Opinions on what should and shouldn’t be reported splits BeachGrit!
Earlier today, BeachGrit reported on the grittier details of Mick Fanning’s brother Peter’s death.
News outlets in Australia and in the UK had quoted a senior police officer confirming the likely cause of death, and BeachGrit principal Chas Smith, who has a commitment to candour, reprinted the uncomfortable news.
I woke to the story all over my Facebook, all over BeachGrit, and it belted me.
In my opinion, it ain’t in BeachGrit’s anti-depressive style to talk about anything that, while titillating and superficially popular, might cause anyone unnecessary grief or suffering.
A man loses his brother? How about we peel back a notch.
In a different context, but one that can be applied with vigour here, the writer Sebastian Junger said: “There are no journalistic ethics that transcend the value of human life. There are none. In a situation where you can save a human life, you must. There isn’t any conflict in my mind.”
Substitute “dignity” for “life” and it fits.
So, Chas and me had a back and forth all morning.
“It became a story because everyone did stories on it but no one looked it in the eye,” Chas texted me. “That’s my opinion. That’s why it ran. ”
As gatekeepers and curators of a thousand potential stories every week, the editor runs a fine line.
Four years ago, I commissioned a story on the photographer Paul Sargeant despite being told he was suicidal and that the story of his sexual assault on a surf journalist would be like pulling the trigger on a gun pointed at his head.
I thought about it for the two years it took Fred Pawle to write one of the better stories ever printed in a surfing magazine. In the end, I felt it was a story the public should know and that any further suppression of it would just prove how shifty and weak surf mags were, are.
Sometimes opening the gate can be a positive experience. Like a story I commissioned, again by Fred Pawle, on surfing’s first openly gay surfer.
As for today’s story, Chas added “I thought lots and lots about it but I could easily be wrong.”
Yeah, we got it wrong. So wrong. Would we write anything for a few hits?
I’m not one for pulling stories (unless I’m going to get my ass sued. Hello WSL.) but this didn’t fit our game.
And so we evaporated it.
Getting it wrong, and sometimes crossing lines, is the messy, noisy, price of candour.
“It’s a demon’s game,” says Chas. “That’s what I thought and thought and thought about. The surf industry sweeps everything under the carpet. It’s what it does and that is fine because feathers don’t get ruffled but what if we all just committed to the truth for once? I get the insensitivity and it made my stomach turn too but son of a bitch. What if someone has a drug problem brother right now who read the piece and maybe thought to go talk to him? Being sensitive is wonderful. But being truthful can also be.”
In the end, with the remove you guys got now the barbara streisand effect over here, and now we all think it was something shady…but at the same time it is something understandable. Whatever. Gomick!!
Sure. And there are times when it makes perfect sense to kiss a source’s ass. If the story hadn’t broken yet, I could easily see holding it. But it was already out there. What’s Fanning going to do to the WSL if they don’t do what he asks? I’m not sure he has much leverage on this one. Clearly Surfing Mag didn’t think there was anything to lose by running it.
These closed, or semi-closed, media environments are interesting. Red Bull events are similar to some degree in the restrictions they put on credentialed media. It’s alright in the general way of things — everyone gets their images of dudes doing back flips and their post-heat interviews and they all go home happy. Except at a certain point, reality has a way of punching hard against the walls of the bubble. And then things tend go a bit sideways.
Good call DR.
Ok, can someone fill me in on that one?
http://beachgrit.com/2015/1…
Follow up:
http://beachgrit.com/2015/1…
“Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.” George Orwell
Beachgrit: The Peter Drouyn of Surf Media.
It made me a little uncomfortable to read that story on BG, partly due to empathy for Mick, but mostly due to the fact that it was posted by “The Editors”. This strongly suggested that it was something you felt probably didn’t fit, but the commercial value of the story was too good to miss.
On the flipside, this was the first place I read about the cause of death, and it was something I wanted to know, so from that perspective I appreciated it. Perhaps it was reported in mainstream media, but not in my locale.
But again, I can’t help seeing it as somewhat schizophrenic to post graphic images of domestic violence (alleged or otherwise) compounded with evidence of complete emotional breakdown, if not mental illness; yet on the other hand baulk at evidencing the dangers of drug abuse.
#wildcardforhank
Rupert Murdoch would be disgusted.
weak constitution? so no phone-hacking forthcoming? borrrrrring. here we are entertain us!
I actually thought it may have been the real Jay…
Jay is that really you?
I havnt seen any other surfing websites reporting on Chris Ward?
Totally agree.
It was bizarre yesterday hearing people giving shout outs to Mick and wondering what the fuck was going on and then watching the whole thing blow up into a huge mainstream story……like every News Bulletin I heard today featured it as the lead story, front page of New Ltd newspapers. Can’t silence something that is news to that extent, no matter how much you want to respect the family. At that point it seems ridiculous, surreal even to try.
