Journalism and ethics after Christchurch

Mar 28, 2019

By Francine Crimmins
Since the Christchurch terror attack, working in a newsroom for some journalists has been 'hectic' to say the least.

Instead of its normal pace, the office has been full of stressed and exhausted journalists scrambling back and forth from their editors’ desks. They’ve all been trying hard to work out what should be, or what deserves to be reported.

The days have been so busy that there hasn’t been a moment to properly process the severity of the event. Reporting massacres, after all, takes an enormous emotional toll. And often, as journalists, they only get time to sit and reflect long after the moment has passed.

The difficulty for journalists live reporting emergencies is they have to make important and hugely impactful ethical decisions right in the moment. In balancing those tough decisions, how often does the common good start drowning in what will draw the most attention from an audience, and away from competing news organisations?

Good journalism should exist on the former level. Ideally, a journalist will provide a facts-based story which is carefully and sensitively curated. But, as news broke of the attack in Christchurch, the professional lines were blurred for many journalists working in newsrooms around the world.

For a few hours, journalists across mainstream media seemed to forget terrorism is not only a physical act of violence, but a form of mass communication in itself. Terrorism relies on the media to publicise fear, incite reactions and even inspire or recruit copycats.

This publicity in the case of the Christchurch attack was magnified as media chose to use the video footage filmed from the perspective of the attacker. Many radio and television stations also read out and reproduced the killer’s manifesto, or allowed their guests to directly quote the document on air.

“It’s hard to justify taking a time-out for editorial choices. But if they had, perhaps they would have been better able to think critically about the information in front of them and their own motivations for publishing it.”

Before long, many journalists recognised they were in fact broadcasting a version of hate speech through reproducing the terrorist material on air. In breaking news, it's hard to justify taking a time-out for editorial choices. But if they had, perhaps they would have been better able to think critically about the information in front of them and their own motivations for publishing it.

Journalists have since been speaking out against their own editors and newsroom editorial standards. Many people feel the choice to use the terror material to tell the story of human death and suffering came from a place of ignorance.

Since the attack, the Ethical Journalism Network (EJN) has issued a simple and practical guide to remind journalists how they can identify and manage hate speech. The guideline aims to achieve ‘tolerance’ in journalism by encouraging editors and journalists to pause and consider the wider impact of spreading offensive or inflammatory content.

Following these guidelines requires a lot of self-control. This control however, shouldn’t be seen as an attack on freedom. Instead, to understand the ethical dilemmas of the work is to understand the power media has, and the level of responsibility which comes with it.

When media conducts itself ethically, they provide a service to the nation. And, if they remain strong in their conviction, they become invincible against terrorists and other people who wish to take advantage of media power for their own benefit.

The main message in the guidelines from the EJN is to avoid sensationalising. It also urges journalists to not rush or get caught up in the atmosphere of the news cycle. ‘Take a moment of reflection,’ it says. --Eureka Street