As I’ve mentioned before, journalists develop a thick skin. But are there story subjects and details that still get under our skin and bother us? Absolutely.
We’re still people, and it’s different for everbody. We have experiences in our lives outside of work that may make us sensitive to certain topics. We have individual thresholds, as do readers, for what bothers us.
For example, I ran across an example this week of a story that horrified me. Online we published a story about a coroner’s inquest that’s coming up, 10 years after a young woman died after being shot. I winced when I read the details about how an RCMP officer sent to the scene didn’t find her and she lay there for four days, dying of her bullet wound.
One that sticks with me to this day was about a child molester who targeted babies — this was back when I was working for a newspaper in Nova Scotia. I wasn’t assigned to cover that trial, but I remember how affected the journalist who did cover it was.
Another that stands out is when I personally covered the sentencing of William Gordon Robert Elliott for killing two young women in the Cowichan community. The details were terrible, and not much softened by the months that had gone by or the bureaucratic sterility of the proceedings.
For that story we ran a warning at the beginning, letting readers know some of the content could be disturbing. We don’t do so often, but we will, most often in criminal cases, where we feel the recitation of the bald facts are important to a true understanding of the story, but that not everybody will want to read them.
So why include these disturbing details? For one, sometimes reality is ugly, and while it’s not helpful for the average person to wallow in it day in and day out, it doesn’t do to pretend the ugliness isn’t there, either. Two, often for people to understand the verdict and sentence when it comes to court cases, they must have the facts. The details influence the sentence a judge will hand down for a given offence.
Which isn’t to say that we’ll gratuitously include everything without limit. We do carefully consider what’s printed. Sometimes readers do not agree, having read in spite of the warning at the top, then wish afterwards they had not.
I admit, I’ve been guilty of doing this myself on occasion — not complaining to a publication for having read what I wished I hadn’t, but having read on despite a warning of disturbing content. An article about the Kimberly Proctor murder comes to mind, here.
So in conclusion, when we warn you that a story may contain material some may find disturbing, take it seriously. We’re not aiming to traumatize anyone.