A young radio reporter is coming to the end of his first month on the job. He’s just been approved to drive the radio station’s news car, which means he can now go out on stories and broadcast live from the scene. He’s very excited.

He looks out of the newsroom window and sees a thick plume of smoke rising from the east of the city centre. He alerts the news editor who agrees he should take the radio car, get as close to the scene as possible, and report live into the next bulletin at 4pm.

The reporter arrives at the scene at 3:50pm. He parks behind two fire engines at the corner of a building which is ablaze.

The reporter has 10 minutes before he has to go live into the bulletin. He tries to find someone for a comment, but all the firefighters are busy trying to control the flames, while the police are trying to control the crowd.

However, one of the engineers operating the fire engine pump will talk. When asked whether there are any casualties, he says “Not that we know of, but there are still people in the building.”

The reporter sees a group of people carrying items out of the burning tenements. He presumes they are trying to salvage what they can from the flames.

He lives in a similar part of the city and in similar accommodation. He feels sorry for them.

At that point he decides on the top line for his live report – that people are still in the building trying to salvage what possessions they can.

He hasn’t even considered that he could be at a crime scene where looters are stealing items as residents flee their burning homes.

He raises the radio car mast. The vehicle is new. It has the radio station’s logo plastered all over it in red, white, and blue. The reporter can see the car is attracting attention.

A group of men, some with their faces covered, gather round the vehicle. Three police officers approach and try to block their way.

By now the reporter is sitting in the radio car ready to broadcast. It’s one minute to the 4pm bulletin.

He leaves all four windows half-open to try to capture the sound effects of the chaos outside.

The 4pm news jingle starts to play.

The news reader announces that there is a major fire at a city centre tenement block. He then says, “We are now going live to our reporter on the scene.”

The light on the reporter’s microphone goes green. He’s live. He starts his report…

“The fire has now spread to four floors of this five-storey building. Dozens of firefighters are trying to contain the blaze. Residents are still in the building. Many are trying to salvage what they can from their burning homes. Working together they’re stacking their possessions on the street.”

One of the police officers, who had been protecting the radio car while the reporter was broadcasting, bangs on the window and shouts, “They’re looting, you’ve got to move, it’s not safe here.”

Emotions and assumptions take over

What we have here is a situation where an inexperienced reporter, faced with a breaking news story, is expected to report live from the scene with little knowledge of what is really going on.

That is a common situation.

But the reporter has been carried away with the excitement of the event, and, in the absence of any credible information, and with no time for proper news-gathering or fact-checking, relies solely on his own emotions and assumptions.

And that is not good.

The fact that he lived in a similar inner-city area meant that he was unable to be objective; he immediately assumed those gathering possessions were similar to his own neighbours.

His emotions were high when he thought they were salvaging what they could. He made a false assumption and that polluted his report.

The story he had built in his mind from the moment he arrived at the scene was wrong. Not only was it wrong, but it was missing the importance of the event.

He was witnessing rioting and looting, not local residents working together to salvage what they could from their burning homes.

In such situations reporters must detach themselves from events, broadcast what they see, and avoid any assumptions.

If they are unable to find out what is actually going on from a reliable source, they should offer a situation report about what they can see in front of them.

There was enough eye-witness material to fill a 30-second report without adding guesswork.

Guesswork, assumptions, and emotionally charged observations are not part of breaking news reporting.

The report should have been limited to describing the flames, the smoke, the number of fire engines, the size of the crowd, and the number of police at the scene.

The reporter’s mistake was letting his imagination take over.

He was broadcasting false information to the station’s listeners.

This was before social media, but in today’s age of Facebook and Twitter, such an error could lead to a rapid spread of misinformation which would take on a life of its own as raw emotion and ill-informed reaction is added.

Lessons from this scenario

• A breaking news reporter’s job is to describe what is happening at the scene, you are not there to interpret without evidence. If you have facts that are sourced and verified, you should include them.
• It doesn’t matter what you think might happen next. Guesswork about the future has absolutely no value.
• You must avoid all assumptions when compiling a report. Assumptions are fine when you are trying to work out what the story is during the research stage, but they then must be verified or discarded during the fact-checking process – they have no place in live situation reports.
• Adjectives and adverbs have little value in live breaking news reporting. The facts are strong enough on their own. The audience doesn’t need your subjective take on things, or your own personal value judgements.

