Deadline reporting: terrorism on September 11.

Abstract

As the eyes and ears of the community, journalists must cover disasters--natural and man-made. Yet it's difficult to teach students how to cover a tragedy or how to write a story under harrowing circumstances in the classroom setting, where discussion is theoretical and reactions can only be imagined. September 11th presented an opportunity to convey a lesson in reporting and writing that might stay with my students for years to come. But I hesitated to take that opportunity. Were my students ready? Was I?

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On September 11th, I was scheduled to teach a weekly class in Deadline Reporting to the graduate students in the journalism program at Concordia. An hour before the noontime class, a handful of students stood outside my office door. I'm a native New Yorker, transplanted to Canada in 1990, and I'd shed some tears in private that morning already, unable to reach my own family members in Manhattan. When I came to the door to greet my students, my eyes, I'm certain, mirrored the same shock, uncertainty and numbness that their eyes carried. They wanted to know if there would be a class. At that moment, I really didn't know. The director of the journalism department told me I didn't have to teach if I didn't feel up to it. I still hadn't made contact with my family at that point, and was particularly worried about my sister, who worked near the financial district. And, underneath the worry, I had sentimental feelings. I was married in Tower One of the World Trade Center in Windows on the World. Now, the memory of that unusually warm Saturday night in November, when a massive New York traffic jam almost made me late for my own wedding, played over and over in my mind.

Should I teach? Could I teach? And if I did teach, what would I teach? I had planned to have a young reporter from Canadian Press (CP) talk about her own experiences reporting on deadline in the second half of the class. I'd set up the event as an assignment, whereby the students would "cover" her talk and then immediately exit the classroom to write a story on deadline. Now, with the magnitude of unfolding events, the topic of Deadline Reporting seemed at once particularly pertinent yet strangely irrelevant. How could I ask students to fully concentrate on a speaker when world events were so distracting? And how could I ask them to write up the talk after class, when they, like everyone else, would want to focus on the events into which we were all plunged that day? Another teacher in the department, perhaps sensing my agitation, diverted my attention momentarily from my own dilemma by telling me about new classroom space that the department had acquired. We walked down four flights of stairs to check out the now empty classroom and determine its feasibility for a class of twenty. The whole excursion took only fifteen minutes, but leaving my worry beads for even a short time made me feel better. The outing clinched my decision. I would teach. I reasoned it would help me feel less powerless if I was in the classroom trying to do something.

But what? Should I carry on with my planned lesson? Should I alter some of it and keep the rest? Should I scrap it all and do something completely different? Should I cancel the speaker? Emotions were running sky high, mine as well as my students, and they were clearly looking at me for direction. I decided to abandon my own lecture that day and to proceed with the speaker at the top of the class. I managed to reach her on her cell phone and ask her to come early, which she was able to do. In the classroom, before introducing the speaker, I told my students not to worry about writing a story off the talk. I wanted to relieve them of that burden and let us all simply listen. The speaker happened to be extremely engaging, and the students paid rapt attention. Like me, they seemed both to welcome the distraction she provided and to relate to her as a young person who'd achieved considerable success in a field they might like to pursue. They had many questions after the presentation. Once the questions were answered, I gave the students a break, during which I struggled with the question of whether to give the class a deadline assignment that day as I normally would. As a rule, they would be asked to cover a specific speech or a press conference, events that could be built in to a course outline and events that had a predictable beginning, middle and end.

Now I saw the potential for a powerful learning experience about Deadline Reporting under conditions that had no predictability whatsoever. Yet I wondered, at the same time, if I'd be pushing the students too far if I went ahead with a plan that was beginning to hatch in my brain. As a journalism professor in a workshop class, I wear two hats. I'm a teacher, but I'm also an editor. Wearing my editor's hat that afternoon, I knew that an unusually high number of reporters in newsrooms around North America, and perhaps around the world, would be working on one story that day and one story only: a story related to September 11th. Not only reporters who covered foreign affairs or politics or local government. Even reporters who covered sports, business or entertainment would be slanting their stories to reflect the grave events that had transpired. I knew, too, that unusual circumstances, as difficult as they may be, often push reporters to produce their finest efforts. The students were expecting to write a story off the talk by the CP reporter that day, but often in the field of journalism, what we expect to happen does not. That unpredictability is one of the elements that make the profession so exhilarating, so demanding and so challenging.

