Why journalists interview grieving families after tragedy
Of the many human qualities required to be a great journalist — curiosity, carefulness, persistence, diligence, intelligence, integrity — it is empathy that ranks almost top of my list, second only to the curiosity that powers all great journalism.
The dictionary defines empathy as the ability to understand the feelings of others, to share another’s feelings or experiences by imagining what it would be like to be in that person’s situation.
The empathetic journalist can imagine another’s plight and pain, and in so doing, takes a critical step toward helping readers understand the plight and pain of another. The empathetic journalist creates journalism that allows us to walk another’s path, thus creating something more powerful than journalism — human connectedness.
When the destruction and distress of great tragedy strikes a community as happened on the sunny early afternoon of April 23, when 10 people were killed and 16 injured after a 25-year-old man plowed a van into the path of pedestrians on a Toronto sidewalk, empathy mattered much.
For those Star reporters tasked with the responsibility of reporting on those who lost their lives, those who were injured and those who witnessed the carnage, being empathetic meant bearing witness to great grief and communicating such depth of emotion to readers.
As you can imagine, this is no easy job. I can tell you from my own experience as a young reporter that there is no more difficult job in journalism than talking with grieving families following the unexpected deaths of loved ones. Ironically, this is a task most often assigned to young journalists, a rite of passage from journalistic innocence to experience.
I can also tell you that I will never forgot any one of the families who invited me into their homes, shared photographs of their loved ones, told stories of love and loss. Writing the stories of those individuals lost to murders, car crashes and other random and heartbreaking events seems even now to have been a privilege in that those who grieved allowed me — briefly — to enter their circle of grief and to share it with our wider community.
I know some readers question why journalists do this at all. Why do we seek out grieving moms and dads, brothers and sisters, friends and acquaintances when such death occurs? Why do journalists intrude on such pain? Don’t the grieving command a measure of privacy?
“A lot of people think a reporter must be heartless to knock on a door and to ask for a picture,” wrote a Ryerson School of Journalism student to her journalism professor (Don Gibb) more than 20 years ago after her first experience talking with a grieving family — a mom whose 7-year-old son was killed while riding his bike and being hit by an impaired driver. “Nothing could be further from the truth.
“It really is gut-wrenching. I don’t know what it is like to lose a son or a daughter. I can only imagine the enormous pain a parent must go through,” said this empathetic young journalist in the heartfelt memo I have saved in my files since the 1990s.
Journalists believe strongly that the stories of the victims of such tragedies should be told, that in sharing the stories of lives lost, we pay tribute to a life, rather than just report a death.
Though difficult to report and hard to read, these stories — reported and written with empathy — aim to show us that victims are real people. I would hate to be part of a community where such death is just another statistic.
Understandably, not all grieving families want to talk with journalists, and beyond asking and explaining why they are asking at the outset, I believe journalists should respect the wishes of those who make clear they do not want to talk to reporters about their loss. That’s also part of being empathetic.
In all such cases, great care — and empathy — is required. On this, the Star’s policy calls for compassion and makes clear that those experiencing tragedy or grief command a special sensitivity: “Intrude on private moments of grief only when the public has an overriding and justifiable need to be informed,” it states.
I am glad that through the Star’s empathetic reporting I now know at least something about the lives of those 10 human beings lost in the van rampage: Renuka Amarasingha, Andrea Bradden, Geraldine Brady, Sohe Chung, Anne Marie D’Amico, Chul Min “Eddie” Kang, Ji Hun Kim, Betty Forsyth, Munir Najjar and Dorothy Sewell. Details about their living reported through the Star stay with me, creating a deeper shared experience of the extent of this tragedy.
And I am grateful for those empathic reporters who told these victims’ stories and helped us all to greater understanding of lives that mattered.