Wine Country Fires: The Ethics of Disaster Coverage

Once again, it's Vox

Though seasonal wildfires are a natural occurrence in the Golden State, humans are making them worse and increasing the harm from them every step of the way.

A New Challenge to Reporting on Tragedy: Tackle Bogus Stories Quickly

Here's the story.

As for how the media responded to the flood of false stories, Susan McGregor, the assistant director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, said that reporters have caught up to how and where false rumors are started. Several years ago, in the wake of the bombing at the Boston Marathon, an incorrect suspect’s name first surfaced on Reddit, and made its way into the mainstream press. Now, McGregor said, one of the first jobs of the press isn’t just to report on new developments. “They jump straight to debunking now, which is almost just as important,” she said.

An Ethical Problem: Master Narrative

Map showing where natural disasters caused/aggrevated by global warming will occur, and thus where environmental refugees will be created (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Story formulas shape, and sometimes distort, news coverage.

News networks do this because treating natural disasters like war gives them a compelling way to tell stories about storms like Harvey and Irma.

The problem is that war requires an enemy — some “bad guy” for people to fight against. And that need to find a bad guy has warped the focus of news coverage during natural disasters.

The Ethics of Disaster Reporting

Here are some ideas.

An excerpt:

Journalists must also expect and prepare for criticism while covering emergencies.
Journalism often looks opportunistic and vulture-like during disasters. Television and radio journalists are especially susceptible to being perceived as exploitive since the emotions of victims are much more apparent and palpable.

Journalists should be especially careful when selecting people to interview on-air during traumatic events. People should not be put in front of cameras or microphones during such events unless they want to tell their stories. Some people will want to speak about their experience as – almost – a form of therapy. Other people may not be ready to share, and that’s okay.

The SPJ Code of Ethics says journalists should be especially sensitive to people not used to dealing with the press. Pre-interviews or brief discussions off camera can go a long way to preparing people to tell their stories. If after those conversations a person is still unsure whether to share their experience, a journalist should feel empowered to decide not to move ahead with the interview for the sake of the source and the people watching or listening to the report.



Here's a cynical take by a "vulture journalist"

An excerpt:

When we write about how people deal with tragedy, we arguably are serving up lessons for coping with grief, reminding readers and viewers that life is precious, that people matter. 

Yet the noble pursuit of this story is often lost in the cynical quest for a “get.” When I’m trying to lure a grief-stricken widow into talking to me, I invariably try some version of the old “I want people to know what your husband meant to you” trick. I’m not lying when I say this; I really do want that, and I really do believe the world is well served by remembering someone’s life in a poignant way. But this line I deliver is still a trick, because what I really want is to pick apart your grieving soul for a good story, a story I can use to catapult my own career.

When I do this kind of piece—when any of us does this kind of piece—we are still hyenas, no matter what good comes out of it. We can comfort ourselves by rationalizing our actions, proclaiming that we’re writing the first draft of history. But we’re also jabbing our snouts into freshly dug graves, gnashing through coffins and munching on broken bones. It’s our nature.