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Ethics and trauma: lessons from media coverage of Black Saturday

2010; Wiley; Volume: 18; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1440-1584.2009.01117.x

1440-1584

Denis Müller,

Disaster Management and Resilience

Covering Victoria's 'Black Saturday' bushfires in February 2009 traumatised many of the media people involved, and confronted them with many difficult ethical dilemmas. These concerned access to the scene and to property, how to treat survivors and victims, how to choose what to publish and how to balance the competing pressures induced by editors, rivals, the authorities and the survivors and victims. The Centre for Advanced Journalism at the University of Melbourne, as its first research project, examined the experiences of media people who covered the fires, both at the fire ground and in studios and newsrooms. The research consisted of 28 in-depth semistructured interviews with volunteers who, in the end, came from many branches of news media and from a wide range of professional backgrounds: reporters, photographers, camera operators, video journalists, news desk personnel, editors and news directors. The term 'media people' is used to comprehend this range. The intent of the research was educative. Its purpose was to acquire material from which the profession, the authorities and the public might learn lessons about the effects of covering a major disaster close to home, and about how it might be done better in the future. It is not normative: it does not make judgments about the rightness or otherwise of individual instances of behaviour or the quality of the coverage. It allows the practitioners to tell their stories and make their own judgments. Through this, patterns emerge that suggest systemic ethical weaknesses as well as extraordinary humanity on the part of individuals. These are presented as conclusions. The emotional impact of covering the fires was obvious during the interviews. Few respondents got through the interviews without showing emotion – 3–6 months after the event. Some were kind enough to say afterwards that the interview had been helpful. The fieldwork was done by the author and by Mr Michael Gawenda, Director of the Centre for Advanced Journalism and a former Editor of The Age (1997–2004). The findings were presented at a conference at the University of Melbourne on 19 November 2009. They are summarised here under five headings: access, treatment of people, maelstrom of pressure, deciding what to publish and emotional impact. Media access to a disaster scene as large as Black Saturday's is a complex and unsettled matter. It is complex because it has many elements. It is unsettled because there seems to be no agreed basis of principles on which the media and the authorities can proceed. In addition, there are insufficient consensual ethical standards among journalists on which to build a basis of principles. For many media people, the existence of a roadblock was a challenge thrown down by the authorities to test the mettle and ingenuity of the media. For these media people, finding a way to circumvent a roadblock was 'fair game'. However, there was no consensus among media people about the correct ethical response to roadblocks. The range of responses was wide: Find another way in Get past by chance Get past by deception Resist deception Accept the roadblock. In general, media people tended to place a higher value on successfully meeting the competitive pressures under which they work, and on carrying out what they saw as their duty to inform the public, than on the countervailing ethical duty to respect the law. Their resolve was strengthened as their perceptions grew that the roadblocks were being managed in an inconsistent and arbitrary way, and that the authorities had ulterior motives for keeping the media out. Many media people came to disbelieve the authorities' assessments about safety, because they saw emergency services personnel and other people going in and out. Media people – especially those who had done the Country Fire Authority (CFA) training – said that if it was safe enough for those people, it was safe enough for them. Some also came to disbelieve that the authorities were serious about preserving the integrity of a crime scene, again because they saw people – including celebrities and politicians – coming and going frequently. When the politicians and celebrities turned up, suddenly the authorities allowed the media to go in too. At this point, the 'crime scene' line lost all credibility. So the media came to see the roadblocks as a way of controlling the flow of information, and as part of a misguided attempt to protect the survivors from the media. They regarded these motives as wrong in principle. The familiar combination of competitive pressures and lack of agreed ethical standards was also illustrated by the fact that while some media people absolutely refused to indulge in deception in order to obtain access, others actively engaged in it or attempted it. Here again, there was a wide range of attitudes. Some took the view that deception was always wrong, and refused to attempt it even when they were offered help to do so by residents. Others tried to get the help of residents by asking to ride into the scene in the back of their cars. Some succeeded in this; others failed. Other attempts to obtain access were made by pretending to be volunteers. Once inside, some concealed from the authorities the fact that they were journalists. One justification given for this behaviour was that some elements of the media, notably television crews in helicopters, seemed to be getting away with fly-in, fly-out incursions, placing other journalists at a competitive disadvantage. Another justification was based on the view that the duty to get information overrode all other considerations. There did seem to be consensus, however, that there is a difference between fortuitous and deliberate deception. Some media people benefited from being dressed in CFA turn-out gear and were waved through police roadblocks in scenes reminiscent of the ABC TV satirical show The Chaser. These media people made no overt attempt to deceive the police; neither did they go out of their way to let the police know who they were. Yet more ethical issues arose for journalists in deciding whether to go on to private property once they were inside the scene. Again there was a range of positions: Some stayed out of private property altogether. They confined themselves to the streets or to the ruins