ETHICS MATTERS
A Monthly Column in News Photographer magazine
Deni Elliott
and Paul Martin Lester (E-mail
and home page),
The Practical Ethics Center, University of Montana
Responsible
Journalism is Accountable Journalism
08/01
NEWS ITEM from
the Buffalo News, Saturday, June 23, 2001:
A Mass of Christian Burial for Joseph R. Traver of Buffalo, an award-winning
photojournalist, will be offered at 11 a.m. Tuesday in St. Mary's Catholic
Church, Hudson.
Traver,
48, committed suicide Tuesday (June 19, 2001), one week after police arrested
him, following allegations of a sex crime made against him by a 15-year-old
boy.
"Please remember me
as the big guy with a smile and an open heart."
From Joe Traver's final letter to friends
We sum up two thousand years of Western
moral philosophy in one sentence: Do your job and don't cause unjustified harm.
The conundrum is that doing your job as a journalist sometimes requires causing
harm. Determining ethical behavior, then, becomes complicated as the importance
of a story or an image is weighed against the potential harm to those in the
news and those affected by it-family, friends, readers, and viewers. Just when
is causing harm justified and when is it not?
Sometimes harm is justified because it
is simply unavoidable. Yet, rarely is the journalistic choice as stark as
"Go with the problematic choice or don't." Choices that include
consideration of how and when and why move journalistic decision-making beyond
the false either/or dilemma to a continuum in which some choices are likely to
produce more harm and others are likely to produce less. Did the kind and
quantity of news coverage push Joe Traver over the edge? It certainly didn't
add to his reasons for living.
Determining professional ethical
behavior is often a study in knowing the difference between praiseworthy and
blameworthy actions. A journalist should be praised if she exceeds the minimal
requirements of a job without causing unjustified harm. Likewise, she has done
something wrong if she falls below the expectations of her job, or if she
causes harm that cannot be justified. However, most journalists and other
professionals rarely reach the ideal of praiseworthy action or the low of
blameworthy behaviors-they find themselves somewhere in the middle.
Aristotle, a fourth century BC
philosopher, provides a concept that can assist present day journalists in
their attempts to create praiseworthy coverage. To paraphrase Aristotle, the
practitioner of practical wisdom is the one who chooses the right outcome, the
right means to get there, in the right manner, and at the right time.
To find the ideal balance,
photojournalists need to think first of the possible extremes in a given
situation. During a funeral for example, one extreme action might be for a
journalist to walk boldly up to the grieving family during the service, ask
questions, use a motordrive and a flash or a camera with lights, and leave
without a thought of adding to the family's discomfort. Such an action,
although fulfilling the requirements of the job, might cause unjustified harm
to those attending the funeral. The opposite extreme is the journalist who is
so concerned for the family that she refuses to take any pictures or shoot any
video. Such a journalist might even refuse to go to the site of the service.
That journalist might find her job in jeopardy. Looking for an ideal balance
means that a journalist finds the least obtrusive way, and thus least harmful
way, of covering a sensitive news event. Letting the family know of your
presence, use a long, telephoto lens, dressing appropriately, and taking only a
few pictures from a public position can satisfy the role related
responsibilities without causing more harm than necessary. You will probably
not win any awards for your actions aside from a possibly grateful glance from
one of those family members, but you won't be blameworthy either. But how do
you know what to do?