When the students returned to class, I started the second part of the session by relating several difficult deadline experiences of my own. I began with my first experience covering a major disaster, the mid-air collision of a jumbo jet and a small plane over a residential area in San Diego. Until that event, I'd never seen a dead body except in a funeral home, and, in speaking with witnesses who lived a block or two from where the plane had gone down, it marked the first time I'd interviewed people who had likely suffered trauma (although, at the time, I wouldn't have labeled it that way because in the 1970s, trauma wasn't widely discussed in newsrooms). I then recounted to the class several other instances in my career that involved covering harrowing events under stringent deadlines: a bloody prison riot in New Mexico in which guards and prisoners died; a school shooting spree at a Montreal university that left 14 young women dead; the crash of a Swissair flight in the waters off the Nova Scotia coast.

Most veteran reporters have little or no formal training in how to deal with victims of accidents, disasters or violence. In the past, neither journalism schools nor professional newsrooms have advised fledgling reporters how to comprehend trauma, how to understand its effects on victims, and how to deal with it wisely as a professional journalist. It's a glaring gap that has only lately come to the fore in journalism circles due to several factors. Journalism educators William Cote and Roger Simpson highlight these factors in their book "Covering Violence: A Guide To Ethical Reporting about Victims & Trauma" (Columbia University Press, 2000). In the wake of September 11th, the authors appear particularly prescient in having identified the coverage of violence as a key issue with which editors and reporters must grapple. They note that with the advent of round-the-clock news coverage, not to mention online ventures that require constant updating, some practitioners of journalism have not dealt kindly with victims of trauma. That became horribly apparent in the feeding frenzy that ensued after such major disasters such as the downing of a plane over Lockerbie, Scotland, the school shootings in Jonesboro and at Columbine High School, and the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.

News organizations, according to the authors, realize that violence sells, and the result is that sometimes, reporters and photographers, driven by demanding editors, show a blatant lack of compassion when covering tragic events. The authors point to an unstated policy at some television stations that goes: "If it bleeds, it leads." They discuss at length in their book the inherent flaws in a fast-food mentality that prods writers, broadcasters and photographers to act in ways that don't always keep the victim in mind. Not only have some journalists offended the communities into which they've descended, but they've also turned off many viewers and readers. No doubt journalists must cover traumatic events. They are the eyes and ears of the community. But the way they carry out their mission is at issue, according to the authors. "Do No Harm" is the physician's motto, and, the authors argue, it should also be the motto of the journalist as he or she proceeds to cover a tragic circumstance. Some journalists do keep that motto in mind, and to illustrate how journalists have dealt compassionately with victims, the authors select for inclusion in the book a number of stellar stories and photos that have appeared in newspapers, accompanied by the writer or photographer's explanation of the methodology used in covering the traumatic situation with consideration and empathy.

On September 11th in my classroom, I saw an opportunity to explore the physician's motto--and much more--with my students. I didn't do it as clearly or as well as I would have liked, but through that experience, I learned that such an exploration must become part of my teaching repertoire, with or without dire circumstances presenting themselves so suddenly. Since almost every journalist will be sent out at some point in his or her career to cover a terrible happening in which loss of life will occur--whether due to such natural causes as an earthquake or a flood, or man-made circumstances such as a bombing or a plane crash--a journalist will have to make a decision about how to act once at the scene. I proceeded to tell my students how I had gotten my story in each case I cited above: the plane crash, the prison riot, the school shooting. I talked about the methodology I used in each instance as I worked under deadline, trying to gather an accurate story as events changed minute to minute, and I spoke about how I approached victims and families of victims, at the scene and afterwards--sometimes years afterwards--with what I viewed as compassion. (I have since taught this lesson and incorporated in it the times when I fell short in this regard and regretted it).