of public buildings, such as schools. Some went inside the boundaries of private property but not near the ruins of houses. Some went up to the ruins but did not go into them or touch them or look closely into them. Some went into the front yard but not around the back. There was one view that in a practical sense private property had temporarily ceased to exist because there was no way of distinguishing one thing from another, and nothing of substance remained. Others applied the standard rule of trespass: you go on private property until asked by the occupant to leave. The fact that there was no occupant was not perceived to invalidate this rule nor render it irrelevant. Some who were taken into the scene by a resident regarded it as proxy permission, as it were, when the resident took them up someone else's driveway, on the basis that the resident knew the occupant. A specific ethical issue arose over the use of private property as a venue to allow media to report on the authorities at work. In one case, the police invited the media onto a property to watch the Disaster Victim Identification team at work. They were kept back a certain distance and were asked not to take images that would tend to identify the property. However, because of the lie of the land and certain features of the property, this proved impossible, and the surviving members of the family learned of this episode when they saw images on the internet of blue-suited forensic pathologists sifting through what the family recognised to be their home where their parents had perished. There was more consensus on how to treat survivors and victims than on questions of access. Broadly speaking, media people in this research set these standards for themselves: Prior consent is required for images of an identifiable individual as well as for interviews. Refusal of consent for an interview is implicitly also refusal of consent for the use of an image of an identifiable individual. People should be asked once only, and a refusal should be accepted. People should not be badgered. Close-up intrusion on grief or moments of intimacy can and should be avoided. It is a betrayal of survivors and victims not to follow up and keep in touch with them. It is necessary to recognise the vulnerability of people who are not used to dealing with media, and treat what they say and do accordingly by applying a fairness test. Some degree of intrusion is inevitable, but it should be minimised. Some of the media people interviewed stated that the authorities took it on themselves to protect survivors from the media. The general view among these media people was that in taking on this protective function, the authorities were both wrong and misguided: wrong because it was not their place to make decisions on behalf of survivors regarding whether they should talk to the media; misguided because in fact many survivors – especially in the first 48 h – wanted to tell their story and appeared to find it cathartic to do so. Media people generally stated that even in the first 48 h, when they were in shock, survivors were able to say yes or no to media approaches. Media people also said that they respected the survivors' wishes and did not press them. One way in which media people thought it was constructive and legitimate to assist survivors who wanted protection from the media was to set up media-free zones, as was done after a couple of days. Individuals could then make a choice and avail themselves of the media-free zones if they did not wish to be approached. Journalists who went to the fire ground and relief centres in the aftermath of the fires received no guidance from their employers about what was expected of them either by way of behaviour or of output. In this vacuum, they fell back on their humanity, their professional judgment and their own moral compasses. There were times when some had suspended their professional roles altogether because they believed the needs of the human beings in front of them were more important than their work. This has long been a difficult ethical issue for media people covering wars and disasters: do you put down the camera or the notebook and go to the aid of a person in distress, even if it means the event goes unreported? Or do you hew to your professional duty to report the news, even if it means the distressed person goes unaided? A further issue to arise was over the use to be made by media of private moments that were witnessed unobtrusively and unexpectedly. In one case a print reporter witnessed a profoundly distressing scene in which three sisters were told by their husbands that their parents had died. The reporter happened to be standing at the place where the group met to break this news. He saw and heard it happen without intending to eavesdrop. Later he interviewed one of the husbands and filed a report. This is a common dilemma for media people: they witness something unexpectedly which creates a situation in which they acquire a substantial piece of news but which also causes people to be overcome by grief, making it intrusive to approach them. Do they withhold the information, even if it is substantial? Do they publish what they have seen without intruding on the bereaved to obtain consent, or do they intrude on the bereaved in order to obtain consent? In this case the reporter bided his time and then approached one of the husbands who, while bereaved, might reasonably be considered to be less directly bereaved than the daughters who had lost their parents. One respondent, Mr Gary Hughes, who was in the unique position of being both a survivor and a journalist, said it was difficult for journalists to understanding just how intrusive they can be, even when they are trying to minimise it. Training in journalism courses and in workplaces should include educating journalists in the trauma they can cause by the questions they ask. They need to be trained by trauma experts on the type of additional trauma that can be unintentionally caused to victims/survivors, and how to minimize the risk. Many journalists said they were aware that they were dealing with people who had no experience of the media and were vulnerable to being exploited. They said they felt a responsibility to take this into account when choosing what to use and what to omit from their reports. Some applied a fairness test: is this a fair portrayal of this person or this person's views? In one case, a reporter judged that an extreme outburst of anger by a CFA officer, who was severely traumatised, could not fairly be represented