It was one of those defining moments that brought out the need for ethical training for journalists and photographers about how to behave while covering issues of immense human tragedy. Hungarian camerawoman Petra László was filmed kicking two refugee children and tripping a man at the border hotspot of Röszke last week. The video went viral and generated justifiable global outrage against her unacceptable behaviour.
The fact that the journalist was sacked and that she apologised for her action does not reduce the magnitude of her crime or the indelible scar her action has left on the profession. But in her apology, there are some crucial lessons for journalists to learn of the issues they should guard against, and for the general public to demand appropriate behaviour from the message-bearers.
In her letter to the daily newspaper Magyar Nemzet , Ms. László wrote: “It’s hard to make good decisions at a time when one is in a [state of] panic and hundreds of people rush in... I failed at that moment. I’m sorry about what happened, and as a mother, I specially regret … a kid in my way and I did not notice. I panicked, and as I see myself in the recordings, as if it wouldn’t be me. I sincerely regret what I did and I take responsibility for it.”
The most obvious lesson is the subconscious absorption of a certain kind of prejudice generated by intolerant politics where a refugee seeking asylum is seen as a threat and not as a victim. When the politics of inclusivity gives way to the politics of exclusivity, it is bound to produce young journalists with little empathy and humanity. While it is impossible to condone her behaviour or rationalise it in any manner, it would be naïve to believe that such a cruel display has nothing to do with the rise of new forms of xenophobia in certain parts of Europe.
I am worried about a new culture of impunity that gives journalists the license to act in a manner that refuses to respect human dignity and the sense of self-worth of the victims. There is an unequal power relation where asylum seekers, despite humiliation, oblige reporters and photographers in a desperate hope that their story may be heard. They want their plight to touch the collective compassion of humanity and expect the international community to take some action to minimise their hardship. In this asymmetric equation, it is incumbent on journalists and photographers to refrain from acting in a manner that undermines the sense of being of the people who were tragically uprooted from their homeland and forced to look for a safer haven.
Over the last two decades, journalism training has matured to tackle many tricky situations in a conflict area. There are innumerable manuals on conflict-sensitive reporting and an entire oeuvre of literature on covering war and low-intensity armed conflicts. Media organisations tend to send reporters with some experience to the front. However, when a war or an armed conflict spills over into another territory, there are inadequate preparations to deal with the situation. There is limited understanding about how to handle forced migration. In South Asia, the lone systematic programme on forced migration that includes the role of media is run by the Calcutta Research Group.
Journalism failed to take into account the shifting languages of the nation states and their security establishments. The strategic affairs imagination is clinical in its thought, vivisectional in its practice and remorseless about its destruction. Elsewhere I had written about how two terms — strategic asset and strategic depth — have failed humankind and damaged our civilised existence. Then I had argued that the language of strategic asset reduced the ideas of home, state, country, and continent to movable pieces on the chessboard. It is a language that is never peopled; it has no capability to empathise or be poignant; it fails to understand pain; and it has no sense to understand the profound grief of any society that has lost its liberal space to a variety of bigots. The security experts’ idea of supremacy is directly pitted against the people’s deepest dream of living fully while existing.
With this column, I complete three years as the Readers’ Editor of this newspaper. I have received various complaints from readers. Some have questioned the editorial stand of the newspaper and some were relentless in expressing their disagreement with some of the opinion writers. However, there has been not a single mail or phone call about unacceptable behaviour of a reporter or a photographer of this newspaper. The ethical fabric runs not only in the newsroom but more importantly in the field too, where the reporters and photographers spend more time. This is a manifestation of the newspaper’s core value that respects individuals as human beings and not as mere subjects for its reportage. As I enter the fourth year, I would like to share my wish of what more I would like to see in the pages of this newspaper. I believe The Hindu has a potential to reinvent the language that would put people ahead of the requirements of security establishments by looking at forced migration with empathy.
readerseditor@thehindu.co.in
