05. 08. 2005

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A JOURNALIST AND A NEIGHBOUR

The basis for this report has been formulated in 18 points defining fundamental parameters of journalistic ethics. In any but the most superficial reading it is easy to understand that these are the parameters of humanity, common sense, honesty, fair play, tolerance and cool-headedness – parameters that every decent citizen should be familiar with (whatever his profession is), whenever he finds himself in a position to pass the news about something he has seen or heard to his neighbours, family or colleagues. Can we be better as journalists than we are as human beings? Is the huge amount of sensationalism, gossip, 'tabloidness', cruelty, basic instincts, a hunger for lynch and humiliation, finding pleasure in someone else's misfortune... just a mirror of those who write or the reflection of loyal readers who consume this kind of “aesthetics and ethics”. The background In circumstances of long-standing media orchestrated confusion and relativity surrounding distinctions between good and evil, patriots and traitors, criminals and heroes, lies and truth – it happened that a young man has been suspected of sexually abusing a three years old girl who died from the abuse. The news is shocking enough and there is no confusion in the media as to whetherthis is a crime or not, but it is evident that long-lost ethics can not be regained even after this kind of a shock. Let's go back to the question from the introduction: can we be better as journalists than we are as human beings? We can, because we are obligated by the journalistic ethics. No matter to what amount the parameters of this code are equal to the parameters that should be honoured by any decent citizen – citizens SHOULD obey these principles, but journalists MUST observe them. WHAT A RESPONSIBLE CITIZEN CAN DO, BUT A RESPONSIBLE JOURNALIST MUST NOT When a good citizen hears a news that a young man has sexually abused a three years old girl, he has the right to call this man a monster in the privacy of his own home. Journalists must take into account that everyone is innocent until pronounced guilty by a court of law (parameter 15). In a case when a journalist cares more about fulfilling the emotion of his potential buyer than about ethics, which is supposedly not well-paid, he will publish a front page with a picture of the suspect and a headline: “Look at him, Serbia: He Murdered a Child!” (Kurir) It is easy to imagine what a good citizen, commenting on the case, might tell his fellow traveler in a bus: “I would sentence him to death... Journalists must not abuse people's emotions nor their ignorance or inability to make a sound judgement and he must respect the right to privacy when reporting on tragedies, sufferings, pain, children, minors, diseases, family tragedies and indictees – as well as when giving their names and photographs, mentioning their innocent relatives or publishing their memoirs (parameter 13). So, no matter how much our hypotheticalcitizen might like it, a journalist must not (having in mind this dialogue in a bus) publish a headline: “Crime That Shocked Serbia. Death for the Monster!” (Kurir) or: “Shocked Citizens: Get Back the Death Penalty!” Which Serbia? Which citizens? What is the sample used for this research? (By the way, it is completely irrelevant what sample is used – do we want a rule of law or the law of the street?) Is it the sample like the one used in the poll conducted by “Glas”? We can read and hear the answers of passers-by to the question: “What would be your verdict for the MURDERER AND THE MOTHER?” A female pensioner, with a name and photograph, says: “... unfortunately, our law does not have an eye for an eye...” A female clerk is somewhat more radical: “... they should be f...... to death”. “Blic” goes farther than that, but closer. The paper has published comments of Ana Filipovic's mother (A.F. is believed to have known that her boyfriend was abusing her daughter): “... Now that the death penalty is revoked, they should tear both of them apart in jail”, says the grandma. Quite naturally, here's the headline: “Lynching for the Child Murderer” (Kurir) Readers are informed that prisoners in a Central Prison want to deliver an appropriatesentence themselves. Prison official are not reacting. There is an insider information that “the monster asked for meat meals”. (Which parameters of the code of ethics of the prison staff have been violated?) Someone has informed “Novosti” that “after the death of the child, the suspects came home and fell into a PEACEFUL sleep”, which naturally produced the headline: MONSTERS SLEEP PEACEFULLY. Who can say how peacefully they have slept? And be so convincing as to make “Novosti” believe this information? Journalists must not fall into a trap of sensationalism and must not publish unfounded accusations, libels, rumours and gossip, as well as fake letters or latter whose authors are unknown or impossible to identify (parameter 8). Neighbours of the suspect Malisa Jeftovic have a right to talk freely about the way he looked and behaved – neigbourhood ethics is a part of someone's personal morality and they are not under any obligation to take care about the life of their neighbour, Malisa's mother, after the publication of their statements. But “Blic” is bound by the parameter 8. Have the journalists turned a blind eye to it when they published Malisa's neighbours' statements? – “we always knew that he was a fool and abnormal since he was born, but we were shocked when we heard that he was a paedophile”. In the same article we could find the following: “... he's been beating his mother for years, said the neighbours IN ONE VOICE”. (By the way: whom did they inform during all these years that there was a woman who was being beaten by her son – why do we always think about these things only after the tragedy?) Even a good neighbour may ask himself a question: what kind of families did this young man and woman come from? But no matter how much he agrees with this neighbour, a good journalist must observe the parameter 11. Journalism must not make any distinctions based on ethnicity, language, religious denomination, race, sex, marital status, political orientation, profession, age, physical characteristics, ideological orientation and social origin. But “Nacional” didn't hesitate to publish: “according to unofficial information, the suspect women is a daughter of a retired police office and Jeftovic has been in JSO for a while.” “Glas” has published a headline: POLICEMEN RAPED A CHILD TO DEATH. The same paper has published an interview with a psychiatrist under a heading: WOLVES DON'T LET ANY SHEEP UNSLAUGHTERED. (Without knowing it, the psychiatrist has been answering the questions asked within the context of unreliable information that the suspect may have been a member of the JSO which had a wolf emblem. We'll never know what his answers might have been if he knew that the suspect worked in urban sanitation?) The suspect Malisa Jeftovic had never been a police officer, said the Ministry of internal affairs, but even if he had been, that would not warrant a headline, according to journalistic ethics. “Blic” informed citizens how the little girl's mother was “sitting and smoking cigarettes while her LOVER abused her little daughter in the woods”. From “Novosti”: “mother was procuring the girl to her boyfriend...” Good citizens read these headlines and evaluate them within their ethical system, whatever their profession. Ethics forces a lawyer to refuse to defend the monster while parents disown their own children (“the beast that was my daughter”, said the A.F.'s father). The parameter 1 says that news must be clearly separated from comments. We may add that a headline should not be a comment loosely based on the news. Consequently, if the suspect's mother says that he should be sentenced to the capital punishment IF IT IS ESTABLISHED that he committed the crime, then the headline of the interview can not possibly be: MOTHER CONDEMNS MURDER: MALISA SHOULD PAY FOR HIS CRIME. Parameter 18: Journalists must not hide their identity nor use dishonorablemethods to collect news, photographs and documents. An addition by this rapporteur: journalists must not falsely claim to be journalists. Dr Vesna Brzev will help us to understand the kind of ethics that binds journalists, doctors, lawyers – but not ordinary citizens. Olja Beckovic