as this man's genuinely held opinion. The fact that the CFA officer said it all again at the Royal Commission did not alter the journalist's view about the correctness of the judgment he made at the time, based on his observations of the person. There were four main sources of pressure on the media people who covered the Black Saturday bushfires: News desks and editors Rivals Authorities Survivors and victims. It can be seen straightaway that these pressures tend to create a maelstrom effect. They tend to pull the person at the centre in several directions at once. Take just one example: the obtaining of survivors' stories: The demand from the news desk is to obtain stories from survivors. There are competitive pressures because rivals want the same. The authorities put up barriers that frustrate these efforts and create risks. The people affected by the fires generate a whole new set of pressures arising from their vulnerability and devastation. Not all media people had to cope with all these pressures all the time, and when they were liberated from one or other of them, it tended to be beneficial. In the early days especially, news desks were almost totally reliant on what their staff on the ground told them. Many respondents operated on the principle of what the eye does not see, the heart does not grieve over. So, where their consciences dictated, they were selective about what they told the desk. Some were also senior enough to assert their independence. Less senior people soon learnt the value of having a story idea of their own to head off ill-considered or impractical proposals from the desk. Many respondents also spent at least part of their time away from rivals. The fire ground was so big that in many places there were few media present at any one time. What really hurt, though, was when the people affected by the fires exerted pressure, either in the form of complaints or in demands for advice which the media person was not in a position to give. It is clear that this source of pressure has had the most long-lasting impact. Even a small inaccuracy can enrage traumatised people who cannot be expected to see things in perspective, and some journalists were unnerved by the emotion-charged blowback from people affected by their stories. The media people interviewed seemed on the whole to find ways of minimising the tension between competitive and news desk pressures, and pressure from survivors and victims. They did this by good journalistic practice: getting away from rivals and finding their own stories. By showing initiative they headed off news desk pressure, and by getting away from rivals they freed themselves to behave as their consciences dictated. Some of the most acute pressures of all arose from the circumstances in which decisions had to be made about what to publish and what to withhold from publication. These affected everyone involved in the coverage and in numberless ways: from the video journalist who was present when a man discovered his home in ruins and unleashed a primal scream, to the newspaper editor who was trying to strike the right tone on his front page, to the radio producer who had thousands of text messages and telephone callers saying one thing and the fire authorities saying another. It was commonplace for the media people on the ground to withhold from publication information or images they had obtained. Mostly these concerned grisly details about how people had died or the state of bodies or other material that would have caused distress either to surviving members of the family or to the public at large. In deciding what to publish, four issues arose: Taste and decency The effects of the disaster being 'in the back yard' Verification Information overload. They drew a distinction between public interest and public curiosity, and took into account the circumstances in which they had received information, especially grisly information about how people had died. Sometimes this was imparted in circumstances of confidentiality, sometimes by people in shock who had to recount it almost therapeutically. The fact that the disaster occurred close to the audience's home meant that decisions on what to publish were different from decisions made about disasters far away. The reasons were that the impact would be much greater, that standards of public taste would be more easily violated, that there was a risk of telling survivors and friends of the dead about who had died before the news had been given by the authorities and that those who were interviewed or pictured in the course of the coverage were part of the audience. Verification was often difficult, particularly concerning names of the dead. Several respondents spoke of the need to withhold unconfirmed information of this kind. A particular issue concerning verification arose from the use of the social networking website Facebook and other secondary sources, mainly for pictures of people. The extent to which these secondary sources were verified before publication – especially online – was problematic. While respondents spoke of their wish to ensure accuracy, it was obvious from many respondents that getting material up online first was a far stronger imperative than making sure it was right. One final aspect concerning decisions about what to publish arose from the cascade of conflicting information that inundated radio stations trying to keep up with what was happening on Black Saturday. By convention and good practice, radio relies on official sources for its information about unfolding disasters. On Black Saturday, however, the official sources of information – the CFA, the Department of Sustainability and Environment and the State Emergency Services – were overwhelmed. The consequences of this for the decision-making in radio stations, which were trying to provide a comprehensive information service, were exceptionally challenging for the staff involved. As the official sources of information fell further and further behind what was happening on the ground, vast amounts of unofficial information began pouring in from phone calls, text messages and Twitter. One broadcaster received approximately 8000 phone calls – 10 times the usual daily number – and between 7000 and 10 000 SMS messages on Black Saturday, mostly between mid-afternoon and early evening. This confronted broadcasters with several difficult tasks: How to assess the quality of the unofficial information How to choose what, from this vast harvest, they should broadcast How to reconcile this unofficial information with the often