Another way to think about the
practitioner of practical wisdom is to review journalism principles that have
stood the test of time. Ed Lambeth in his classic media ethics book, Committed
Journalism, identified the principles that good journalists stand by: truth
telling, justice, freedom, humaneness, and stewardship. Truth is necessary for
ethical journalism. Without truth, a journalist has no credibility. The
principle of justice relates to a reporter's responsibility to be fair. A story
should be complete, relevant, honest, and straightforward. The freedom
principle means that a journalist should be independent both politically and
economically. A journalist should never compromise that independence by
"the acceptance of gifts, free or reduced travel, outside employment,
certain financial investments, political activity, participation in civic
activity, or outside speaking engagements." Humaneness, as Lambeth writes,
is a principle that requires "a journalist to give assistance to another
in need." Finally, the principle of stewardship means that a good
journalist doing well cares for "the rights of others, the rights of the
public, and the moral health of his [sic] own occupation." Truth telling,
justice, and freedom are principles covered by the NPPA Code of Ethics when it
asserts that "pictures should report truthfully, honestly, and
objectively. "The principle of humaneness is mentioned when photographers
are asked to have "sympathy for our common humanity." Finally, the
stewardship principle is invoked when photojournalists are reminded by the Code
that their "chief thought shall be to . . . lift the level of human ideals
and achievement higher than we found it."
This is why the suicide of a story
subject, whether a stranger or a known colleague, raises the possibility of
failure for the professionals who produced the news coverage.
If a person featured in a news story,
photograph, or video suddenly proclaims that she will kill herself if it is
ever published or aired, a journalist has the moral-but not
legal-responsibility to make sure the story or picture is important enough to
risk that extreme action. The journalist also has the responsibility to notify
someone about the threat. Such are the dictates that follow from humaneness and
stewardship. Suicides that happen after a story has been reported, but with no
prior warning to the photographer, videographer, or reporter, should still make
journalists consider how a story could have been covered differently. Just as
journalists are happy to take credit for the good that comes from their
reporting, they are accountable for the bad. Likewise, some stories are so
sensitive and contain such emotionally charged and career-threatening
information that a journalist must be sure that the story and images are accurate,
fair, and the editing and positioning of them are done with an eye toward
causing the least possible harm.
One extreme inappropriate choice in the
coverage of Joe Traver's arrest might have been to report unsubstantiated
accusations and biased images of the accused with a jacket over his head large
on the front page. The other extreme inappropriate choice would have been to
not report the story at all. One way to strike an ideal balance would have been
to report the story without images on an inside page. Sometimes an image can
make the difference between a story that a subject can live with, and one that
the person cannot.
What makes the telling and retelling of
the ethical issues surrounding the treatment and ultimate end to Joe Traver
difficult is that he was one of us. Like a death in the family, Traver's
tragedy is, in a sense, our tragedy. Messages on the NPPA listserv abound with
praise for his helpfulness to others and his illustrious career. Many of us
thought we knew Joe well. Many were shocked by the possibility that the actions
alluded to by police officials and supposed victims might be true. Traver was
generally well liked, an able NPPA president, and a gifted, award-winning
photojournalist. For the record, Traver, in an open farewell letter to friends
written a day before his suicide, denied any physical contact between himself
and the boy who accused him, denied resisting arrest and injuring any police
officer, and complained of what he considered unfair media coverage.
We are left with trying to find lessons
that can be learned from this sad situation. Should the media avoid reporting
details of arrests? This is the convention or the law in many democratic
countries. Should members of the media expect softer or harder treatment from their
brethren if charged with a crime? The former question assumes that all are
equal under the media microscope, while the latter question smacks of
favoritism. It is easy to answer the two questions with an unhesitating,
"no." But such absolutism might lead to coverage that is, on
occasion, sensational, unfair, inhumane, or inconsistent with the kind of
profession that journalism should strive to be.
Journalists are the first to take credit
for stories and pictures that provoke others to action against some social
travesty. The tenement images of Jacob Riis, the child labor horrors documented
by Lewis Hine, the fire escape tragedy by Stan Forman, and the effect of drugs
on the lives of adults and children by Eugene Richards are examples of when
photographers were praised for their social consciousness. Humanness was
expressed by their selection of their topics and the images produced from them.
However, journalists are more than willing to point their fingers at lying
sources, incomplete documents, deadline pressures, competition, or the
unpredictability of humankind-when coverage turns out to be inaccurate, biased,
or unfair and someone dies because of it. Realistically, journalists can't
expect to be praiseworthy for one without recognizing that they are also
blameworthy and accountable for the other.
