I never thought that I’d end up working as a journalist. In fact I vowed I wouldn’t. Like many of us, as a teen I lost a dear friend and his untimely, accidental death became the front page lead in the New Zealand Herald. I was livid and so was his family. It seemed so unjust and invasive that his dying was the business of anyone else. My friend had drowned in a known danger spot and the story, although painful and in this case reported inaccurately and sensationally, was news. It was news because it brought home the very real danger of swimming on a treacherous beach on a day when the beach was closed due to massive seas.
I often wondered if the reporter who trudged out to the west coast that day ever knew how the family felt, how much the presence of a news team in their private grief was despised. But reporters have to be where the trouble is, that’s their job. In a new media environment littered with stories of closing newspapers and shrinking circulation it’s easy to forget that everyday journalists, photographers and cameraman put their lives and well-being on the line to bring the rest of us the stories and the pictures.
Keeping us mindful of this is Jim Macmillan, a US photojournalist who became so traumatised by his 30 year career that he had a crippling breakdown. After decades of forcing his way into the nightmare zones like the Oklahoma bombing and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina it was finally the experience of being one of the first on the scene after a second plane hit the World Trade Centre that unwound him. Jim Macmillan had to acknowledge the deep psychological distress he was suffering in a journalistic culture that admires hard bitten bravado above all else. He now lectures on the effects of post traumatic stress and was recently in New Zealand addressing a group at Auckland University. What is of particular note is that it is often the young reporters who are sent out to gather the news of crimes, road accidents and disaster without the experience or support to temper the everyday brutality.
As communication professionals we shouldn’t lose sight of fact that the news gathering process is done by people. People in the frontline, at the crash scene, in the war zones, who can be harmed by what they see and hear and what they need to make palatable for us at home. And while we comfortably discuss in what medium we like to receive our morning news messages there are thankfully still people on the ground making it so.
