PressEthic

I just came across this quote while scanning a quotation dictionary for another class. It was shouted by an anonymous British TV reporter to Belgian civilians awaiting an airplane to escape from the Belgian Congo to their motherland in 1960, Little Oxford Dictionary of Quotations says.

It's hilarious, yet bad. One thing I'm sure is that every single one of us in our class (including me) will someday find himself or herself throwing a similar question. Believe me you will be in a crazy situation, more than once, throughout your career.

I guess I have. Not in the exactly same manner and words, but similar enough, in a strict sense. I have covered murder, fire, suicide, and bribery among many other grim things, as we journalists all do. Even when I had a genuine sympathy to those involved and was fair and accurate, I still knew I was exploiting them. I made my living for so doing.

We grab stories out of other people’s misery, and even when we serve the public and contribute to the greater good, it is still exploitation. Anyone who's ever been interviewed will agree, I believe. A portrait is a portrait, even when it's done by a master in your favor, and you are an object.

After more than six years of reporting, I felt I had sinned a great deal. I know I will sin a great deal in the future, too, because I'm an imperfect person doing a crazy job. The only ethical solution I have reached so far is to try not to sin shamelessly but sin humanely. That’s indeed the ground of the compassion I feel toward my fellow journalists all over the world.