ETHICAL DILEMMA IN JOURNALISM
For Amber Schultz, Investigative reporter at Crikey INQ, there have been numerous occasions in her career that have been met with hard ethical decisions when reporting on trauma.
Starting her career at The Age when studying her masters at Monash University, Amber moved from Melbourne to Sydney to work as an Associate Producer at Nine News before her current position at Crikey INQ.
Despite the confidence in which she speaks of her career highlights and experiences, Amber Schultz would be one of the first to admit the struggle to remain ethically sound in journalism.
“It’s often really small biases or really small ways of framing things that you really have to watch out for and really have to be careful with,” she said.
When reporting for The Age in 2018, Amber was assigned to report on the violent murder of a women in Phillip Island. It was her first experience reporting on a traumatic event and one she was “dreading”.
Despite feeling hesitant about the communities’ response, she was grateful they embraced her decision to “not glorify the perpetrator and focus on the victim and the community”.
It was through approaching the situation with care and empathy, that resulted in her winning an Ossie Award; presented by the Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia.
If a journalist can have this impact on a community then why do 44% of Australians feel “the news media often takes too negative a view of events”, reported the News & Media Research Centre in the 2019 Digital News Report.
According to Amber Schultz, big media organisations sometimes “just don’t care”.
“The dangerous thing is that if everyone is creeping towards this line, everyone else is looking at everyone else on how to behave,” Amber said.
With this mindset, journalist can forget the importance of self-regulation and forget to take a step back in order to do no harm.
“It’s really important for you as a Journalist to draw the line in the sand and say to your editors, ‘No I am not comfortable. This is my journalistic reputation’,” she said.
And stand up for her journalistic reputation was exactly what Amber did in March this year, when the traumatic Christchurch massacre occurred.
Following the announcement from New Zealand prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, to “speak the names of those who were lost rather than the name of the man who took them”, Amber was asked by Channel Nine to write an article about the man and where he was imprisoned.
She refused.
And pitched another angle she was “comfortable” with – an article focusing on the victims and their upcoming funerals.
“You have to be prepared to offer an alternative and pick your battles. Fight for what you think is important,” she said.
Sometimes the battles can’t be picked.
But the importance of self-regulation and its neglect has resulted in RMIT ABC Fact Check unit reporting, according to PR ‘giant’ Edelman, “trust in the media in Australia now ranks as the second lowest of 28 surveyed countries”.
Despite Australian media content being self-regulated, there are professional documents available to assist professional communicators towards remaining ethically sound. Most commonly for journalism is the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) Code of Ethics.
The MEAA Journalist Code of Ethics describes their members as journalists who “commit” themselves to honesty, fairness, independence and respect for the right of others.
And counsel their members to “Respect private grief and personal privacy. Journalists have the right to resist compulsion to intrude” (11).
This Code of Ethic, although straightforward on paper, creates an ethical dilemma in traumatic situations.
Journalists are required to balance full disclosure to the public but also to protect the vulnerable through doing no harm.
A journalist’s role is to get the information out there if it is in the public’s right to know. But unethical approaches are taken by some journalists.
The Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma aims to educate journalists in their ‘Working With Victims and Survivors’ guide. Advising that “People who have experienced deep trauma or who have lost someone close to them in sudden, violent circumstances have a right to decline being interviewed, photographed or filmed”.
According to the Dart Centre, it is up to “news media, and their newsrooms, to respect that right” and to “exercise the principle of doing no further harm”.
Amber Schultz describes this balance when having to do the death knock or the “digital death knock”; contacting someone after the passing of a loved one or acquaintance.
“It’s in the public’s right to know if someone dies to commemorate their death, and it’s in the public’s right to know whether if the way someone dies presents a risk to the broader community,” Amber said.
“If it’s something that doesn’t pose a risk to the community, it’s not going to affect their day to day lives and it’s hurtful for the family to hear about it, then that’s where you step back,” she said.
It’s a fine line, but one Amber deals with through “going with your gut and listening to who you are speaking to”, she said.
This ability to balance full disclosure and remain responsible to the public and the vulnerable is not always achieved.
Crikey INQ explored the negative impact the media can have on the public in their three-part series ‘Media Roadkill’.
And believes “the tabloid media being ‘first’ is nearly always more important than being right – or being human”.
This need to present an emotive article with no consideration for the human subjects they are attacking, was evident in 2018 when Channel Seven’s Sunday Night program released a segment on African gangs “wreaking havoc” in Victoria.
The Age confronted the inhumane way this segment was approached in their article ‘Hundreds of African Australians rally against “racist” reporting’. Detailing the negative report on the involved community.
“People should not have to see me on the train and be afraid. I am more than the colour of my skin,” rally organiser, Sebit Gurech told The Age when interviewed.
The Journalist’s Guide to Media Law handbook says, “professional communicators should pause to reflect on the implications their actions have on others – the people who are the subjects of their stories”.
Through self-regulation journalists can and will be able to balance their journalistic freedom and aim to do no harm to those around them. But it is up to journalists to start putting these ethical ‘codes’ into practice.
INTERVIEWEE
Name: Amber Schultz
Investigative Reporter at Crikey INQ
Contact: aschultz@crikey.com.au
PRIMARY SOURCES
http://junctionjournalism.com/2018/12/05/2018-ossie-award-winners/
Fisher, C, Park, S, Young Lee, J, Fuller, G & Sang Y 2019, Digital News Report, News & Media Research Centre, University of Canberra, Aus. (page 8)
https://www.meaa.org/meaa-media/code-of-ethics/
SECONDARY SOURCES
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-10/fact-checking-the-new-workplace-skill/10209210
https://dartcenter.org/content/working-with-victims-and-survivors
https://www.crikey.com.au/inq/media-roadkill/
Pearson, M & Polden, M 2019, The Journalist’s Guide to Media Law, Allen & Unwin, NSW, Aus. (pg 51)
