearino probably has never heard\read about this same type of hypothetical. Forgive the length, but the Marine at the end cuts to the chase.


Washing Their Hands of Responsibility:
"North Kosan"

In the late 1980s, public television stations aired a talking head series called Ethics in America. For each show, more than a dozen prominent thinkers sat around a horseshoe-shaped table and tried to answer troubling ethical questions posed by a moderator....

This episode was sponsored by Montclair State College in the fall of 1987. Its title was "Under Orders, Under Fire," and most of the panelists were former soldiers talking about the ethical dilemmas of their work. The moderator was Charles Ogletree, a professor at Harvard Law School, who moved from expert to expert asking increasingly difficult questions in the law school's famous Socratic style....

Then Ogletree turned to the two most famous members of the evening's panel,... These were two star TV journalists: Peter Jennings of World News Tonight and ABC, and Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes and CBS.

Ogletree brought them into the same hypothetical war. ...while Jennings and his crew are traveling with a North Kosanese unit, to visit the site of an alleged atrocity by American and South Kosanese troops, they unexpectedly cross the trail of a small group of American and South Kosanese soldiers. With Jennings in their midst, the northern soldiers set up a perfect ambush, which will let them gun down the Americans and Southerners, every one.

What does Jennings do? Ogletree asks. Would he tell his cameramen to "Roll tape!" as the North Kosanese opened fire? What would go through his mind as he watched the North Kosanese prepare to ambush the Americans?

Jennings sat silent for about fifteen seconds after Ogletree asked this question. "Well, I guess I wouldn't," he finally said. "I am going to tell you now what I am feeling, rather than the hypothesis I drew for myself. If I were with a North Kosanese unit that came upon Americans, I think that I personally would do what I could to warn the Americans."

Even if it means losing the story? Ogletree asked. Even though it would almost certainly mean losing my life, Jennings replied. "But I do not think that I could bring myself to participate in that act. That's purely personal, and other reporters might have a different reaction."

Immediately Mike Wallace spoke up. "I think some other reporters would have a different reaction," he said, obviously referring to himself. "They would regard it simply as a story they were there to cover.

" "I am astonished, really," at Jennings's answer, Wallace said a moment later. He turned toward Jennings and began to lecture him:

"You're a reporter. Granted you're an American"-at least for purposes of the fictional example; Jennings has actually retained Canadian citizenship. "I'm a little bit at a loss to understand why, because you're an American, you would not have covered that story."

Ogletree pushed Wallace. Didn't Jennings have some higher duty, either patriotic or human, to do something rather than just roll film as soldiers from his own country were being shot?

"No," Wallace said flatly and immediately. "You don't have a higher duty. No. No. You're a reporter!"

Jennings backtracked fast. Wallace was right, he said.

"I chickened out." Jennings said that he had gotten so wrapped up in the hypothetical questions that he had lost sight of his journalistic duty to remain detached....

"I wish I had made another decision," Jennings said, as if asking permission to live the last five minutes over again. "I would like to have made his decision" - that is, Wallace's decision to keep on filming.

A few minutes later Ogletree turned to George M. Connell, a Marine colonel in full uniform. jaw muscles flexing in anger, with stress on each word, Connell looked at the TV stars and said, "I feel utter ... contempt. "

Two days after this hypothetical episode, Connell said, Jennings or Wallace might be back with the American forces - and could be wounded by stray fire, as combat journalists often had been before. The instant that happened, he said, they wouldn't be "just journalists" any more. Then they would expect American soldiers to run out under enemy fire and drag them back, rather than leaving them to bleed to death on the battlefield.

"We'll do it!", Connell said. "And that is what makes me so contemptuous of them. Marines will die going to get ... a couple of journalists." The last few words dripped with disgust.

Not even Ogletree knew what to say. There was dead silence for several seconds. Then a square-jawed man with neat gray hair and aviator glasses spoke up. It was Newt Gingrich, looking a generation younger and trimmer than when he became Speaker of the House in I995. One thing was clear from this exercise, he said: "The military has done a vastly better job of systematically thinking through the ethics of behavior in a violent environment than the journalists have."

[Jo Nuvark]

I once heard Rush Limbaugh say that journalism students will usually tell you they have chosen their career NOT to report events, but to make a difference in the world. If that difference means changing the world or leaving their mark, then liberal journalists have accomplished both. The world they are responsible for is more evil and dangerous than ever, and their mark has left painful and disfiguring scars. If they are the force for making the world a better place, then after all this time they should be reporting nothing but good news.

Either by action or in-action, this article illustrates their detachment from the pain they inflict.

[Jo Nuvark]

[... Newt Gingrich said, "The military has done a vastly better job of systematically thinking through the ethics of behavior in a violent environment than the journalists have."...]

I could not stand to watch this particular show. The arrogance of the moderator and their self righteous panel. Too much for me. This one would have been worth it.