I was interviewed the other day about media coverage of crime in general, and the NIU shootings in specific.
The question was asked, "What about interviewing victims and their families?"
Early in my broadcasting career, a news director ordered me to go interview the surviving victims of a shooting at a house party that killed seven people. We knew where to find the survivors and, at that moment, no one else did.
They didn't really want to talk to me. My photographer and I convinced them they should.
I made three people cry that morning. Doubtless they'd been crying all night but when I took them through the whole horrible ordeal again, step-by-step, each of them broke down.
My boss literally jumped up and down in his chair ecstatic. Crying on camera, of course, translates to ratings in the minds of some news executives. It's "drama in real life."
I felt like a pig. And I vowed I would never hammer a victim or witness into talking to me again. I never did.
One thing you have to understand. When a reporter shows up at the scene of a major incident, there will always be those who want to talk about what happened. They make themselves available whether to have their fifteen minutes of fame or just to vent feelings of rage or sadness or fear, or just to let the public know what happened. Some actually seek out TV and radio reporters specifically. I have no problem with those sorts of interviews. A case in point occurred after a commuter train rammed into a school bus, killing a handful of teenagers. One of the survivors came back to the scene after being taken to the hospital just to go on television. I don't know why. I didn't think to ask him. I wish I had.
What makes me want to puke are the sensationalists who, in one case, followed a kid on a bike who announced to a media throng that he knew where a murder victim's parents lived so "Come on! Come with me!" Like lemmings, four TV teams ran along behind him and pounded on the parents' door. It was less than an hour after police found his body; in fact detectives had just notified the parents their son had been murdered.
Or the enterprising TV reporter who dropped into a neighborhood hangout for kids to announce that five of their peers had just died in a car crash on the highway. "Did anyone know these guys? How do you feel about what happened?" The reporter got exactly what she was looking for. The brother of one of the victims, unaware of what had happened to his sibling, got the news first with a video camera recording his reaction.
Some argue that by doing the "how does your son/brother/sister/mother/father's murder make you feel?" interviews we're providing an opportunity for the victim/witness to work through their feelings about the tragedy. No, we're not shrinks and that's not our job. What we're doing is intruding on someone's grief in hopes of getting a money shot.
We often cover people on the worst day of their lives, in the midst of the most awful experience they will ever have. Insisting they talk to us is mostly a shameless effort to get tears on tape. In my opinion, most reporters do it with all the subtlety of a hammer to the forehead and it's inappropriate.
Having said that, the media will never back off. And some journalism schools have reacted by attempting to teach students the right way to handle victim/witness interviews. Michigan State University pioneered the Victims and the Media teaching track and it's a great idea. More schools should adopt it. News organizations should offer in-house workshops on the topic.
Sensationalism is painful, and not just for those of us who have to watch it.
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