Maybe the drugs angle was a bridge too far, it’s certainly Dell’s right to make that judgement call but if it’s already out there in the mainstream it’s kind of pissing into the wind.
Hope Chas doesn’t pull too many punches…..maybe considering the history between Chas and Mick (now there’s a doco with an angle- hopefully some kind of Stockholm Syndrome ending) it was the messenger and not the message that pushed it into the too much too soon basket.
The fact that it was on the front page of The Australian today makes pulling it kind of redundant.
I don’t come here for news I can find everywhere else.
there’s news elsewhere?
Only on #Tournotes, my good man…only on #Tournotes (again…I mock but I enjoy them because there is no intermediary in the clips and it’s just people talking).
The only thing suspect about the post was the less-than-flattering picture of the deceased in question. Guy clearly had some demons and the last thing the internet and his kids need/needed was a photo of him rather clearly in ‘celebration’ mode while cause-of-death speculation circulated.
That was me but very difficult to find a picture of the man, I must say.
It was tasteless, I know you got it from the Gold Coast Bulletin website but still it was tasteless
Truly a moral quandary. The tabloid angle of BG is editorially brilliant, salient to us plebes; but do you really want to stick to National Enquirer level ethics (or lack thereof) lock, stock and barrel?
There’s an argument for going full “tabloids, fuck yeah, rules don’t apply”. But I would expect you to be making serious money (like exponentially more than any existing surf site) to even consider it.
EDIT: by “tabloid, fuck yeah”, I mean sinking to the level of posting pictures of celebrity cadavers, etc. No qualms about the incriminating photos of the living and light nudity. I truly look forward to the day when a “mug shots” section rivals the blood feuds (start with Michael Tomson).
Glad that you pulled it, Mick’s family have asked for privacy at this time, there is no autopsy report, and frankly the manner of the man’s death are irrelevant to Mick’s fans. At the moment all it is is speculation. That that speculation comes from an Ozzy newspaper isn’t reassuring at all as to how true it is. This is ultimately a fans website, and whether you like Mick or not, I’d say everyone that visits this website respects him. I think you should respect the wishes of the family at this time. Maybe in time they will be feel like talking about their loss in public, maybe not, but they should be given the space to do it, and to do it on their own terms. As a fan all I need to know is that yesterday Mick found out before paddling out that he had lost a brother. That is all!
Here’s my take: you can be either journalist, or friend, but not both. I saw nothing distasteful about Chas’s article, hell, even the timing of it wasn’t really as immediate of several of the other ‘news’ outlets.
I did, however, have a problem with ol’ Pete Mel beating around the bush in that post heat interview. Again, journalist or friend. If you’re a friend, you say nothing and let the man get through his day. If you’re a journalist, with a (by then) confirmed story, you ask directly, and to the point, without wiggle room. I thought his tactic was purely designed to coax tears and make for webcast drama.
Relevant: Fox doesn’t report baseball pitcher’s death for fear that he may learn of his father’s passing on air. Again, you either report the whole thing, or you report nothing. https://www.washingtonpost….
Agree 100% with your comment about Peter Mel. It was parasitic. Not just the attempt to make drama but the result of manufacturing or stereotyping Mick into a superhuman hero, by saying: “You are amazing”. If Mick won the title, for the next 5 years, the WSL robots would have never stopped mentioning superhero Mick winning when his brother died. I was glad for Mick that he did not win the title because he would have had to ’emotionally perform’ for the media for the next 6 months. Before the internet, when Tom Carroll lost his sister & won Pipe, there were a few articles and that was it. The problem is, now, the WSL amateur commentators parasitically regurgitate the same emotional drivel over & over & over again, merely for drama rather than for sympathy. The WSL commentary has become so unbearable that I think Mick losing was for the better.
When you want the idea of exposing the truth to become why people read as opposed to what you feel your individual narrative can give to a story then you’ve stepped a foot wrong in my opinion.
Surfsplendor podcast; “extramarital sex & drug use totally off limits” You broke both parts of that rule the week it went to air. Glad you pulled it.
Those are Derek’s rules……
…currently in a state of flux…
Why is drug use off limits?
Or extramarital sex?
Agree with everyone here — Derek, you’re claiming that Chas got it “so wrong,” but not WHY he got it wrong. He didn’t get the facts wrong. He didn’t break news — it was already public record. It’s fine to disagree on the overall news value of the news in question, but it was a totally defendable judgement call.
…the architecture of our site doesn’t help, I think. Our headlines… YELL… and give the impression we’re tap-dancing every time we post…
You’re not?
…only all the time…
Choose a recessive font and whisper the headlines then shout the quotes. It’ll confuse the shit out of everyone.
so do the endless exclamation points; not to mention the actual use of the word “dance” all the time