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| Reporting on atrocities: it is vital that we measure every word with care | Reporting on atrocities: it is vital that we measure every word with care |
| (5 days later) | |
| In more than a decade of being a news editor at the Guardian, I can’t remember another period quite like the summer of 2016. | In more than a decade of being a news editor at the Guardian, I can’t remember another period quite like the summer of 2016. |
| There have been bigger atrocities before but nothing like the daily succession of attacks that we have reported, from the Nice truck slaughter and the Munich shootings to murder in Normandy and Yorkshire, not forgetting Orlando, Dallas, Ansbach and Sagamihara. | There have been bigger atrocities before but nothing like the daily succession of attacks that we have reported, from the Nice truck slaughter and the Munich shootings to murder in Normandy and Yorkshire, not forgetting Orlando, Dallas, Ansbach and Sagamihara. |
| It’s at times like these that we might just turn to each other in the Guardian newsroom and whisper (so the editor-in-chief can’t hear): “Can somebody please stop the news?” | It’s at times like these that we might just turn to each other in the Guardian newsroom and whisper (so the editor-in-chief can’t hear): “Can somebody please stop the news?” |
| Related: How should the media cover terror attacks? Readers' views | Related: How should the media cover terror attacks? Readers' views |
| Over the years, and despite being a proper coward, I’ve covered the Balkans war and 7/7 as a reporter, and terrorist attacks from Bali to Beslan to the Bataclan as a news editor. But these sudden bursts of violence test the nerves, judgment, stamina, humanity, character and common sense of news editors and reporters to the limit. And when they come one after the other, like the staccato volley of attacks across Europe and the US in this dreadful summer, they throw up difficult decisions and questions that can threaten the reputation of an entire news organisation. | Over the years, and despite being a proper coward, I’ve covered the Balkans war and 7/7 as a reporter, and terrorist attacks from Bali to Beslan to the Bataclan as a news editor. But these sudden bursts of violence test the nerves, judgment, stamina, humanity, character and common sense of news editors and reporters to the limit. And when they come one after the other, like the staccato volley of attacks across Europe and the US in this dreadful summer, they throw up difficult decisions and questions that can threaten the reputation of an entire news organisation. |
| A shooting, it is said: some injured; no, some killed? Says who? How many fatalities – and does that govern how big the story runs? Grainy video – what does that prove? Who was he? (Because in case you haven’t noticed, it’s almost always a he.) A terrorist? What does that even mean any more? A Muslim. So what? Islamic State? How can we be sure? Someone who is ill? Is that mitigation? What are the sensitivities there? Bodies. Lots of them. Children. Do we describe what they look like? Is that necessary? | A shooting, it is said: some injured; no, some killed? Says who? How many fatalities – and does that govern how big the story runs? Grainy video – what does that prove? Who was he? (Because in case you haven’t noticed, it’s almost always a he.) A terrorist? What does that even mean any more? A Muslim. So what? Islamic State? How can we be sure? Someone who is ill? Is that mitigation? What are the sensitivities there? Bodies. Lots of them. Children. Do we describe what they look like? Is that necessary? |
| It’s easy to make mistakes. Even the foreign secretary can get it painfully wrong by jumping to conclusions. And the terrifying thing is this, being a news editor is like being a goalkeeper: you can get it right 99 times, but people will always remember the one mistake you make. | It’s easy to make mistakes. Even the foreign secretary can get it painfully wrong by jumping to conclusions. And the terrifying thing is this, being a news editor is like being a goalkeeper: you can get it right 99 times, but people will always remember the one mistake you make. |
| My colleague Lizzy Davies has a better analogy. “It’s a bit like you’re the conductor of an orchestra,” she says, “and there’s a group of people with different skills and abilities. You have to make sure everyone’s playing to their strengths, whether that’s on-the-ground reporting, cool-headed analysis, or fantastic live-blogging.” | My colleague Lizzy Davies has a better analogy. “It’s a bit like you’re the conductor of an orchestra,” she says, “and there’s a group of people with different skills and abilities. You have to make sure everyone’s playing to their strengths, whether that’s on-the-ground reporting, cool-headed analysis, or fantastic live-blogging.” |
