Some time ago Mark Brayne of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma talked to us about the damage that can be done to a journalist reporting on a traumatic event and the damage he can do to others through his report.
A topic that we only touched on but that was of interest to me, was the question of whether a journalist reporting on someone in distress or danger should ever attempt to step in and help.
There's the obvious human response that you should help anyone that you can. However, on the flipside, there's the thought that the report might help more people in the long run than the one person you can assist at that moment. Finally, of course, if a journalist does not know what he is doing he may get himself into a serious case of making matters worse.
I was interested to see a report on Newsround the other day which brought this issue to the my mind once more.
A team working on the Planet Earth documentary had been following a family of penguins for months. When the baby penguin fell in a hole in the ice and was sure to die, having grown rather attached to it, they stepped in and pulled it out. A similar debate on journalistic interference ensued.
So should a journalist put his human instincts aside when reporting? Or should his human instinct be telling him to stay out of things anyway?
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