Comments on: Doorstepping the bereaved

By: JC Skinner

JC Skinner — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 08:43:41 +0000

I said legally because I meant legally. Cemeteries are public places. So are the streets outside churches. Photographers are freely allowed to gather and work there as in any other public space.
I don’t know that it’s necessarily an invasion of privacy either. I attended a funeral some years ago that had press photographers show up. I had to be told afterwards. I hadn’t even noticed them. Two came, took pictures, and were gone in about five minutes.
As I said earlier, I don’t feel such pictures are needed to illustrate the news. But editors will continue to seek them and print them, because they believe the public wish to see them.
Sales tell them this.
If you want the practice of funeral photos to be ended, then firstly stop buying any paper that takes pictures at funerals (that would be all of them) and secondly write to the editors and tell them.

By: Sheesh

Sheesh — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 21:49:32 +0000

@JC Skinner:

“Legally, it is of course perfectly fine for photographers to gather outside a church or in a cemetery. So there is no invasion of privacy involved.”

I could see your point to a some extent before I read that comment. Did you mean purely from a legal standpoint? Surely you can see that it is an invasion of the family & friends’ privacy? Even if someone did wish to speak about their loss, how on earth can it be “no invasion of privacy” to photograph people at the church/graveside?

By: JC Skinner

JC Skinner — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:27:28 +0000

Oh, and let me give you an example of where the media didn’t contact the family and greatly ballsed up thereby:
There was a case in the North where a tabloid paper covered the inquest into the suicide of a young girl.
In the course of the inquest, reference was made to the girl’s diaries, which included many disturbing references to her own sister.
The paper duly reported that the girl had taken her own life after a tempestuous relationship with her own sister.
However, what had not been mentioned in open coroner’s court was the small but pertinent fact that the girl was suffering from a mental illness and experiencing paranoid delusions about her family, especially her sister, that were not true.
You can imagine the devastation in that family when they read in the paper that their other daughter had driven their disturbed child to her death.
If the journalist had taken the time to approach them, they might quickly have discovered that their story was not only incredibly insensitive, but also factually inaccurate.

By: JC Skinner

JC Skinner — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:12:29 +0000

@Wysiwyg: If I wanted to be a bollix about this, I’d point out that people don’t call the police for no reason, and therefore your anecdote contains more than a few concerning lacunae, such as what did the house resident do that warranted the police being called on them? Did they assault a journalist, perhaps? In short, I’ll suffice to say that I find your story, as you present it, to be implausible because it is so clearly an incomplete account.
@20: The line isn’t so easily drawn. If one, for example, ringfenced the media by law or guideline practice from contacting grieving direct family members (as they are barred from contacting witnesses during a trial) then you’ve got an erratic boundary.
Some people are detached from their families, but live alongside others who know them better. Students, for example. Your guideline would stop a journalist from contacting a student’s parents, but permit them to contact his live-in pregnant girlfriend.
Some people are closer to their next-door neighbour than they are to their own mother.
And as Mick and I both said earlier, some families very badly want to talk about their loss and their loved one.

By: Twenty Major

Twenty Major — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:05:08 +0000

How would you know that family members only have trite cliches to offer until you speak to them?

You’re speaking to them when they’re not really in a place to be speaking to strangers, if you see what I mean. What do you get beyond ‘X was a great person, we’re going to miss him’? Genuine question.

Neighbours, friends, colleagues etc can all give you a picture of a person. I’ve got no real problem with that. I just think that the immediate family’s privacy and grief should be respected.

As a reader of a paper, I already appreciate people will mourn without needing to see them do it.

I think most people do which is why photos (close-ups, crying mothers, children etc as opposed to generic crowd shots) are completely unneccessary.

By: WYSIWYG

WYSIWYG — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:01:00 +0000

I read this blog pretty much every day JC but rarely post comments. Today however, this post touched a nerve so I commented, believe me I am not looking for approbation for my comments and my “anecdote” as you so tactfully put it, is not one bit exaggerated. Facts are facts. I experienced it and seen it with my own eyes.

You can stick up for your journalist buddies all you want. I don’t know any journalists personally so I can only speak from my experience with that family and of the blatant disregard for their privacy after they were told again and again to leave. Anyways, that’s all I’m going to say on it.

