“There are three kinds of people who run toward disaster, not away: cops, firemen and reporters.” -Rod Dreher, newspaper columnist
I saw this quote on the wall at the Newseum in Washington DC this past autumn, just days before the anniversary of September 11th. While the quote is not entirely accurate, as evidenced by all the people who ran towards the explosions to help others yesterday at the Boston Marathon, it does draw attention to a set of people who often go under-appreciated during crises: journalists.
Journalists provide a public service; their job is to report and inform, bringing knowledge and answers to their audience. In the case of visual journalists, they also take on the role of being the eyes of the viewers. It’s often easy to overlook what they do, or forget that they perform their jobs at their own risk during a crisis. It’s easy to assume that they are detached from a situation as the cover tragedies too, but the reality is this: journalists covering these events are in the midst of a balancing act. They are balancing performing their job while processing the same events they are experiencing. They are balancing getting the news while being sensitive to the victims.
In today’s Boston Globe, columnist Kevin Cullen recognizes this balancing act, writing:
I saw Lisa Hughes from WBZ-TV trying to do her job, amid the blood and the body parts. And then I remembered that Lisa, who is as nice a person as you’ll find in this business, married a guy from Wellesley named Mike Casey who lost his wife Neilie on one of the planes out of Boston that crashed into the Twin Towers. And then I tried not to cry and just marveled at how professional Lisa was.
This balancing act is what struck me the most at the Newseum’s 9/11 exhibit. The film “Running Toward Danger” shares first-person accounts from journalists covering the events of September 11th– how they were reporting one minute and running for their lives the next, trying to perform their jobs but then breaking down and crying while trying to process what had just happened. It’s a story that is resounded in Time’s Q&A with Boston Globe photographer John Tlumacki does a really great job of illuminating what one photojournalist experienced while working an event like yesterday’s. Tlumacki says “you try not to get your emotions involved as a photographer” and describes sticking to the job and exercising good judgement. Then he says:
I was so shook up about it — I was speechless when I was there [on scene]. My eyes were swelling up behind my camera. We use a camera as a defense but I was shaken when I got back, just scanning the pictures. The other sad part was that I took my shoes off because they were covered in blood from walking on the sidewalk taking pictures.
I always wondered what it would be like when I see photographers covering this stuff all over the world. You go to Israel and then there’s an explosion and photographers are there. It’s haunting to be a journalist and have to cover it. I don’t ever want to have to do that again.
According to Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, journalists’ symptoms of traumatic stress are remarkably similar to those of police offers and firefighters who deal with tragedies. Yet unlike other first responders, journalists seldom receive support such as debriefings and counseling, Tompkins says.
The mental risks are just one component of covering trauma. There’s also the risk of personal injury or death. In the United States, only one journalist has died as a result of a dangerous assignment since the Committee to Protect Journalists started keeping track in 1992. That one journalist was Bill Biggart, a freelance photojournalist who died during the September 11th attacks. Biggart was walking his dog when he learned that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. He ran home, grabbed his camera, and rushed to the scene. At 10:28:24 AM, he took his last shot, before the second tower collapsed, killing him. Biggart’s body was recovered in the rubble four days later, along with three cameras, six rolls of film, and one compact flash card containing nearly 150 digital images. As I walked around the Newseum and saw the images from Biggart’s final moments next to his battered gear, I broke down and cried.
Biggart is just one of 123 journalists who have died on dangerous assignments around the world since 1992, and another 856 have died in connection with their work as a result of murder or combat.
So today while we reflect on yesterday’s events and the brave people who put themselves in harm’s way, let us think of the journalists as well, not just in Boston, but around the world.
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