I am wondering about the ethics of reporting on
violence. Yesterday two bombs went off
toward the finish line of the Boston Marathon creating chaos and killing 3
people – 2 adults and a child – likely all bystanders. Many, including atheletes were injured,
losing legs and sustaining serious injuries of many types.
The CBC cancelled almost all other news and devoted every
program on radio and TV since then to covering the aftermath of the event. Since real news in such events comes very
slowly, they endlessly repeated the same
information. A reporter gave us a
snippet of information and Evan Soloman repeated it word for word as if he was
giving us new information. This went on
and on for hours.
As they found new witnesses, they had each person recall
exactly what they experienced and how they felt minute by minute until there
was nothing to add.
What is their objective here? Is the point to put every member of the
audience in the exact position of someone who was there, experiencing the
bomb. Do we want the whole American and
Canadian populations to experience the violence vicariously? Is the repetition designed to induce in us a
condition of PTSD? Post traumatic Stress
Disorder? As we live and relive the same
traumatic moments in time?
There is no question that this was a tragic event and has
put people and security systems around the world on alert. We have no idea who did this or why? Was it an act of terrorism? A political act? Or the act of a mad person – or several mad
people? This information will no doubt
surface in time. We all want to feel
compassion for those who were directly affected. But is this a reason to traumatize the whole
of North America on a personal and emotional level?
And does this mean that the fact that the stock market is in
free fall, job growth is weak to non-existent and there continues to be a
growing disparity between the rich and the poor are issues that have just gone
away? Where is the balance in
reporting. Why aren’t some of these
resources being put into serious research on what is happening to our
economy? Why is our economy so dependent
on commodities? Why is the whole energy
of the CBC devoted to this incident instead of covering issues of real
importance to Canadians? What greater
reward can you give the people who committed this terrible crime?
