OPINION: Where to point the camera

Journalistic ethics are a rough subject, mostly because doing any sort of journalistic work requires digging into topics which can be private and sensitive. Throughout my years in college, it was by far the most fascinating subject because the specifics within freedom of expression can clash with being a good human.

Most of the sensational stories of elite journalism which deal in ethics don’t apply to the local level, but I am often curious by grey areas in the larger cases. I still keep my media ethics textbook because it’s fascinating to sift through real cases of ethical conundrums. As much as it could be easy to think of journalists as cold - emotionless humans because being anonymous makes better journalistic writing - we’re still humans.

One case in 2020, which is still tough to talk about years later, involves The Lantern, a student newspaper for Ohio State University, covering student protests in the wake of the killing of George Floyd. In the first protest, student reporters operated like they would any other, capturing pictures of speakers and attendees and documenting names when necessary.

During the next protest, a different tone escalated matters. When reporters arrived, attendees turned to the cameras and declared their identities off-limits to reporting. The Lantern and their reporting was now the subject of protest. These attendees, despite being on a public campus and protesting publicly, were telling Lantern reporters they wanted a right to privacy.

Cases like these immediately invoke a question, “what would you do?” Protests against racial injustice like these often involve direct criticism of the police, which means public identification in reporting not only informs the public but also the police and can lead to arrests both unjust and not. Is there a separation between public speakers and attendees? How should The Lantern cover themselves now that they were the subject of protests?

There’s no right answer - it’s ethics - but it’s possible to get close. Often, handling these matters rely on a personal or professional code which dictate behavior. In the end, documenting events as they are is the point of journalism, and getting as close as possible means having to make hard decisions. The Lantern chose to only show attendees from behind while speakers received unobstructed identification, a middle-ground approach.

These decisions were made with careful consideration over multiple protests, reviewing criticism and acting off it. There’s acknowledgement in the power of journalism for triumph and harm. Journalism has to align to history in their form of documenting, but, in keeping current, their work can damage if not held to proper ethics.

Last week, I was able to catch “September 5,” an overlooked thriller from last year which closely examines the ethics of ABC’s coverage of the Munich massacre in 1972. For a situation like that, when Palestinian terrorists captured Israeli coaches and athletes as hostages to eventually kill all of them, ethics certainly will play a part.

It’s what “September 5″ does best, closely examining how in such a tense situation, these ethical decisions have to be made snappily under a ticking clock. ABC’s sports team, meant to be covering the Olympics, has the unusual ability to provide live, direct coverage of the incident. They have cameras set up, a reporter in the closed Olympic village and a ticking clock.

Linguistic decisions (should the team use the word “terrorist?”) work alongside more macro decisions (could the kidnappers be watching ABC’s live feed?). One reporter has rolls of film taped and hidden under his clothes and given a fake identity to infiltrate the Olympic village. Confirming sources leads to one decision which is a haunting reminder of what happens if journalists make an error.

All of these decisions are made in short discussions, stacking the weight of human life on their shoulders in just a couple minutes. Trauma isn’t considered until it’s all over, the exasperation and dissonance in unemotionally covering charged events.

If there’s one thing “September 5” does right, it’s truly considering ethics as something which is always present in the back of one’s mind. It’s a constantly morphing subject; there are disagreements and there are regrets from missing the proper job. Yet, rules can be bent if the coverage is valuable.

But, the release of “September 5” in our current year, in the midst of the war in Gaza, is a matter of ethics as well. For a matter which dramatizes a conflict where Palestinian terrorists are remarkably clear as “bad guys,” where can this interpretation extend? Could viewers who see this movie, see Black September, choose to align all Palestinians as terrorists?

An extended look at Israeli-Palestinian conflict is impossible in a movie under 100 minutes, but it’s worth mentioning because of how sensitive those topics can be. “September 5” isn’t an act of journalism, but it’s certainly an act of speech. Is there a responsibility when dramatizing such a black-and-white situation (terrorism is bad no matter who does it) to protect today’s world where Palestinians are being bombed and displaced in an utterly cruel capacity?

As I said, in the world of ethics, it’s hard to find a right answer.