Award-winning journalists will discuss the
techniques, hazards and rewards of covering the most difficult stories
of our time when they gather in Shoemaker 2102 beginning at 2 p.m. Nov. 19.
D.C.-area anchor Mike Walter of WUSA-TV will join Australian
journalist Gary Tippet of The Age and Natalie Pompilio, a writer based
in Philadelphia who has provided on-the-ground coverage of the war in
Iraq and Hurricane Katrina. All are members of The Dart Society, an
organization that provides outreach to journalists who cover trauma.
The Dart Society is composed of winners of fellowships presented by
the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma. Panelists were invited by
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Deborah Nelson, Carnegie Visiting Professor
at UMD, who was recently elected president of the Dart Center’s
Executive Committee.
“Covering crime, accidents, disaster and death is a fundamental part
of a journalist’s job. War and terrorism also figure into today’s mix.
We need to learn how to effectively and sensitively report on human
suffering–and how to handle our own responses,” Nelson said. “This
panel will give students a head start on dealing with the profession’s
most difficult assignments.”
The journalists will describe the methodology behind some of their
stories and how they coped in the aftermath.
Pompilio, whose Katrina stories for The Philadelphia Inquirer made
her a finalist for an award from the American Society Newspaper Editors,
said despite the difficulties and stresses of the job, it’s well worth it.
“We get to do and see things other people never will,” Pompilio said.
“We are there for some of the worst moments of our subjects’
lives.That’s a privilege and a burden. We have to do right by them.”
Doing right by subjects requires empathic listening skills, attention
to accuracy– seemingly little mistakes, like an incorrect age or date,
can be hurtful to victims and their families — and great courage in
confronting one’s own response to horror.
Walter had already covered stories in Somalia, the Northridge
Earthquake, floods and tornadoes in the Midwest when he witnessed
firsthand American Airlines Flight 77 crashing into the Pentagon on
9/11. He was surprised at his reaction.
“I think instinctively I felt like having been in a war zone — and
covering every sort of tragedy you could imagine — would prepare me for
a day like that. But it didn’t,” Walter said. “I was surprised at how it
affected me. Eventually I found the resources of the Dart Center and
like-minded journalists in The Dart Society. Both helped me turn a
corner. I think the one thing I want to stress to journalism
students is this: This is a wonderful profession, but there are times
when what we see as journalists can take a toll on us as people.”
Tippet has covered some of Australia’s biggest stories, including the
Port Arthur massacre, the East Timor crisis of 1999-2000 and the Fiji
military coup. In 1997 Tippet won Australia’s most prestigious
journalism award, the Walkley Award, for the feature story “Slaying The
Monster,” an account of an abused child who, 30 years later, returned to
kill his molester with an axe.
”After the Port Arthur massacre, in which 35 people were murdered, I
remember a Salvation Army worker whose daily task was providing
consolation. Relatives and friends of the dead would come up and he’d
wrap them in a hug as they salted his shoulders with tears and he’d soak
into himself a little of their misery and grief. That was his heroic
mission,” Tippet said. “But I suspect that, unwanted, something similar
happens to journalists who see too much death and do too much intruding.
Years of covering murders, suicides, road crashes, fires, massacres and
natural disasters must work on us like Chinese water torture. Drip by
drip they do harm.”
For more information, contact the DART Society’s Deirdre Stoelzle Graves, or Carnegie Visiting Professor Deb Nelson.
