"......everywhere, like, such as......" and other ruminations: On a more serious note

A tragedy's emotional impact can engulf journalists, too

Friday, December 22, 2006

By Monica Haynes, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"I feel the need to share something with you, and I'm sort of loathe to do it for a few reasons. One, it feels very personal but it is something I've shared with you before so it seems like I have to tell you the rest of the story ..."


	Lynn Cullen: Callers wept along with her. Click photo for larger image.

Related article

Cullen: 'I want to connect'
With those words, local radio talk-show host Lynn Cullen told her audience last week that Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Clark -- the love of her niece Leah Nuetzel's life -- had been killed in Iraq.
Through her tears, Ms. Cullen relayed the suffering his death has brought to the two families involved. At times her voice was so filled with pain and despair that it was almost too much to bear auditory witness to.
The host had never met her niece's boyfriend but she and her audience felt they knew him via her niece Leah and Leah's mother, Susan, who comes on her sister's radio show weekly.
"Now, he's dead in this senseless, insane war," Ms. Cullen intoned on her broadcast last Friday. "We don't want any more of these wonderful young people to die in something so stupid," she said banging the desk. "So damn stupid."
Callers wept along with Ms. Cullen over the death of a young man listeners had deemed "our Marine." Cpl. Clark is to be buried today in St. Louis.
The self-declared "Lone Liberal" of the radio-waves had expressed her vehement opposition to the war in Iraq even before it became so deeply personal.


Associated Press Walter Cronkite: "I'm a fairly emotional person." Click photo for larger image.

However, her heart-wrenching broadcast raises the issue of how members of the media deal with emotionally charged issues or stories.
Those old enough to remember the assassination of President John F. Kennedy may recall the nanosecond pause Walter Cronkite took to compose himself as he made the grim announcement.
"It was tough to get those words out that the president was dead," said Mr. Cronkite, describing that event for the Newseum archives. "I knew the moment was coming, but I wasn't consciously thinking about what would happen when the moment came. We just knew it would come. It's tough. I'm a fairly emotional person. I tear up easily, although that was certainly an event which you don't have to excuse. But yes, it was a tough moment and I had to gulp a couple of times to get the words out."
Most recently, journalists have had to report on such monumental tragedies as Sept. 11, the 2004 Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina while being personally affected by those events.
"I think that journalists wouldn't be human if they didn't sometimes react to the powerful events, to bearing witness to powerful events," said Bruce Shapiro, executive director of The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at the University of Washington in Seattle.
"And sometimes news consumers expect journalists to keep their balance, and that's right. And sometimes the sheer scale and nature of an event is going to outweigh the usual 'on one hand this, on the other hand that' style of reporting.
He cites coverage of Hurricane Katrina as an example of reporting fueled by the intensity of the event.
"Many journalists covering the storm were so shocked about what was happening to people in New Orleans and the Gulf," Mr. Shapiro said. "You got a kind of journalism of witness or journalism of outrage."
In a personal essay on the Dart Center Web site about covering Katrina's aftermath, BBC correspondent Gavin Hewitt wrote:
"Outrage is at its most effective when it is based on compassion; the sense that one is speaking out on behalf of ordinary people. There were some reporters who showed tears on screen. I am not comfortable with that. Not because good reporters are not sometimes overwhelmed by what they see. It is that tears make the correspondent the eye of the story rather than the people who are actually suffering."
Mr. Shapiro said journalists who live in New Orleans and the other Gulf states affected by Katrina are still balancing their reporting of the situation with the continued suffering of their own families and the community.
"Reporters on the one hand are being very passionate and working harder than they've ever worked because it's their community," Mr. Shapiro said. "By the same token they understand this makes [them] all the more determined to bend over backwards to be fair ... because they understand their own emotions are so powerful."
He thinks it's good when reporters acknowledge, at least to themselves and sometimes to their audience, how they're affected by monumental events because then they know when to make the extra effort to be fair.
CNN's Anderson Cooper became a media celebrity with his emotionally charged coverage of the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina.
In his book, "Dispatches From the Edge," Cooper wrote, "As a journalist, no matter ... how respectful you are, part of your brain remains focused on how to capture the horror you see, how to package it, present it to others."
The presentation and coverage of tragic events is the highest calling for a journalist, said Joe Hight, managing editor of the Oklahoman newspaper and president of the Dart Center Board.
Mr. Hight shepherded coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing.
"I think journalists sometimes have a natural guilt reaction to the fact that there are people going out and helping the victims out in the community," he said. "What they don't realize is that their coverage has a dramatic effect on the community."
He said providing facts, accuracy and, most importantly, the stories of the people involved help to bring a sense of calm to the community.
"When people are cut off from information, what they want most is information," Mr. Hight said. "A newspaper is doing its job when it's getting the news to people who are most affected."
Psychiatrist Frank Ochberg, a founder of the Dart Center, said some journalists suffer post traumatic stress disorder, especially war correspondents.
"A journalist who goes to war has as much emotional casualty as the soldier who goes to war," Dr. Ochberg said. "The culture of journalism has been to ignore this, to deny this to treat it with alcohol and bravado and a certain amount of contempt for the journalist who admits a problem."
He said to have normal human emotions that are proportional to the event is reasonable.
But, he said, the expectation of some is that journalists must be cool under fire.
"Cool is one thing," said Dr. Ochberg. "And cold is something else."
To listen to Lynn Cullen's Dec. 15 broadcast, go to this audio archive and click on the link to Dec. 15 Hour 1.