Press: Knocking On Death's Door

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Several news organizations have responded to public criticism by adopting - new codes of behavior. WCCO-TV in Minneapolis, for example, forbids its reporters to ask victims' relatives how they feel. When the family of a hit- and-run victim asked television reporters to stay away from the funeral last month, WCCO agreed, even though its competitors did not. Rosemary McManus, assistant editor at Long Island's Newsday in New York, says she never sends a reporter to the home of a victim until she is sure the family is aware of the death, and always instructs her reporters to honor a relative's refusal to talk. "It is one of the few situations in journalism where you should take no for an answer," she says. (However, she does advise the reporter to leave a business card in case the person has a change of heart.)

A different set of issues arises when reporters do gain access to victims. Jacqui Banaszynski, a reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press Dispatch, won a Pulitzer Prize last year for a lengthy series about a gay couple dying of AIDS. Privy to the most intimate details of the lives of both the men and their families, Banaszynski had to balance her sense of loyalty to her subjects against her desire to make the series as truthful as possible. "I would not print information so private that it would harm without enhancing," she says.

Reporters who are exposed to death on a regular basis can suffer some of the same psychological effects as grieving survivors. "Even though most reporters don't have a close personal relationship with anyone killed," says Vanderlyn Pine, a sociology professor at the State University of New York, "the grief component is just as serious as ((for)) anyone who does." Banaszynski says the stress from working on her series took a toll on her physical health. Free-lance writer Joe Levine of New York City was haunted by dreams about AIDS after he completed a long profile of a man who was dying of the disease. Such experiences may hold the key to improving coverage, since reporters who have been affected by seeing death close up may become more sensitive to the needs of the bereaved.

But most journalists at last week's conference held out little hope for reforming the way death is covered. "We have a commercial interest in catastrophe," admits Milwaukee Journal editor Sig Gissler. The most realistic changes that can be hoped for, agreed the journalists, are slight improvements in tone and treatment. Said Newsday columnist Sydney Schanberg: "If we see only five seconds instead of 30 seconds of ghoulish film, we've made progress."