| How do we navigate these wretched events? The crucial factors are experience, judgment, instinct, caution, teamwork and resources. And, of course, energetic, curious reporters who will find out the facts and stick to them. Fortunately, we have no shortage of those. | How do we navigate these wretched events? The crucial factors are experience, judgment, instinct, caution, teamwork and resources. And, of course, energetic, curious reporters who will find out the facts and stick to them. Fortunately, we have no shortage of those. |
| The first decision is what makes an attack worthy of coverage, serious enough to send one of our team to the scene. It’s hard to give a reader the sense of the terrible mix of the awful and the banal if you’re not on the ground. But you can’t be everywhere all the time. You need to separate the remarkable from the prosaic, and fast. | The first decision is what makes an attack worthy of coverage, serious enough to send one of our team to the scene. It’s hard to give a reader the sense of the terrible mix of the awful and the banal if you’re not on the ground. But you can’t be everywhere all the time. You need to separate the remarkable from the prosaic, and fast. |
| There are many considerations. Scale, moment – and above all, what does it mean? It’s not just about death: in the last week we all but ignored the murder of a Berlin doctor by his patient (ghastly, but with few wider ramifications) and the killing of two people outside a Florida nightclub (equally ghastly but by now wearily familiar). By contrast, the murder of a French priest in his church was the lead story of both the website and the newspaper. Motive and the novelty factor are crucial. There’s a clue in the word “news”. It has to be new. | There are many considerations. Scale, moment – and above all, what does it mean? It’s not just about death: in the last week we all but ignored the murder of a Berlin doctor by his patient (ghastly, but with few wider ramifications) and the killing of two people outside a Florida nightclub (equally ghastly but by now wearily familiar). By contrast, the murder of a French priest in his church was the lead story of both the website and the newspaper. Motive and the novelty factor are crucial. There’s a clue in the word “news”. It has to be new. |
| Of course, readers query these decisions: we have been asked why we covered the Paris attacks in November 2015 in the greatest detail but gave less time to the preceding attacks in Beirut or subsequent atrocities in Baghdad, where the death toll was comparable. It’s a fair question. The first day a car bomb went off in Baghdad, following the US invasion in 2003, we spent days reporting the perpetrators, victims, tactics and implications, because the development was new. Alas, horror in the Iraqi capital is no longer so new. Horror in the French capital is. | Of course, readers query these decisions: we have been asked why we covered the Paris attacks in November 2015 in the greatest detail but gave less time to the preceding attacks in Beirut or subsequent atrocities in Baghdad, where the death toll was comparable. It’s a fair question. The first day a car bomb went off in Baghdad, following the US invasion in 2003, we spent days reporting the perpetrators, victims, tactics and implications, because the development was new. Alas, horror in the Iraqi capital is no longer so new. Horror in the French capital is. |
| The next decision is whether to fire up live coverage. We call these articles “live blogs”: a rolling screed of incoming news, filtered, distilled, curated, verified wherever possible. We’ve covered at least half a dozen violent attacks live in the past two weeks, sometimes rotating the anchor to our reporters in London, New York and Sydney through the timezones. These pieces are read by millions of people, and though they are clearly a fast and furious attempt to grapple with a moving target, we have to ensure they do not descend into an echo chamber of every rumour and conspiracy theory going. | The next decision is whether to fire up live coverage. We call these articles “live blogs”: a rolling screed of incoming news, filtered, distilled, curated, verified wherever possible. We’ve covered at least half a dozen violent attacks live in the past two weeks, sometimes rotating the anchor to our reporters in London, New York and Sydney through the timezones. These pieces are read by millions of people, and though they are clearly a fast and furious attempt to grapple with a moving target, we have to ensure they do not descend into an echo chamber of every rumour and conspiracy theory going. |
| So we are careful to avoid repeating second-hand information, such as unsourced comment reported by other news outlets. We are cautious about naming names until we are certain; that goes for victims as well as perpetrators. We are highly sensitive about pictures that intrude on grief or are demeaning, or just gruesome for the sake of gruesomeness. | So we are careful to avoid repeating second-hand information, such as unsourced comment reported by other news outlets. We are cautious about naming names until we are certain; that goes for victims as well as perpetrators. We are highly sensitive about pictures that intrude on grief or are demeaning, or just gruesome for the sake of gruesomeness. |
