The Collegiate Laws of Life Essay Contest asked Penn State students to explore ethical values and intercultural issues, and their talent for expressing their views in writing.
Marissa Kandziolka, ’18, Paterno Fellow and Schreyer Scholar in Economics and Finance, won Second Place for her essay, below, responding to this prompt:
On November 13, 2015, there were terrorist attacks in both Beirut and Paris of similar magnitude, but they had very dissimilar media coverage. What are the ethics of reporting death and tragedy in the media?
Want the Truth? Look in the Mirror
Five years ago I visited France. I walked the streets of Paris with my family and stayed in a hotel room from which I could see the magnificence of the Eiffel Tower as it glittered nightly. I spent a week among the French people, their food, their history, and their customs. During that week, I connected with the city.
I have never visited Lebanon. I have never walked the streets of Beirut. I don’t know much about Lebanese food, culture, or history, and my school certainly didn’t offer any classes in Lebanese or Arabic. I cannot say that I have a connection with Beirut like I do with Paris. I’m sure many of my fellow Americans can agree, that we know more about Paris, France, than about Beirut, Lebanon. This might be why many people were glued to media coverage of the November 13th terrorist attacks in Paris. This is why my Facebook wall was filled with notifications that my friends had overlaid their profile pictures with a French flag. It is why #PeaceForParis trended. Days later, however, a more subtle trend arose on my Facebook timeline. Friends, their profile pictures still covered in the French flag, began lamenting the media, and posting articles questioning why Paris was a “big deal” while Beirut wasn’t. Accusations began to fly of racism and western bias. It was like whiplash.
The attacks in Beirut were tragic, just as tragic as those in Paris. But the news coverage of Paris was much more prominent than that of Beirut. Why? Not because the lives of the Parisians mattered more than those of the Lebanese. Not because the press thought what happened in Lebanon to be of no concern. Not because the media was in some way unethical, but because of the American public, because of you and me.
It’s easy to use the media as a scapegoat. When similar attacks occur, and one gets all the coverage, it’s simple to say that the media are racist, biased, or unethical. But, what is the media if not a business? The media is a large corporation, their product headlines. They cater to the random passerby who glances at a headline and stops because they’re captivated, or intrigued, or scared. They cater to teenagers, who see a click-bait title and can’t help but read more. They cater to the public, to you and me. In doing so, media becomes a reflection of what the public values. We’re fascinated by the raunchy, the unseemly, and sometimes the downright tragic goings-on of the world around us. As a result, newspapers plaster their covers with death, destruction, and scandal. The media do so, not necessarily because they believe these stories to be most important, but because that is what the consumers demand. They do so because they are a business, designed to maximize profits, to increase sales, and to draw an audience.
When it comes to reporting death and tragedy, ethics don’t change. The media owe the public the truth. Ethically they are responsible for ensuring that they do not, to their best knowledge, lie or misinform. The media, however, isn’t under oath. They don’t owe us “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” The media is, now and forever, biased in its coverage. It’s biased because its audience is biased; because humans are biased; because you and I are biased. But that does not make it unethical. It isn’t unethical for the media to focus more on one tragic or deadly event than another. Ethics come into play in the reporting of death and tragedy only to the point of truthful information. There was no denial of what happened in Beirut, simply less coverage. The truth was told, and though that truth wasn’t a headline, that didn’t make it any less true, or the media any less ethical.
The blame for the discrepancy in coverage isn’t on the media, but on that which the media is a reflection of, us. It’s on us to ensure that Beirut gets more coverage; to ensure that tragedy everywhere is covered equally. We do that by showing an interest in the world, thereby demanding that the media cover such topics. We tell the media what we want to read about, what we want to see. Thus, it’s our own biases, our own personal interests that have caused this discrepancy.
I have never walked the streets of Beirut. Perhaps that’s why the attack on Paris had a greater impact on me. Perhaps that’s why I read hundreds of articles about Paris and only one about Beirut. Perhaps that’s why the media focused so heavily on one while “brushing off” the other. The stark contrast in coverage of tragedy and death exist because of us, and it’s on us, not the media, to fix it.