Tragic deaths as well as social and humanitarian crises enter our lives through the prism of multiple media channels. Journalists are expected to be able to report responsibly by relaying fair and impartial facts.
However, carried by the imperatives of the snapshot in the chaos inherent in a disaster, the transmission of information becomes fragmented, the analysis deficient. If one tolerates the insignificant parts of these continuous reports, it is less true of the coverage of the emotions of the victims and the motivations of the alleged culprit of the aggression.
Testimony of the victims
What is the usefulness and relevance for the public of measuring the intensity of the distress of a mother who has lost her child or of gauging the terror felt by an immediate witness of a traumatic event? It is not because we have the possibility of showing something that we must do it: the feelings of the victims are not a consumer good.
Journalism is more about a person’s story than the person. It is his role. Some testimonials thus generate more discomfort than empathy. The whirlwinds of images, fragments of interviews, strings of dull superlatives anesthetize as much as they amplify our reactions to this human experience unfolding before our eyes.
If heroic gestures touch us so much, it is perhaps because the rescuers show humility and humanity. This is also what should inspire us.
Images showing interpersonal violence are widely used in times of war for strategic purposes: this is often more political instrumentalization than journalism. On the other hand, their capture with the victims is more discreet and is not intimidating.
Some journalists – sincerely benevolent – justify their immodest microphone by claiming that their conversation with a victim could have the effect of a balm. Science proves them wrong: for two decades, it has been demonstrated that the hot testimony of victims does not protect them from an unfavorable psychological evolution. THE debriefing psychological has been replaced by an approach (psychological first aid) which prohibits this practice. If the French model has not followed this trend, early intervention is still carried out by a mental health specialist.
On the person who attacks
While the media has very little reliable and useful information to convey, it gives a lot of space to the person who has used violence. At best, it will go around in circles with a concerted misunderstanding and at worst, it will reinforce the inaccurate prejudice that violent crime is associated with mental health problems.
Instead of repeating over and over that it is too early to say, we should ban all microphones and all cameras for this person in the public square. Moreover, it is outside and in the public square that the individual who has committed an attack will have conveyed his inability to resolve an internal conflict. The denunciation of a gesture of great violence cannot coherently be supported by flamboyant media coverage. “The message is the medium,” said Marshall McLuhan.
Journalism had however well integrated the Werther effect, which had demonstrated the correlation between the mediatized suicide of a personality and the risk of suicidal contagion. Just because we can talk about it doesn’t mean we should.
Media governances are invited to redefine the framework of journalistic practices after a disaster or mass violence. Freed from the undue pressures of filling and thrill-seeking, people practicing grassroots journalism can then provide us with the ethically responsible reporting we expect of them.