By: JC Skinner

JC Skinner — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:00:05 +0000

How would you know that family members only have trite cliches to offer until you speak to them?
Often, as Mick O’Toole has said already, they have plenty of things to say that can be of major importance.
You simply cannot predict what they might have to say. In circumstances such as this week’s killing in Mayo, when Mick speaks to the neighbours to build up a picture of the deceased for his readers, he is answering the perhaps prurient interest of the public to know who it is that has died. But that’s the very definition of public interest right there.
And often people will want to put the public record straight as regards the deceased, or will want to pay tribute to them, or defend their character, or explain their circumstances, or any number of things that go beyond trite cliche.
As for pictures of funerals, I’m not fond personally. Legally, it is of course perfectly fine for photographers to gather outside a church or in a cemetery. So there is no invasion of privacy involved.
But I’ve never thought such pictures add to my understanding of a death. As a reader of a paper, I already appreciate people will mourn without needing to see them do it.
That’s something that is decided by editors and conducted by photographers, though.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone objecting about a journalist sitting at the back of a funeral service quietly taping the eulogy.

By: Twenty Major

Twenty Major — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 18:46:29 +0000

I’m not sure some trite clichés about what a great person someone was or how well loved they were from their family is in the public interest. If a family member has some kind of insight into what happened, then maybe, otherwise it’s just exploitation of grief, in my opinion.

What are your thoughts on pictures of people, grief stricken, at funerals then plastered all over a newspaper?

By: JC Skinner

JC Skinner — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 18:28:24 +0000

I think there is a disconnect here between perception and reality.
There’s a public perception that doorknocks are an unacceptable intrusion into grief. I think this stems from the awkwardness that people feel around someone who has been bereaved.
Having volunteered years ago with a charity that dealt with those bereaved by suicide, I’m aware that there is a general stigma to death (and more so to violent death, be it suicide, murder or otherwise) that keeps people away from the door.
As a result, bereaved people can feel further isolated. For many people who have been bereaved, the need to talk about their loss can be profound, and exacerbated by the sudden vanishing of their extended support network within the community.
There’s also a perception that journalists are ethical black holes, devoid of human sympathy, amoral compasses spinning towards the most sensationalist of angles possible.
I’ve always thought it ironic that of all industries to be most publicly misunderstood and to suffer a poor public image, journalism ranks among the highest.
There frankly isn’t a large cohort of press out there, at least not in this country, operating from a total lack of ethics.
In fact, any journalist of my acquaintance – and I know a few – is hypersensitive to the effects of what they write on anyone affected, be they cabinet minister or grieving granny.
One problem is the public depiction of journalism in popular culture. In any TV soap or movie, they’re invariably shifty creatures, sell-their-granny-for-a-story shysters. Perhaps the public come to expect this of the media, and in lieu of actually seeing what the media actually do and how they really work, assume that what is depicted in drama is what actually occurs.
It isn’t in my experience. I’m not in a position to question Wysiwyg’s anecdote about his/her experience. But I would say that it is at worst highly atypical of Irish journalists’ behaviour and more likely quite exaggerated and implausible.
There’s no doubt that some things that the media do are considered lacking in taste by others. Their coverage of inane and banal topics and people, often in sensationalist tones, is indeed irksome and is done, as has been suggested, to sell papers.
But when there is a genuine case of public interest, I believe it is legitimate for the media, if not requested to respect the privacy of a family, to approach them as they would anyone else in the professional pursuit of the facts.

By: Twenty Major

Twenty Major — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 17:06:08 +0000

I know dozens of them in Dublin alone. I work with them every day. There are only a few, less than a handful, that I would consider to be a bollox. And two of them are broadsheet reporters at that.

Look, let’s not turn this into another ‘Colin Coyle is a cunt’ thread.

Anyway, as I said in the blog post I’m more curious about why this has just become an acceptable thing for people to do than the people who do it.

Folk will do pretty much anything in the name of work/money.

And Michael, from your own blog:

A few days later, I was doing another doorstep, this time in Omagh. It was the family of young Deborah Cartwright, a teenager killed in the bomb. I teamed up with a British reporter for it: there was no point in both of us doing it separately. Her father, an RUC officer, was standing in the garden, his hands in his pockets, staring at the grass. I took the lead. Again, I asked if he would speak to us. He said no. I apologised and walked away, expecting the reporter with me to also retreat. However, as I was walking away, I heard her angrily exclaim to him: ` What? Not even a word?’ I didn’t wait to hear his reply. I got out of there as quickly as I could.

I don’t think anyone was suggesting all journalists/reporters were cunts, but people on here have had bad experiences in difficult situations with certain members of your profession.