What would you have done? Ethics are real. They affect beings who breathe and grieve. On our trip to the Arizona Republic, I met columnist E. J. Montini. I had been tipped off that he had been a dissenting voice in the campaign to place
martyred reporter Don Bolles' car in the Newseum. Bolles was investigating a story and had gone to meet a source at the Clarendon Hotel. The source never showed and when Bolles began driving away, six sticks of dynamite blew a hole through the floor of his Datsun. He died eleven days later leaving a wife and seven children. One of those children was featured in Montini's May 1, 2008 column.
http://localsearch.azcentral.com/spcatId=&aff=1100&searchkeyword=&searchcategory=*&azcHomeSearchButton=&keywords=Bolles%27+daughter+relives+horror+of+June+2%2C+1976&address=&x=15&y=11
I would not have remembered this case if I had not seen that car in the Newseum on a field trip with my students a few weeks ago. Plus, I don't think I thought about the families until after I talked to Mr. Montini. Now, however, I have a visceral reaction to this like I did at the Bodies exhibit.
Kennedy student Niles Bates took this photo. You can see the power of the blast. If your family member had been killed in this event, you might be upset that people would "gawk" as daughter Frances Bolles has said. On the other hand, as a teacher, my students saw this as real, that reporters can be in serious danger trying to get at truth and indeed, be heroic. I am sure that Bolles did not want to go out like this. He put tape on the hood of his car to prevent this sort of thing. He was careful. But it happened. Now what do we do with the evidence? What do you think?
Joanna Greer
John F. Kennedy High School
Silver Spring, Md.
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For those seeking more information, here's a link to The Arizona Republic's Web site devoted to the Bolles case.
ReplyDeleteSteve Elliott
Arizona State University
Phoenix
I am also torn on this issue. Similarly, when I was interning at a high school a few years ago, I was given the task of escorting the class of seniors to a pre-prom assembly on drunk driving. I was not expecting a slide show of pictures of real wrecks and footage from crash sites. The photos included pictures of bodies that had been burned and mangled by the various accidents. The assembly seemed to be effective in scaring the kids that horrific things can happen when you are not driving responsibly, though in the back of mind I was thinking: what if someone's family saw these pictures? People were informed by the presentation, but also it could do a lot of harm to those close to the incidents.
ReplyDeletePeople are naturally drawn to disastrous things, but where do you draw the line between gawking and informing? If in that situation, I don't think I would be able to put evidence out there for the public to see, informative or not. Write about it, talk about it, discuss it, but I don't think it's appropriate to allow people to view it as they might a movie prop.
Ashley Barnes
Bel Air High School
Bel Air, Md.
I thought about this issue when the photography session were going on. When exactly do you stop being a journalist and start being a Paparazzi? Where is the line between reporting news (getting the shot) and creating news (Diana or the story about the drowning person who got their picture taken as they went down)?
ReplyDeleteIt is an ethical question, one that may become increasingly valid as we move into more available technology. I think Seinfeld covered this issue as well.
On the other hand this was a journalist who risked his life for a story, and like Woodward and Bernstein (All the President's Men), it is a story every citizen should hear.
Adam Haller
Northwestern High School
Baltimore, Md
I thought about the railroad cars at the Holocaust Museum or slavery implements. It must be a whole other experience to see these on display if they affected you or your relatives or your people. Somehow these displays don't feel gratuitous to me but like essential knowledge. Is it different to me because the victims were many and anonymous? Or that I didn't know them personally? Or that they were longer ago? I don't know. Where is the line? I know I crossed it about mid-way through the Bodies Exhibit. I didn't know that those plastinated cadavers might have been prisoners from China and who knows what that could have meant from the prisoners' point of view? Prior to this I believed they had donated their bodies to science. Museums must have a policy on this that I am unaware of and that is a story possibility. Who decides these things? I am glad it isn't me.
ReplyDeleteI checked in with my sister by phone today, and after watching the violence in Iran in the mainstream media all week, she said that she is sickened by the graphic material available to the general population that is made easy because of cell phones with both still and video cameras in them. She wanted to know, "Does it sicken you, like it sickens me, that everyone is whipping out cell phones and video cameras at every death, execution, and other act of violence?"
ReplyDeleteWhile I feel that artifacts like Bolles's car and the Holocaust railroad cars can help drive home certain points, things such as footage of a journalist's beheading or a civilian gunned down on the street are not things to be gawked at. Certainly, the story can be told in less graphic ways that, in their sublety, will be more powerful.
Kye Haina
Kamehameha Schools Maui
Pukalani, Hawai'i