Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of The Media
by Shannon Perrine, TV News AnchorThe lessons the Terri Schiavo story taught reached far beyond those now rushing to their lawyers' offices to make out living wills. Journalists in the United States and around the world also took away new tools for doing their jobs. I was not a journalist personally covering the end of life for Terri Schiavo. However, as a person who has made her living as a reporter for 12 years, I took in the coverage from several media outlets over an intense period of a few weeks, and the preceeding years leading up to her ultimate death.
For reporters, the dreaded element of Shiavo's case was the uncertainty. The science was perceived as nebulous. It is at best tricky and at worst impossible to fairly paint the picture of Shiavo's real physical state in the one to two minutes most broadcast journalist are alloted. Many reporters steered clear of covering the intracacies of her health; her brain activity her medical history. They steered toward the current state of the surrounding players: her parents, her husband, the children getting arrested for protesting outside her hospice. Those news elements are safe. It's harder to mess those up. If you can see it happening, you can more accurately report on it.
This is not an excuse, this is a symptom of modern journalism; not just the way it's produced, but the way it's consumed. The world wants information fast. The good news: Terry Shiavo's story made an impact on how we do our jobs. This is a story that would not let us off that easy. It forced us, just by the nature of it changing almost daily, to find new angles. That is a reporter's challenge in any story that doesn't end in a day.
Think about what you know about Terri's condition before she died. You, like me, perhaps wish you knew more. You consider yourself smart enough to digest that knowledge. This story drove that home for those of us who cover the news. Lesson learned: just because something is complex does not mean we shouldn't investigate it and consider it. Many of us know much more than we did about living wills, and our rights as Americans who may be disabled. Many of us do know more because of the journalists who chose to focus on a woman in Florida who couldn't speak for herself, and the people around her trying to do that job for her.
No doubt another woman or man or child, perhaps relying on a wheelchair, maybe a feeding tube will get our attention and teach us more; not just about how to die, but, how they live.
* Editor's note: Please email your comments and questions for Ms. Perrine by clicking here.
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Shannon Perrine is a reporter and anchor at WTAE TV in Pittsburgh. She lives outside of Pittsburgh with her husband and one and a half children.
-- Written exclusively for quadBlog.com.
©2005 quadBlog.com
posted by Greg @ 2:12 PM
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