In The Year of Living Dangerously, the dwarf photographer –
Billy Kwan as portrayed by Linda Hunt – offers the following
advice: “Don’t think about the major issues. You do
what you can about the misery in front of you. You add your
light to the sum of all light.”
Bearing witness to misery. Illuminating it. Adding light to
the sum of light. These I considered as important duties
whilst working as a reporter at the Cape Argus in my native
South Africa. But with those duties comes responsibility,
and the need for an ethical code according to which one must
navigate illuminating misery.
When a reporter bears witness simply to advance his or her
own career path, there may set in the temptation to be
hyperbolic and to exploit painful human situations and
people experiencing these. Instead of illuminating injustice
towards the goals of critique and restitution, the process
can become self-serving to the reporter, their career and
how they (rather than their subjects) stand to gain from the
exposure.
An ethical code for the reporters witnessing and
illuminating misery should guide them away from the
self-serving, careerist aspects of their work and towards
the goal of contributing towards a more just society. I
believe that two guidelines can assist:
1) Be true to your subjects. Treat subjects, those whose
misery you report on, as human beings deserving of dignity.
Do not reduce them to clichés which reinforce the idea of
them as hapless victims – less capable than more fortunate
people. Do not use them as props to simply advance a story.
Place them and their concerns at the centre of the story.
2) Report towards a restitution. In each example of human
misery human interventions are possible to provide relief
and lessen suffering. Often human decisions and actions have
resulted in the suffering to begin with. Do not simply
report on suffering for the sake of exposing it.
Illuminating suffering should serve the higher purpose of
alleviating the suffering, by identifying remedial actions
or support that are needed (these may be couched in an
identification of the causes of misery).
