Thin ice

When does news reporting become voyeurism or worse emotional vampirism?

Previously: A bony finger on the doorbell: Journalism's defence of the 'death knock' is self-serving (August 18, 2021)

Content warning: This edition discusses the coverage of a story in which several children lost their lives.

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On Sunday, three boys aged eight, 10 and 11 died after entering icy water at Babbs Mill Lake, near Solihull. A fourth boy, aged six, is in critical condition in hospital at the time of writing. This was and is news.

There is always a grim calculus at work whenever “news value” is measured; had one child fallen into the lake and died, it most likely would have been a local story, left to regional papers and news bulletins. The scale of the loss, the attendant shock, and the proximity to Christmas are what made this a national story and even led to some international coverage.

But what comes after a traumatic event is open to question: Is the grief of families and the wider community a story in itself? When the facts are not disputed and the immediate incident is over is the presence of news crews and reporters justified?

ITV News interviewed a 13-year-old girl who tried to rescue the boys. A Facebook post by one of the boys’ aunts has been mined for national newspaper stories and photos from Facebook have been used to illustrate them. Private grief is defined as in the public interest because the public is interested. One writer I spoke to — who isn’t covering this story — put it this way:

You’ll often hear, "It’s what people want to read” because it’s never been easier for newsrooms to look at their hit counter and see exactly how much interest there is in something. And I know from experience that there’s nothing like a heartbreaking quote from a grieving parent when it comes to writing an emotive attention-grabbing headline. But ‘our instincts tell us this is a big story that looks great on the page, and lots of people are reading and sharing it’ can’t be the be-all and end-all.

John D. Lewis, a former chief reporter and news editor at local papers including Brighton’s Evening Argus and the Derby Evening Telegraph, and latterly of The Times, told me:

I started in journalism in 1975. Back then I dreaded being sent to get a ‘pick up picture’¹ of a road accident victim. I hated the intrusiveness of it then and I hate it now.

When I rose to the news desk on large regional papers, I would always counsel my reporters and my editors that we get one or maybe two shots at the background information on victims of a tragedy and then we’re gone. In other words, we tried to avoid intruding.

It has now descended into a feeding frenzy which serves no one except the voyeurs. As for people saying, “It’s news”, not the way it’s done now: it’s clickbait.

A broadcast reporter with experience in covering traumatic events said:

I’ve been sent out on loads of death knocks by many editors and hated it, but had no choice. I’ve been physically attacked — once — on these sorts of jobs, or just told to fuck off. But I’ve also done quite a few stories where families wanted the press coverage of their loved ones and where I feel it helped them grieve in a small way and was in the public interest.

The first writer I spoke to echoed this view to an extent:

If there’s something political to be done that could stop something like, for example, Grenfell from happening again; or in cases like that of Olivia Pratt-Korbel where initially we were hammering the people who were shielding her killer, I think papers have a role and a duty and can do some good. But kids falling through ice and drowning feels like something where there’s not really any more to say.

There is clearly an argument for producing public information journalism in the wake of the tragedy at Babbs Mill. Telling readers, listeners, and viewers what to do when someone falls into icy water is practical and could save a life. Standing in front of a pile of floral tributes and repeating lines about a community’s understandable and visceral grief does nothing, particularly on day two or three of the story.

What the press and media consider “reflecting” the response to a traumatic event can, in fact, exacerbate that trauma and feel like a kind of emotional vampirism to those at the centre of the attention. When I said I was writing about this topic, several people shared their experiences. One person wrote:

When I was in sixth form, a major car accident killed a 14-year-old at my school. The day her life support was switched off, we, the older students, were briefed that we might have to protect younger students from predatory journalists at our school gates trying to interview them.

Another said:

When two girls from my high school drowned during a trip, the press pitched up at the gates to get pictures of crying kids on their way in. Many of us didn’t find out what had happened until morning assembly. Awful ghouls, Killed my desire to become a journalist stone dead at 13.

A third told me:

When my friend was murdered when I was 16, me and my friends visited the place he was killed. A journo asked me if I wanted to give a quote about him and I said no, the journo then got arsey with me saying they thought it might be nice to share my memories of him. It stuck with me.

I’m sure this will provoke a “not all journalists” response from some people in the industry who read this. It’s true that local journalists particularly can be extremely affected by the stories they report on because they are happening where they live and one national broadcaster I spoke to told me:

My experience of arriving for stories like this is generally people appreciate and want to contribute to our presence. I’ve got Christmas cards to write to people I met on big stories years back that I’ve kept in touch with.

Plymouth Live’s response to the August 2021 shootings in the city offered a good example of how journalists can operate in communities where a traumatic event has occurred. Its crime reporter Carl Eve tweeted at the time…

… Plymouth Live staff are not doorknocking residents. Any reporter at your door tonight is not from Plymouth Live. You need time and space to process this. If you want to speak to us later, we’ll be here to listen to you.

… and the outlet’s digital editor, Edd Moore, told Press Gazette that the story was:

… a really tragic reminder that we’re custodians of the city but we’re all linked – this is our friends, our neighbours, our relatives that we’re reporting on…

The distinction between what reporters can do and should do is often lost in the scramble for details and ‘colour’ in the aftermath of a horrific event. That a 13-year-old girl and her family agree for her to be interviewed on television about witnessing an event that led to the death of three children does not mean that a broadcaster should put her on TV.

As Professor Lucy Easthorpe, an expert in disaster recovery, tweeted:

Sitting with a young girl and discussing how she feels she did not do enough to help should not be happening on a national news item. This is a huge issue in post-trauma and survivor guilt and is not to be trifled with by a reporter.

A photo of one of the boys who died with his father has been used in multiple newspaper reports, seemingly without family permission. That image — a happy memory for the father — will now be forever linked to the events of his death. That photo and that family’s grief is not the property of a media organisation or theirs to exploit. But that kind of behaviour is common, accepted, and treated as normal.

“Death knocks”, “tribute pieces” and “reflections on a community’s grief” are all seen as part and parcel of reporting from local news to national outlets. Talk to any young reporter — I’ve spoken to several this week — and they’ll tell you about being sent out to speak to grieving relatives. The Plymouth Live approach of encouraging those affected to come to journalists when they were ready is worthy of note because it is all too rare.

Talking about grief and having your loved one recognised is helpful for some, but as Dan Hett, whose brother Martyn Hett was killed in the Manchester Arena bombing, has talked about so powerfully, the media often gives you no chance to think. In the hours after the arena bombing, he tweeted an image of a journalist’s business card and the message:

I have dealt with 50+ journos online today. Two found my mobile number. This cunt found my house. I still don't know if my brother is alive.

While rolling news has changed the pace of this kind of coverage, Sophie Michell, a historian of death and crime, rightly pointed out:

This kind of death was more common in the nineteenth century and was reported in the same kind of almost lascivious tone. It’s nothing particularly novel, although I think television media has made it more profoundly distasteful… Attempts to create rolling news from grief and horror are deeply voyeuristic.

Others have also noted how intrusive the media coverage of the Aberfan disaster was 56 years ago when TV news was still in its teens.

I’ll end where I began: This was and is news but people’s grief and their personal tragedies are not content or fair game. In the production of news, the race to reveal more than the competitors often outpaces humanity and empathy. I’ve not included long quotes or videos from reports in this edition because I don’t want to join in.

Too often reporters and editors comfort themselves with the thought they’re simply telling the story without asking themselves how much of that story is theirs to tell.

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1. In pre-digital days, reporters were sent to get a physical picture from the victim’s family.