As budding journalists, we are always taught to report our story with no bias and no interference. Our main priority is to tell the people the story — our own feelings, thoughts and opinions forgotten. But in the wake of the earthquake in Haiti, as reporters from around the world rush to chronicle the chaos from the disaster area, audiences are seeing an interference from correspondents and journalists such as Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
So where is the line?
Where do we stop being unbiased reporters, unaffected by the bodies and scenes of bloodied children, and start being compassionate human beings, shocked and saddened by the natural disaster that has taken place in this impoverished country? How do we know when it’s okay to step away from the pen and step into the story?
The images of orphaned children, dead bodies and injured survivors are rampant across front pages of newspapers and the Internet. Recently, while reporting in Haiti for CNN, AC 360 host Cooper was filmed putting his camera down and pulling a child with a gushing head wound to safety, going so far as to lift the child and hand him over to an American fighting off looters behind a barricade. Similarly, Gupta, an American neurosurgeon and regular correspondent for CNN, has been filmed stepping away from the microphone and stepping back into scrubs.
Both men have been praised as heros by the average Joe, but the question has risen of whether their actions and the subsequent airing of their footage were OK.
What seems to be the general agreement among comment fields on blogs and online articles is that the ethics of being a good human being trumps journalism ethics 101. The comments on Cooper’s blog all praise him as a “kind” and “generous man” whom the Haitian people are lucky to have in their country reporting on the earthquake and “saving lives.” LIkewise, Gupta is also being thanked for his eagerness to jump into the medical crisis, rushing into medical tents and singlehandedly running a medical clinic after Belgian doctors fled the scene for security reasons.
But is what they did OK?
If my opinion means anything (and at times, I like to think it does), I would say yes, Cooper and Gupta jumping in to save lives was the best decision they could have made in their individual situations.
The whole purpose of a journalist remaining completely objective is so they don’t influence the story. Should a journalist purposefully sabotage an event to create a story?
Absolutely not. But helping a small child who was hit over the head by a cement block, blood gushing from his wound, his legs unable to support his weight and no aid in sight is not unethical because the reporter would not be affecting the outcome of the story. The looters are still robbing stores, cement blocks are continuing to be thrown off rooftops and the general chaos of the scene has not been disrupted. Should Cooper have stood by instead and captured on film this young boy possibly dying only to go to his comfortable hotel room, report the story to CNN and fly home without helping?
And what about Gupta? The man is a licensed neurosurgeon who has posted on his Twitter that he is a “reporter, but a doctor first.” Does his medical interference in any way lessen the amount of survivors in need of care? Or does his simultaneous medical interference and reporting simply give the world a first hand account of a situation in which all are uniquely united? Journalists are meant to give a first-hand account of a situation and remain objective in the process but what is there to remain objective about when there is a natural disaster? Whose side are we supposed to take? Mother Nature’s?
The devastating circumstances in Haiti are not the result of a political war. What Gupta and Cooper did was noble, and I, for one, commend them for their actions. This doesn’t mean that Brian Williams or any other correspondent in Haiti should dramatically step in and save any life they stumble upon, it just means that Cooper and Gupta saw a situation in which they could be of assistance and acted accordingly.
Then there is the even stronger debate of Cooper and Gupta’s decisions to air their individual actions on television.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, journalism ethicist Bob Steele said that networks appear to be attempting to capitalize on the interventions of their journalists. This may be so, but wouldn’t withholding their footage elicit a negative response from the public who feel like they may have been lied to? Admittedly, the image of the “Silver Fox” wearing a form-fitting gray shirt effortlessly lifting an injured child to safety is good press but I also believe that the videos are helping to bring the story of Haiti back to the states.
So how do you draw the line between being an unbiased reporter, unaffected by the bodies and scenes of bloodied children, and being a compassionate human being? It’s a question journalists and reporters wrestle with everyday, and like most ethical questions, there isn’t a straightforward answer. The only thing we can do is be honest about our actions and report every situation as it is. Cooper, Gupta and the other correspondents stepped in to give water to survivors or bandage up a wound, stepped away from the stoic robot mode we’re taught to stay in and acted rationally in a time of most need.