On City Island
November 23, 2007
There’s a lot of talk about journalistic ethics, but when it comes down to it, we’re diving into people. As students, we infiltrate our communities, build relationships, and use people for the information they hand us. And when it’s something like a tragedy I admit to rejoicing. There is a thrill in finding the drama in someone’s life. A drama we can tell through words and sounds and images. Yes, thrilling. That’s the word.
If only it were so clear. That thrill, in me at least, inspires and equally potent sense of guilt. That’s right. Guilt. These are people, after all. And there’s a trust built.
I am profiling an 82-year-old woman this week. She’s not laid up in some home, despite what you’re thinking. She’s a realtor and a hoot and she’s outlived everybody. She says these amazing one-liners, which, if taken out of context, could be construed as racist and anachronistic. She has a gruff way with people, practically yelling at me for showing up for our interview, then warming to me, telling me of all the people she’s known, loved, and watched die. And that’s the thing. This survivor has survived it all. Husband, children, friends, dead. What a sad, wonderful, provocative story. What a thrill(?) What an opportunity to either write a touching story about a community pillar, or use my editing skills to cherry pick controversy as my muse.
There’s a famous photo, of some war zone or crisis. The photojournalist who shot the pic ended up killing himself. A journalist should be his/her own censor; it’s the trust that takes years to establish, developed individually and as a media company, that lends credibility to the news. It’s the trust that begins when a journalist trusts him/her self, to make choices with humanity. It is not the job of the storyteller to expose every flaw, every indecency.
As writers and storytellers, we gather the lives of people like collectibles, rearrange them, present them, revel in them. But we have to live with ourselves. Never discount the conscience to keep a good journalist in check.
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