h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The body was that of a 22 year old who disappeared after a night out last week. He'd been celebrating his birthday and looks as though he stumbled into the marina and drowned. The body was found by some kids. "Welcome to the real world".
Worse than that, last night the bodies of a father and two young children were found in a fume filled car. It looks as though he'd killed himself and his kids because of a bitter custody battle. Suicide is a selfish option but at least it hurts no one else physically. But to take your own life and those of your children is a cowardly act. I don't pretend to understand the desperation that drove him to those lengths but surely things can't be that bad.
The mother has been sedated. But when she awakes from the fog nothing will have changed for her.
And how do journalists feel about such tragedy? In a strange and cynical way we are hardly affected at all. Objectivity is more than just balance it is the pole that we reach out with to touch the world.  

Just how do journalists retain their objectivity? When you are working with the general public, and you get to hear first hand
the highs and lows of life. It has to affect you in some way. You are a person with feelings otherwise you would not be able to do your job of reporting such incidents.. Especially those affecting life and death. I know when I read reports of suicide, I feel very sad, that a person would feel depressed enough to kill themselves. But when they take the life of a child or children as well, that I will never be able to understand.To me that is horrific.To harm a defenceless child to me is the worst thing one human being can do to another.

Sorry to take so long to reply!

Interesting job? Objectivity? Well, journalism in the most cynical sense is about putting templates over life. This is a good story for X,Y and Z reasons. The old cliche is that if a dog bites a man then that's no story but if a man bites a dog then it most certainly is a story. You don't often get wrapped in a story - and that is sad. The very wat journalism works allows us to put distance between the even and the way it is reported. I suppose it's no different for doctors or pathologists. You don't become desensitised you just have working practices that keep you apart, uninvolved. Of course it doesn't always work - colleagues of mine who reported on the Omagh bombing or the Lockerbie disaster were amazingly affected the scale of the tragedies.

I am just pleased to hear from you, I thought you were perhaps on shift work.
Your description of putting templates over life is interesting. I can see how you can do that.
When such tragedies as Lockerbie occur, how could a person cover a story like that and not be affected.
You are human beings with feelings. I realise that to do your job, you have to remain detached to a certain extent though.
Actually being there, close to the tragedy, is far different from seeing it reported on the TV or in the local newspaper.
Today I am upset about the tragedy and loss of lives, that is happening now in Turkey. I feel for them all.
But to actually be there and see it, and for it to physically touch me, is far far different story.

The best foreign correspondents are those who use the way they are affected by disaster to report as honestly and accurately as possibly.
The difficulty is this - if a two year child from your town is molested and killed that is without doubt an appaling tragedy and I think we can all as human beings empathise and feeling the terror. But when 40,000 people are killed in a foreign country, how do you report the scale of the tragedy? The greater the distance from the media then the bigger the tragedy has to be in order for it to be news. If a two year old child is killed in Turkey then it's not news n Canada. If 40,000 children are killed then it is. If one child is killed in Turkey and the murderer is, say, the President of the country then it's news in Canada or anywhere else in the world. What I'm saying is that human suffering isn't always the way in which we judge news. And that's why journalists are so cynical. I once say an amazing map of the world where scale was determined by the importance of each country in terms of news value to Britain. Britain was, of course, huge, as was America, not Canada. India was like a tiny peninsula and the mass of Africa little bigger than France. It says something very worrying doesn't it? For a good explanation of the trivialisation of news, check out www.nymag.com/critics/view.asp?id=2355 (I'm sorry I don't know how to mark a hyperlink in my text)

Okay so I'm replying to myself but I THINK I've worked out to hyperlink. So here goes. ARTICLE</ LINK> Hopefully that works.

Argh not quite. Try this Link</ LINK>

Hi, First of all I want to tell you that your link WORKED It is a good article and I am going to go back to it a bit later.When I have done with H2G2.For today anyway.
I am not as good as you at putting my thoughts down, but everything you say makes a lot of sense to me. We have an Indian saying here. It says 'Never Judge Me...Until You Have Walked 10 miles In My Moccasins'
I know that until you have had the experience of actually being touched by a tragedy personally, it is very hard to empathise.
Until you have had the experience of nursing some-one through Cancer or any other fatal illness, you cannot possibly know
the tradgedy and heartbreak that is there. Nor any of the feelings you will experience when there is an empty space left within your heart. Life goes on, but it will never be the same again. it goes on, but it is different. My heart still breaks every time I hear the death toll rising for the poor people in Turkey who have lost everything including homes and loved ones..

Hi..Me again. I find the idea of the map you told me about intriguing.
Is it anywhere on the Internet?? I would love to see it.