| “It’s forced us to think about making live judgment calls on everything,” says Matt Wells, our senior digital editor. “It’s quite an intense editing experience.” | “It’s forced us to think about making live judgment calls on everything,” says Matt Wells, our senior digital editor. “It’s quite an intense editing experience.” |
| The metabolic rate of news events such as these is ferocious. Twitter chatter, TV, wire services, local papers, rival live blogs, citizen journalists Periscoping in real time. We strive to resist the pressure of rivals making calls we can’t. Such as CNN, during the Boston bombings, asserting that arrests had been made, or Mail Online during the Paris attacks identifying one of the attackers as Europe’s first female suicide bomber (she wasn’t) and then publishing a picture of “the bomber in the bath” (it was the wrong woman). | The metabolic rate of news events such as these is ferocious. Twitter chatter, TV, wire services, local papers, rival live blogs, citizen journalists Periscoping in real time. We strive to resist the pressure of rivals making calls we can’t. Such as CNN, during the Boston bombings, asserting that arrests had been made, or Mail Online during the Paris attacks identifying one of the attackers as Europe’s first female suicide bomber (she wasn’t) and then publishing a picture of “the bomber in the bath” (it was the wrong woman). |
| At times such as these we find a useful device is “What we know – and what we don’t”. We recognise that our value lies sometimes not in what we publish but what we choose not to. This is particularly true of motive. It was noticeable how the alleged killer of Jo Cox was described as a “loner” with “mental health” issues; Muslim attackers are rarely described that way. We are also careful to reflect soberly on the lives lost. | |
| Experience tells us not always to trust the authorities. During the Nice attacks, everyone from the president down had reached for the words “terrorism” and Isis before much was known about the truck driver who killed 84 people. Throughout that day, we were extremely careful about using the T word (it has become rather meaningless) and deliberately avoided mentioning Isis. Of course, it was clear that a mass killing had taken place. But as to motive, nothing was apparent. One of our earliest decisions was to send a reporter to the Tunisian home of the perpetrator, where an alternative to the Isis footsoldier narrative emerged. | Experience tells us not always to trust the authorities. During the Nice attacks, everyone from the president down had reached for the words “terrorism” and Isis before much was known about the truck driver who killed 84 people. Throughout that day, we were extremely careful about using the T word (it has become rather meaningless) and deliberately avoided mentioning Isis. Of course, it was clear that a mass killing had taken place. But as to motive, nothing was apparent. One of our earliest decisions was to send a reporter to the Tunisian home of the perpetrator, where an alternative to the Isis footsoldier narrative emerged. |
| There are new discussions – still evolving – about the impact our reporting has on the world it reflects. Do we glorify the attackers too much, encouraging copycats? (Le Monde has decided it will no longer show pictures of killers such as Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel.) Are we too saccharine, too writerly, in rendering these tragedies? Do we really need to describe the gore and horror? Does that serve a purpose? Readers’ views on this are always welcome. | There are new discussions – still evolving – about the impact our reporting has on the world it reflects. Do we glorify the attackers too much, encouraging copycats? (Le Monde has decided it will no longer show pictures of killers such as Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel.) Are we too saccharine, too writerly, in rendering these tragedies? Do we really need to describe the gore and horror? Does that serve a purpose? Readers’ views on this are always welcome. |
| Suffice to say that it is vital to measure every word in our news stories carefully to navigate these precarious waters of meaning. In the era of instant news and information overload, not every publisher can afford that luxury. | Suffice to say that it is vital to measure every word in our news stories carefully to navigate these precarious waters of meaning. In the era of instant news and information overload, not every publisher can afford that luxury. |
| Thanks to the support of our members, we can. And we do. | Thanks to the support of our members, we can. And we do. |
| • Help fund our journalism by becoming a Guardian supporter. | • Help fund our journalism by becoming a Guardian supporter. |
| • This article was amended on 2 August 2016 to amend a reference to the person alleged to have killed Jo Cox. |