Years ago, I was asked to answer a question during an extensive journalism training course organised by Reuters-Thomson Foundation. The trainer who asked the question was a famous editor from one of the African newspapers. The question was quite complicated, at least for us who did journalism in this country.
He asked: “You’re a photojournalist. On your way to the office, you’re in the middle of an incident. A man is about to stab another man. What would you do? Would you take the photo first, or would you try saving the man from getting stabbed?”
The participants got divided while answering the question. Most of us said we would save the person from getting wounded. A few said they would take the photo first. The trainer was quite amused, but he said: “No, as a journalist, your first duty is to take the photo. You’re not the saviour. Saving a person in distress is somebody else’s duty.”
His teaching kept me thinking on the issue for all these years. As a journalist, I agreed with his professional approach, but never could accept it. However, in my professional assignments, I tried to apply what he taught us. It always kept me wondering whether I was following proper ethics while performing my official duties.
Many years have passed since then. Our media grew with many ups and downs. Some actions by my colleagues in different media houses always reminded me of what my trainer said in the mid-’90s.
We’ve seen our mates weeping while live on TV. We’ve seen some of them literally quarrelling with the police, also live on TV. We’ve seen reporters asking the right questions in the wrong time. We’ve seen reporters risking their lives during the Pilkhana carnage. And we’ve witnessed a reporter doing live from inside a grave dug for Rana Plaza victims. The list would be quite long.
To my mind, the reporter who was doing live standing inside a grave at Azimpur certainly wanted to do something different than the others. After all, it’s the visual media and the audience always loves to see some sort of variation on the screen.
Sometimes, we try to draw the audience’s attention by presenting attention-grabbing tricks, which sometimes may be tantamount to gimmicks. We seem to consider the tricks as “exclusives”. However, how acceptable would that be in the minds of the audience hardly crosses our minds. We seem to take the audience for granted.
Let’s look at another example. When Reshma was coming out from the rubbles of Rana Plaza, we kept her asking: “How are you feeling?” Now, as a journalist, we’ll all obviously try to talk to her first and broadcast what she says, as an exclusive, before others do. But the way we did seemed out of the way to a great extent.
Should we have given Reshma some time before asking any questions, to get over the shock she was in? Or was it only normal for us to rush to her and ask about her mental state at that time? These questions need answers as far as our ethical knowledge is concerned.
A similar incident happened when we were asking questions to the suicide bombers at the hospital after the country-wide bomb exposition in 2005. The persons, totally bandaged, were wrenching in pain and we were asking them about how they did it.
The latest such incident was noticed when a photograph of a reporter, with a boom in hand, asking questions to a wounded man lying on the ground, was published on Facebook. The man was carrying a bag-full of hand bombs which exploded and wounded the carrier.
Certainly, the journalists would have a flurry of questions for him. There’s a lot to know from him about the incident. However, was it a good time to ask all these questions? Perhaps not. By any indicator, asking questions at that time, when he was bleeding with wounds all over his body, was certainly less than expected.
Arguably, these incidents take place in Bangladesh sometimes as a matter-of-fact and sometimes as a reality. We just can’t stay away from the opportunity of delivering an “exclusive”.
But in the process, our journalism gets a bad name. We believe this could change. We could always remain journalistically ethical in a competitive backdrop if we simply had regular training along with editorial guidelines for each media organisation. I repeat, the need for editorial guidelines of us has now become mandatory.
