Errors of Judgement in Reporting the MH17 Tragedy

Journalism is often called the news business – the gathering, processing and delivering of important and interesting information and further developments or follow-up stories by newspapers and broadcast media. It is undeniably and inextricably entangled in that giant, whirling entity often referred to as the media. The media, with all their idiosyncrasies often race to be the first at the scene of a story to fulfil the need to know of the public. The situation was no different with the violent shooting down of MH17. Malaysians were simply not ready for this tragedy. Journalism does not prepare anyone to catalogue the human drama arising from the rarest and weirdest of human tragedies such as this. The crash site of flight MH17 was like the set of a horror story, except that movies are never allowed to show what the journalists saw over that weekend. No matter what the situation, coverage of the news needs to be ethical. Foreign and local journalists alike were eager to cover the tragedy. Some were driven by enthusiasm, the magnitude of the story and the hunger for the truth. Nevertheless, some steered from being ethical and made serious errors of judgement. While presenting Sky’s lunchtime coverage of the flight MH17 disaster, Colin Brazier stooped down to look at a piece of debris. It was a child’s suitcase. He put his hand inside and lifted out a water bottle and a set of keys. As he did so his mental circuitbreaker finally engaged and he apologised instantly on-air for what he was doing. Some were too proud to admit their mistakes and had their news agencies do it for them; such was the case of Dutch current affairs show EenVandaag, which apologised after its reporter Caroline Van Den Heuvel picked up and read from a diary of one of the Malaysian crash victims on flight MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. The actions of the Malaysia Gazette crew in eastern Ukraine when its chief reporter was filmed using a stick to poke at and turn over what appears to be a body part of an MH17 victim, might well be one of the most unconscionable acts at the crash site thus far. Good journalism requires many elements and empathy is one of them; so is understanding the boundaries of decency and taste.