This too is a very humane plea, and when the ethical regulatory mechanisms and filters in newsrooms don’t work, perhaps it will help us to work more carefully when writing about human fates.
It was an intense week for journalists. Armenia’s National Security Service (NSS) arrested an armed group of 21 people.
During this developing news story, journalists’ work and decisions to disseminate or how to disseminate the NSS videos fall within the scope of editorial decisions.
Newsrooms had to decide: publish the image of a naked man with a sofa cover thrown on him or not? They decide how to describe the detained: suspects, an armed group, terrorists, or criminals?
An admonition addressed to journalists was shared in the news today. Levon Baghdasaryan, the attorney defending Artur Vardanyan, one of the the suspects arrested on November 25, asked journalists “not to escalate the situation and taking into account the presumption of innocence, refrain from needless qualifications whilst the case is still in the pretrial stage.”
It’s a plea to be human, which might affect the everyday decisions of newsrooms.
One of the news sites that published the news of the attorney’s request when publishing Artur Vardanyan’s photo blurred [AM] the faces of two other people in the photo, who also participated in a public demonstration. This sets a good precedent for the ethical use of photos in local Armenian news media —a show of respect toward these individuals’ private lives.
Perhaps serving as an example for Levon Baghdasaryan’s appeal was another plea to journalists. Yesterday, Anelik Bank posted a special announcement [AM] on Facebook for those in the media industry, asking: “When covering the news of the murder of the Anelik Bank lawyer, refrain from publishing photos of the […] young man already dead or at least blur his face [in the photo]. This is basic respect for not only the deceased, but also his relatives.”
This too is a very humane plea, and when the ethical regulatory mechanisms and filters in newsrooms don’t work, perhaps it will help us to work more carefully when writing about human fates.
Gegham Vardanyan
The views expressed in the column are those of the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of Media.am.
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