Why Aren't Journalists Sadder? (Part Two)

Writer39s note This is the second installment of a twopart column seeking to answer questions partially through the lens of differing explanations for the death of Kevin Carter about the degree to which covering difficult subject matter takes a toll on journalists Part one can be found hereAs was discussed in part one of this series there is no doubt that covering certain stories affects a person what Matt Rainey is referring to when he describes those emotional evenings driving home from the hospital39s burn unit after spending the day photographing Simons and Llanos However the same is no doubt true for other professions from policing to medicine many professions subject their practitioners to emotionally jarring environments It is not as if this is a phenomenon in any way unique to journalism as some of the proverbial loudest voices in the room have seemed recently to suggestWhen it comes to handling these environments I suppose that whether in journalism or say nursing one simply gets used to it For instance as a child I recall an elderly aunt of mine describing that when she was a nursing student she passed out while witnessing a childbirth for the first time But within a matter of weeks she barely batted an eye Read cynically this is not altogether unlike the answer a hardened criminal gives to quotHow did you do all those awful thingsquot when he replies quotIt was only hard the first timequot Detachment need not necessarily be an ideal for which to strive particularly in fields such as journalism where an empathetic eye can sometimes lead to better work However at the same time what is the alternative to at least a degree of detachment to developing some thicker skin To allow the subject of one39s journalism to consume youRainey believes that quotphotojournalists are generally very emotional people to begin with Compassion and empathy are at the heart of photojournalismquot Yet this was a starkly different answer from the one I received from Jeff Widener when I posed to him this same question in 2018 about the extent to which his journalism took an emotional toll on him Widener was the one to snap Tank Man during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989As Widener told me then quotTo tell you the truth I am drawn to these dangerous events even though they scare the hell out of me I am sure a shrink would have a field day with that but I am not the only newsperson out there who feels this way I guess there is an adrenaline rush in trying to capture images under dangerous situations and making it out alivequot So for him being in close proximity to the action appears to be one of the reasons he entered the field in the first place or at least why he remainedAs I discussed in part one commentators almost certainly were jumping to conclusions when they seemed to imply that Kevin Carter39s suicide was an occupational hazard of journalism an occupational hazard that potentially could affect any journalist covering difficult subject matter if he let it get the better of him Widener though indicated in that same interview quotI have never been depressed or suicidal though I have heard confessions from other photographers about it and some have actually gone through with itquot This leads one to suspect that this entire discussion is as much if not more about the journalist than the subjectDiscerning writers have noted the contrast between various writers39 worldviews and their daytoday happiness to this point there were the philosophical optimists nearcertain that through just the right amount of rationality and effort a veritable utopia could indeed be found on earth Yet some of these very philosophical optimists such as John Stuart Mill were downright miserable on a daytoday basis and in their personal lives All the while other writers with a more tragic view of the world and of human nature like Anton Chekhov hummed along rather cheerfully while they worked Tolstoy for instance considered Chekhov the man to be the epitome of gracefulness as well as a quotsimply wonderfulquot person in his demeanor Again it is often more a matter of the disposition the writer has than his subjectAs such it is probably not as simple as saying that if Carter had become a chef rather than a journalist he would still be alive Just the same one would be silly to seek to argue that his close proximity to so much heartache did not likely aggravate preexisting depressive tendencies As we know from Hornblum39s comments witnessing such things could have just as easily motivated another journalist to want all the more to live on to expose their taking place and to work to remediate themThe current crop of journalists particularly those at the household name outlets are rivaled now only perhaps by psychologists in the degree of their selffocus They seem endlessly to tweet about how hard it is to be a journalist as if journalists have a monopoly on suffering In doing so particularly for the ones who hammer away on keyboards far from war zones and tsunamis they trivialize the toll that reporting under true stress or adverse conditions can take If one is Kevin Carter watching children succumb to starvation or Anna Politkovskaya reporting from Crimea under known threats to her life that is of course another matter entirely The jury may still be out on the new generation of journalists however as for the old guard it seems as though few generalizations can be made when it comes to discerning if sorrow is a natural accompaniment to serious works of journalismClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet

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Why Aren't Journalists Sadder? (Part Two)

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Erich J. Prince

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