Changing the world?
By Lieszel Plumbe
A small, conservative country town. A young woman viciously raped at gunpoint. The headline "RAPE HUNT!" screaming out on the front page of the local paper. And so begins what may be the last will and testament of my spirit as a journalist.
The attack was the first of its kind to be reported in the town. The police asked the media (one small newspaper and one small radio station, which I work for) to hold off publishing the crime because they thought they were close to tracking down the offenders. The police didn't want them scared from the town.
The radio ran a small item about a serious assault in the town.
The paper not only published the fact that a woman had been sexually assaulted, but did so on the front page with a one-inch headline in bold block letters: "RAPE HUNT!". They were short of news. A journalist at the paper admitted it probably shouldn't have run on the front page. It did.
The story in the paper gave a detailed and terrifying account. The woman's age was given. The ages of her children were given. The number of dogs in her backyard was given. Her name was absent, but so what? It's a small country town; her identity would be obvious to many friends and acquaintances.
A woman's life shattered by rape. Her privacy shattered in the name of a good story.
"I feel sorry for the woman and the police who are investigating", said one of the journalists from the paper when asked about the morality of printing the story. "Our job is to sell papers. The story was good for sales."
The rapists still haven't been caught.
I realise what an effort it sometimes takes for a journalist in the popular media to retain his or her
personal integrity.
Telephoning the police and ambulance departments each afternoon, being short of news, it is often quite easy to find myself excited about someone else's misfortune: a theft, and assault. For a journalist it means a story. A story is a wage.
When I left school last year brimming with ambition to become a journalist, I had dreams of using my writing to change the world for the better.
Sometimes it seems I was naive.
But if my writing can change just one person's attitude, improve just two or three lives, then surely the effort is worth it.
Isn't it?