THOUGHTS ABOUT COVERING TRAUMATIC NEWS

As I was working at ABC4 in Salt Lake this summer, I was faced with the situation of having to shadow a reporter on a murder case. The case involved a house-wife being beaten to death by a burglar in her own kitchen, while her children were in the house.

Objectivity for me was very hard. I was emotionally subjected, I already hated the person who had killed her.

Her neighbors were crying, and her children were being forced to make witness statements, it was "hard to cover news". As we interviewed a teary neighbor, I couldn't help but get misty eyed hearing his story of the last time he had seen the woman taking in her garbage cans the day before.

I wonder, how can you cover news like this day by day and not become depressed or cynical? How do you cover such emotional news? A blog I read today included amazing advice from a New York Daily News photographer David Handschuh who was near ground zero on september 11th. If you wonder the same thing I do read this article, it will help you gain a context for these issues.

Here's a little taste of his experience.

" On Sept. 11, 2001, Handschuh was driving to a graduate-level class he taught at New York University when he heard scanner traffic about a plane hitting the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

Handschuh said he called the Daily News and was told to head to the site. He also called the university and left a quick message at home: "I'm going down there. Love you all."

Following a rescue company he'd covered at other scenes, Handschuh reached the towers at 8:53 a.m., about 10 minutes before the second hijacked airliner struck the South Tower.

The scene was "surreal," he said. "I was cognizant of what was going on, but I don't think I was accepting of what I was seeing."

He didn't hear sirens but remembers smells. He didn't register the sight of people plummeting to their deaths but still hears "the sound as they were hitting the pavement."

He recalls the "Kodachrome-blue beautiful sky" overhead moments before the South Tower collapsed in front of him, tossing him about a block. His right leg was shattered. "I thought I was going to die face-down in the gutter," he said. A group of firefighters from Engine 217 in Brooklyn hauled him to safety."

During my time at ABC I shadowed reporters on many hard stories, 8 year old kid falling into fast moving ditch and dying, innocent housewife killed by burglar, ATV accidents, boaters dying on Utah Lake....it's a hard world out there! But we need to warn everyone else to be careful, and be thankful for the life that they are living.

In Handschuh's own words on helping to deal with traumatic events, "We need to work as a community," Handschuh said. "It took a 110-story building falling on my head for me to realize how short life is. Appreciate life. Appreciate every day. Appreciate the little things."