Dave Foulk Internet Flyer

Critics cannot have it both ways. I have heard for years how reporters are dispassionate ghouls who look for the sensational. Now, I hear it’s wrong for a reporter to become emotional or distressed when they are describing and reporting on conditions that appear to be worse than some disasters in third world countries.

I believe it’s understandable for a reporter to become emotional at times, but s also a reporter or anchor’s job to try to keep those emotions in check in order to render an accurate portrayal of what is happening.

In my more than three decades of covering spot news, I have seen my share of things that deeply distressed me. It’s hard to summon up that emotional detachment, and it can be especially hard when the story involves the very young, the old, and the vulnerable in our society. I have been lucky enough to have time to cry and pray, and work it out in my mind at a later time.

It changes you. Forever.

We might be able to learn a lesson from our first responders- the firefighters, EMS, and law officers who deal with awful things on nearly a daily basis. They do their jobs (hopefully) with professionalism and compassion, yet try to keep their own emotions in check until a proper time.

Critical incident debriefings help them cope with tough things they experience, and the professionals who conduct them cann help keep the nightmares at bay.

I believe reporters need a way to talk to someone after covering things like multiple death incidents, or disasters. It would have helped me and possibly spared my family some rough days when I wasn’t myself–those things still rumbling in my mind.

There’s a way to interview someone who has been involved in a traumatic event. One thing you certainly DON’T want to do is capitalize on someone who is distraught and possibly not thinking clearly. This time, I have witnessed the best and the worst techniques. But I’ll have to say as a whole, reporters have been more compassionate toward grieving people than I have ever seen.

Some of the reporters, even some of them who have covered combat may never be the same again. The casualties were home folks- Americans. The houses looked American. Things this bad are not supposed to happen in this country… or so we thought.