Since last night, following the perpetrator’s confession to the murder of Stavros Georgiou, various messages have been circulating among journalists. What seems to prevail — perhaps out of wishful thinking on my part, or simply within my own bubble — are messages saying: “Guys, we do not need to report every detail or everything we know. There are two teenage girls involved.”
But even if there were not, where does our duty to inform the public end, and where does the deliberate attempt to peer through the keyhole begin — turning stories into clickbait to drive engagement while behaving like tabloid grave robbers? What the hell kind of service are we providing to the public by giving them every deeply personal detail of a dead person’s life and death? None, in my view.
A disclaimer: I am not pointing the finger at any particular news outlet. Whatever we, as the fyi.news team, consider ethically right, we put into practice every day, and we are judged like everyone else in this profession. Over the past few hours, however, we have once again been witnessing monstrosities, which I will not reproduce for obvious reasons.
The ones that frighten me most are not those in the headlines. That is simply undisguised thuggery. What frightens me more are the reports whose headlines wear a thin veil of ethical restraint, while the body of the article contains the same graphic and brutal details of the crime, carefully allowing readers to reconstruct the story in their minds and add whatever extra elements they choose.
What would journalism have lost if the story had not been splashed across the front pages, but had instead appeared further down as a regular news item, containing carefully selected reporting details that left no room for insinuation or further pain for the victim’s loved ones? Nothing.
What the hell kind of service are we providing to the public by giving them every deeply personal detail of a dead person’s life and death?
Article 2 of the Journalists’ Union of the Athens Daily Newspapers’ Code of Ethics states, among other things, that a journalist must “respect the personality, dignity and inviolability of the private life of every person and citizen; respect the protection of minors enshrined in international conventions; and treat citizens with discretion and sensitivity when they are grieving, emotionally distressed or in pain.”
Were the union to get to work — and I choose not to dismiss it, despite the criticism I am obliged to direct at it — it would barely be able to keep up with identifying breaches of the Code and referring members to its disciplinary councils.
So what? Would penalties put an end to this barbarity? No. Once an editor or editor-in-chief has, at best, permitted and, at worst, demanded that articles and headlines be written in this way, the problem is much bigger.
And yet, for professional self-serving reasons, we take issue with news content creators who are not journalists and who report the news without formal training, as though those of us who are trained and experienced spend every working day producing Pulitzer-worthy journalism.
I am also deliberately leaving out of this discussion the role and responsibility that the public undoubtedly bears when it consumes this type of content with heightened interest and then comments underneath it as well, creating the perfect vicious circle. Doing so would feel like deflecting responsibility.
The responsibility lies first and foremost with us, the journalists. We have said it, and we agree on it.
But no one escapes the shame.
What is fyi.news?
