What would you do if you saw a sick child that needed to go to hospital?  Her parents have no money for gas to take her there and you have a car with a tank full of gas.  Without a doubt, you would offer to take the baby and her parents to the emergency room.

But what if you are a reporter or a photojournalist and they are your subjects?

Our discussion this week is about ethics and ethical dilemmas.  As journalists, we will face an ethics issue at some point in our career if not one in every story we do.  It’s what we do in these situations that can define what kind of reporter (and person) we really are.  The most difficult part is making the decision in the moment, while the most important part is being able to look back on the decision and be able to justify it.   

The scenerio I started out with actually happened to Anne Hull, a writer at the Washington Post, which she wrote about in a short essay called "A Dilemma of Immersion Journalism" in the book "Telling True Stories."  She and the photographer knew that the parents of the child expected her to offer her car, but she also knew that if she did, it would ruin the story.  She was there to see how people on welfare and far below the poverty line coped with the issues that come up in life.  What ended up happening was that the father of the baby had to pawn his shotgun to his neighbor to get the money to fill up the car with gas to take the infant to the hospital.  THAT is the story.  

But how do we figure out where the line is?  When should we intervene?  One of the most heartbreaking pictures I’ve ever seen is the child in Sudan with the vulture.  Kevin Carter took the photo in 1993, and he won the Pulitzer for it.  He also received a lot of criticism for the photo, with editors and readers asking why he didn’t help the girl.  Should he have helped her?  Would that have been journalistically ethical?  I think that Carter could have helped the girl as long as he mentioned that in the caption.  In fact, I think it would have answered a lot of questions that the photo raised.  Transparency is key; I think that a lot of actions can become unethical if they are not disclosed.             

As journalists, especially visual journalists, we want our subjects to treat us as if we aren’t there.  But our very presence often affects the situation, no matter how invisible we become.  Our subjects expect us to help them if something drastic happens.  How do we become immersed in someone’s life without actually being a part of it?  I don’t think we’ll ever know the answer.

~Ariana van den Akker