At what point does an interview with a grieving, traumatised victim of a violent crime cross the line between a legitimate inquiry into a matter of public interest and an opportunity to rehash the gruesome details of the crime for dramatic effect?

Claude Robinson

This question was on the media agenda for much of the past week or so in light of several newspaper, radio and television interviews with Mrs Sonia Williams, mother of the three children killed at Kiloncholly in St Mary two weeks ago.

In one of the interviews I heard, Mrs Williams relived for Nationwide@5 co-hosts Cliff Hughes and Emily Crooks the trauma that has to be the worst nightmare for any parent. The co-hosts struggled to find the right tone, so they were clearly aware that this story required a fine balance.

Mrs Williams sounded like she really wanted to talk. In fact, she explained that she welcomed the opportunity to keep telling the story because it took her mind off what happened.
In the quiet moments when she was not talking with the media, with neighbours or with investigators, the burden, it seemed, was just too much to bear.

I grieved with her, but I was also disturbed and discomfited by the experience: Should she be reliving the story in such detail to the Press? Is she really in a position to help us understand what happened in her home that night she left her children and went to church?

Sonia Williams (left), the mother of the three children killed at Kiloncholly in St Mary two weeks ago, is comforted by a friend at a memorial service held for two of her children by their school, St Mary High, last Thursday.

What has been happening to her since that wrenching discovery when she returned?
Should the Press be more concerned with long-term damage to her mental and emotional health? Will she suffer post-traumatic stress disorder? If that happens, should the Press be in any way accountable? Or was she just another source for a compelling news story?

These are not easy questions, but they should not only engage the media, health professionals and law enforcement agents but the wider public which is deeply concerned about the effects of violence in society and in media.

I hoped that some of them might have been raised with the other guest on the segment, psychiatrist Dr Wendell Abel, but in the time available, Cliff and Emily chose to ask him to help us understand the psyche of someone capable of committing such acts.

Fair enough!
But I believe that the national media focus on the Kiloncholly child murders should force all of us in the media to think again about coverage of violent crime, especially the treatment of victims and perpetrators.

We must avoid any unhealthy intrusion on grief and pain as well as the temptation to assign guilt, especially to persons charged with unspeakable crimes that offend our sensibilities.

Given the unacceptably high murder rate and the widespread fear of crime in Jamaica, it is not surprising that coverage of violent by the crime media, especially on television, has been a contentious issue.

It was the focus of a symposium on 'Coverage of Crime and Violence in the Jamaican Media' hosted by the Mona School of Business and CARIMAC, with support from both the Media Association and the Press Association just over a year ago.

Research presented at the symposium showed that news of violent incidents dominated TV and newspaper coverage and one researcher, Dr Audrey Pottinger of the Department of Child Health, concluded that the coverage had a negative effect.

"One of the growing concerns among mental health professionals is that the media's emphasis on crime and violence is contributing to a pervasive sense of fear, hopelessness and learned helplessness among people in Jamaica," she concluded.

But Dr Pottinger also found that middle-class and inner-city respondents reacted differently to the coverage, something which sometimes poses difficulties for editors.

She found that only 15 per cent of middle-class respondents to her survey had favourable impressions of the news, while 85 per cent thought it was too graphic, explicit, too sensational, with too much emphasis on violence, blood and gore.

On the other hand, among respondents from inner-city communities approximately 75 per cent were supportive of the coverage: the "news can't do better", "nothing wrong with what is done", "people need to see and know what happened".

Indeed, much of the violent news coverage has been explained in many parts of the world simply on the basis that the media are giving the people what they want.

The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) begins its guidelines for handling violence in news and information programmes with the observation that "The audience should not, and cannot, be protected from this everyday occurrence.

"News should and will shock viewers at times" and sometimes the "sense of shock" is a necessary part of a full human understanding of the story. However, the EBU states that "care should be taken never to discomfort viewers gratuitously by over-indulgence. The more often viewers are shocked, the more it will take to shock them".

Interestingly, both our national TV stations have been responding to criticisms that telling crime stories in less intrusive ways does not mean impinging on the right to report the news freely and fairly.
In this context we note that just this past Monday night, David McBean, chief executive at CVM-TV, was on the speakers' circuit defending the coverage of crime and violence by CVM Television.

"What we report on crime and violence are real problems, not manufactured," said McBean. "Is it acceptable to shoot the messenger just because he brings bad tidings?"
He said that over the past two years, his communications group has undergone a "quiet revolution" and has made a concerted effort not to glorify crime and violence or engage in sensationalism.

A policy decision taken by the group was to focus more on national issues than crime and violence in the early part of the news.
Similarly, Gary Allen, group operations director for the RJR radio stations and TVJ told me Friday that they were also reviewing their approach to reporting violent news, including stories that affect children and victims of crime.

I must commend both CVM and TVJ for developing guidelines that not only affirm their responsibility to present bad tidings when they occur, but to do so in ways that minimise harm to audiences.

The next step is to share the guidelines with the public so they can hold the media accountable for the standards they set for themselves. That, among other things, would give us an objective standard to say whether the radio and TV interviews with Mrs Williams crossed the line of intrusion on private grief.

Claude Robinson is senior fellow in the Research and Policy Group, Mona School of Business at the UWI.
kcr@cwjamaica.com

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