Writing & Reporting
Writing & Reporting
Balancing acts
John Swinconeck
Journal Tribune, May 2008
“There must be some way out of here,” said the joker to the thief. “There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief.” – Bob Dylan
The coffin is presented.
Inside are the remains of a Marine who was killed in Iraq. His wife, now his widow, several months pregnant, drapes her body over the casket, a face that seems too young to carry such an expression of grief.
The photographer from the Rocky Mountain News hits a button, the shutter opens briefly. And what is a deeply personal and tragic moment is now part of recorded history.
The photograph, which can be viewed at rockymountainnews.com, is part of a larger project, chronicling a Marine whose job was to inform relatives that their sons and daughters had been killed in Iraq. The shot is at once beautiful and terrible.
But is it intrusive?
Or does it capture the impact of the war in a way reams of editorials and hours of talk shows cannot?
How to capture such a moment is a situation every news photographer, every reporter, will have to make, and those who have worked at the Journal Tribune are no exception.
There is no constitutional amendment, nothing in the Bill of Rights, which protects against an invasion of privacy. The closest thing is the Fourth Amendment, protecting citizens against unwarranted search and seizure. There are laws and torts protecting privacy that vary from state to state. But it’s pretty clear that if you’re in a public space, your moment, no matter how painful, is fair game for the lens.
It’s a strange situation. I have been chastised for photographing moments of extreme stress outside of a high school, outside a store that was robbed, outside a boarding house where a seasonal migrant worker was killed.
Sometimes the glares come from public officials; sometimes it’s from private citizens.
I don’t entirely blame them.
How would I feel if I was the victim? Would I want that moment photographed?
Thankfully, I do not know.
In contrast, I have also been chastised by residents and readers for missing breaking news, or not getting to the scene before the yellow tape blocks off access.
So which is it?
I decided to seek the advice of my mentor, Randy Seaver, former editor at the Courier, and a man whose face is well recognized by anyone at Biddeford or Saco city halls. Randy recalled covering the 1999 murder of Ashley Ouellette of Saco and interviewing the victim’s family. He remembered the balancing act between the pain and anguish of her family versus the public interest in the violent death of one of the community’s own.
The way to go about such coverage, he said, was tact.
“You’re a human being first. You’re a reporter second. … It’s tough stuff to do,” he said. “What it all comes down to is that every story, every situation is different.”
Many of the news/editorial staff at the Journal lives in or near the communities we cover. The missteps we make are not ones that we can easily avoid on our off-hours. We, too, live with the effects, for good or for ill, of what we print. Moreover, we live with the events that shape our cities and towns.
There was a day, not long ago, when I found myself behind the lens, shooting a private family in a public place that was trying their best to cope with an awful situation. It was an event riddled with anxiety and ultimately tragedy.
I stood back from the family, I was unobtrusive, but I was there, and not welcomed.
A feeling of unease settled in the pit of my stomach and remained there.
When I finally came home, I was unable to separate myself from my job because the sound of a search plane circling nearby could not be quieted.
As Randy said: “When you’re the editor of a small-town paper, you’re cognizant that you’re part of the community, too.”
I don’t spend a lot of time with a camera anymore. These days, I’m content to sit behind a desk. But every once and again, I’m called upon to capture that awful moment.
And that feeling of unease always returns.
— John Swinconeck is the copy/photo editor at the Journal Tribune, and can be reached at johnswin@gwi.net.