Related modules

Accuracy – scenario

Accuracy in journalism

How to avoid make-believe journalism

Photojournalism and ethics

The post Emotional assumptions – scenario first appeared on Media Helping Media.

In this scenario we look at how a journalist should act when they witness a tragedy unfolding and have to decide whether to help, or to stand by and report.

The scenario also looks at how senior editorial managers could, and probably should, support their journalists working in difficult conditions.

Becoming part of the story

Imagine you are a local radio news reporter working in a city whose football team has qualified for a major European final.

Your editor holds a planning meeting a month before the game. Three sports reporters are sent to provide commentary and gather interviews, while you are assigned to cover the news angles.

The brief is to travel with the fans, stay with them in the city where the match is being played, mingle with them at all times, and file regular reports on the atmosphere before, during and after the game.

You are also asked to gather enough material in order to produce a half-hour documentary to be broadcast in the station’s news and current affairs programme a week after the game.

You arrive in the European capital, where the game is being staged, a day early to soak up the atmosphere.

On the morning of the game, the fans invite you to join in a football match with the opposition fans in the street close to the stadium. The fans are enjoying themselves. You record some of the atmosphere and a short piece for your programme. You find a phone box to send a 40-second news report on the build-up to the match.

At 4pm the police usher the fans into the stadium – more than three hours before the kick-off.

It’s cramped, the stadium is in a poor state. The concrete terracing is crumbling. The barriers are unsafe.

The fans become bored. Fireworks are thrown. They start to taunt each other either side of a thin wire fence separating the two sets of supporters. It starts to buckle under the pressure.

The police move in. Some in the crowd try to escape, others surge forward. The fence collapses, then a wall. Fans are crushed under the weight of the concrete. You hear screaming.

Many fans are trying to exit the terracing as more police arrive. You pass the wall which has fallen. Fans from both teams are trying to dig people out of the rubble. Some beckon to you to help them.

What should you do?

1. Help those who are trying to rescue the injured fans.
2. Try to capture some of the noise for your programme and record a situation report.
3. Keep moving, you need to find a telephone in order to contact the news desk.

Suggested response

Reporters are often caught up in events. Most of the time we are just witnesses to incidents which we observe and report.

Occasionally, what we are seeing could be a matter of life and death. We have to make a decision, sometimes split-second, on whether it’s more important to report on the news, or whether we can offer assistance and help save lives.

It might be possible to do both, but sometimes the journalist becomes part of the story, making reporting difficult. In those cases their news priorities might have to come second.

Of course, each case has to be judged on its merits. In this particular case the reporter decided that his immediate job was to assisted fans and later paramedics in the rescue operation (and got hit with batons by police who misunderstood his motives).

He knew that his colleagues in the commentary box would be able to report on the unfolding scenes below them, and that the newsdesk would be supplied with updates – if not the first-hand experiences he was going through.

And he also knew that he might get reprimanded for not finding a way to file a live report about what was happening. But in that moment he had to decide.

He was still able to file a report three hours later about what he had witnessed that day (the only eye-witness account of what happened on the terraces to be broadcast), and he was still able to complete his documentary.

But he wasn’t first with the news, despite being the closest journalist to the tragedy that was unfolding.

Sadly, 39 people died that day; 600 were injured.

Reaction

In the scenario set out above the reporter’s actions were appreciated by his managers both locally and nationally. Not once was he reprimanded for his failure to update the newsdesk.

Three messages of support are embedded below.

These are important, and a reminder for today’s senior editorial managers, because they show that those who manage the news understand the decisions reporters have to make, and the issues they often face, during the course of their newsgathering.

Image of memorial stone at the top of this scenario is by Rodhullandemu and is released via Creative Commons BY-SA.

The post Covering a tragedy – scenario first appeared on Media Helping Media.