contradictory information from the official sources that – as became clear months later – was hopelessly out of date And how to provide the best possible information without undermining public confidence in the official sources and the organisations behind them. In addition, broadcasters had to decide whether people calling on the talkback line were ringing to tell what was happening to them or to ask for help. Calls for help were not considered suitable for broadcast because it was seen to be a violation of the caller's intent and therefore a breach of trust. In deciding what to broadcast, they created some decision rules: Assess the credibility of the unofficial information. Is it: First-hand or hearsay? Hysterical or stable? Apt to inform or panic the public? Try to check it with official sources Present official and unofficial information Inform but do not advise. This last rule created severe emotional strain. Desperate people were on the other end of the phone begging to know what they should do. The broadcasters were in no position to advise them because they did not know whether their advice would turn out to be good or bad. So they just had to say 'We can't advise you because we don't know enough. Keep listening and we will give you all the information we have'. Some of those callers died; some of those broadcasters know they were the last people to speak to them. The legacy of grief and guilt has been a heavy one. Covering the Black Saturday bushfires and their aftermath exacted a severe emotional toll on many of the media people interviewed for this research. Seasoned veterans and relative novices; men and women; people from newspapers, radio stations, television channels or websites; reporters, photographers, camera operators; those who had been to the fire ground and those who had not: it made no difference. All were deeply affected. Their ability to cope, however, differed widely, and here experience counted. Those with substantial exposure to trauma, especially wars and disasters, were able to recognise within themselves the symptoms of their own familiar reactions. They were also able to assimilate the emotional impact more quickly and remain fixed on the job at hand. Not many of the respondents saw exposed bodies. A few did, a few more saw bodies in bags or under covers, but most did not. Many were told of horrendous ways in which people had died and of indescribably awful discoveries made by the emergency services personnel. So exposure to physical horror was to a considerable extent vicarious. While this was bad enough and played a part in traumatising them, it became clear from what respondents said that it was by no means the whole story, nor perhaps even the most important part of it. Judging from what they said and from their emotional responses during the interviews, the important factors were: The shocking scale and intensity of destruction The cruel capriciousness of the fires The unrelenting exposure to human suffering. Their immersion in this consuming tragedy was made worse for many by the shock of coming back. It was all so close to Melbourne. Within a few minutes' drive from the fire ground, they were transported from a Dantean world of lamentation to what seemed the obscenely serene normality of suburban Melbourne. This engendered a sense of embittered disconnection between them and the rest of their world, and was something for which few were prepared. It was as if no one understood or could grasp what had happened. Many likened it to returning from a war, where the only people who understood were those who had been in the war too. This created tensions in the office and, for some, at home. It also altered people's perspective on what was important. Another commonly reported symptom was a flatness and lack of interest in routine work. Many respondents spoke disparagingly of the usual diet of media stories, as if none of it mattered any more. This mood tended to last for two or three weeks, sometimes longer. Those who sought professional advice about it had been told it was a normal reaction. Their employers had offered counselling, but whether because of the way it was offered or because of the state of mind in which the offers were received, few took it up. Some went off and obtained professional help at their own expense rather than do it through the company for fear that, despite assurances to the contrary, their cards would be marked and they might not be assigned to similar big stories in future. Some de-briefing sessions were held, but they differed widely in content, atmosphere and effectiveness. Even where they were conducted in a constructive atmosphere, participants preferred to confine their discussions to logistics and equipment failures rather than matters of the mind. Some were conducted in a slightly hard-bitten atmosphere where there was a sense that this was something that had to be got through regardless of individual need. None of the respondents said they gave much away in these sessions. The picture to emerge was of an industry that, while it has come a long way in recognising the trauma caused by covering disasters and wars, still has a lot to learn about how to help traumatised staff. There are many lessons: Couch the offer in the right way Create a culture of acceptance Managers and staff need to talk about this Ownership by editorial management essential Offer the right kind of help Separate personal from operational de-briefings Personal de-briefings should be individual or small groups. The great lack is the absence of professional ethical consensus. Key issues arise concerning the reasons for roadblocks, the way the media respond to them, treatment of survivors, protection of crime scenes and rights of access to private property. These are concrete ethical questions to which the media's codes of ethics give only the most abstract – and sometimes ambiguous – attention. While individuals are responsible for their decisions, the ethical vacuum in which journalists work is primarily a systemic failure that abandons them to a kind of relativist jungle where what is right or wrong is decided by reference to what each individual journalist thinks. This makes a tough job harder. It means that good decisions go unrecognised and bad ones are not named for what they are. Covering disasters such as the Black Saturday fires is a traumatising experience for media people. Their professional and industry support mechanisms are under-developed and a culture persists, despite decades of evidence to the contrary, that 'real reporters don't cry'.