At that point, the class was almost over. The time had come to present the class with an option. I told my students that September 11th presented an enormous opportunity to test themselves under deadline. I also told them I fully recognized that some of them might not feel comfortable doing so. I threw the ball in their court. Did they feel they could write a story under deadline reacting to the events of September 11th? Did they want to give it a try? If not, I wouldn't push them. No one said a word for what seemed like a long time. A woman sat at her desk, wiping away tears with a tissue. "I just don't see how I can approach people today," she said. "I feel like I'll be intruding." A male student then raised his hand and said, "I'd like to cover the story, but I don't want to do it alone. Could we work with a partner--or in teams?" A breakthrough. Students began shaking their heads in agreement. Even the woman who'd been wiping away tears only a minute before started to nod. It was what we, in academia, like to call a "teaching moment"--but it was a moment meant for me, the teacher. The students were showing me a way, and I took their direction. They were essentially telling me they wanted to take a stab at it, but they didn't want to go it alone. They saw strength in numbers, and for this assignment, so did I.

A plan began to take shape. I urged students to form teams of their own choosing. Then I gave them the assignment: Write a "reaction" story to the tragedy. Pick an angle and seek a response from an "expert"--or from people particularly affected by the events of the day. Perhaps get the reaction of several Concordia students who have family in the United States. Perhaps get the reaction of a faculty member at a Montreal university who has studied terrorism. Perhaps interview stranded passengers at Dorval International Airport, where dozens of travelers were diverted when the air traffic system was shut down. Perhaps talk to city officials to see if Montreal had taken measures to protect government buildings. Students began contributing ideas of their own. I wrote them on the blackboard. Students moved into clusters and began talking. Before long, they were leaving the classroom and donning their reporter hats, going out to cover a story, just like the reporters they were being trained to be. They had a sense of purpose, albeit coupled with a sense of trepidation; I hoped that together they would overcome their fears and bolster each other. Only one student did not join the crowd. Looking distressed and ready to burst into tears, he approached me when the rest of the class was exiting. "I'm not going to do it," he said. "Give me a makeup assignment next week." I was somewhat surprised since he was among the top students in the class. I wondered what was going through his mind, but I did not pry, nor did I not ask him to reconsider his decision.

A few weeks later, for the purposes of this essay, I asked if he would speak to me about why he refused the assignment. There was no simple answer. He recounted how he'd awoken very late that morning, learned of the tragedy just moments before leaving for school, and grabbed his Walkman to listen to live coverage as he rode the bus. He had not had the benefit of time, like some other students, to absorb the story bit by bit. He sat in class, shell-shocked. He also acknowledged that his priorities in life might well have shaped his response. When he was eight, his sister had been killed in a car accident, and that tragic event, he said, no doubt fashioned his reaction to any tragedy; he felt he could not focus on anything other than the event. What's more, he bad family and friends in Israel, and worried that Israel might well be the next target of a terrorist attack. If he'd been a reporter in New York on September 11, he told me, he would not have been able to report the story; he would have wanted to help the victims. "I'd be fired for that, but I wouldn't care," he said. In the wake of September 11th, he said, he'd thought a good deal about the profession he'd chosen to pursue, but bad concluded, "It's not my job yet." He'd decided, after much thought, that he'd probably be able to deal with the demands of reporting a tragic circumstance at some point in the future--but not now.

In conclusion, it turned out that giving an assignment to my class that day proved a wise decision, even for the student who didn't do it, but who learned a great deal about himself. As for the others, the consensus was that "working the story" on September 11th offered a learning experience unlike any they'd had thus far. The student who didn't do the assignment learned as much as those who did. He learned that at this point in his life, he would be unable to write a deadline response to a tragedy. But this does not mean he would never be able to do it, nor does it mean there is no place for someone like him in a newsroom. The others learned many lessons. They learned that flexibility is an absolute necessity when dealing with the fluid nature of breaking news, since the story sometimes changes hour to hour. They learned that they could ask questions under tense and terrible circumstances, even though they had never tried it before. They learned that people would talk to journalists in trying situations, not shut them out, if the questions are asked in a professional manner, with respect, knowledge and compassion. And, lastly, they learned that they could produce a story on deadline by simply doing what they'd been trained to do--putting on their reporter hats and going out to do the job.

Linda Kay, Concordia University, Canada

Assistant professor Linda Kay is the graduate program director in the journalism department, where she teaches introductory writing and reporting classes.