Media should only air 911 calls when they’re relevant
Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn’s take on news organizations’ use of 911 calls:
I’ve long felt that it’s close to obscene to play the most intimate, raw sounds of shock and pain experienced by those experiencing the effects of crime, given how little news value the recordings have.
And the fact that we can — that 911 recordings are part of the public record — doesn’t mean we should.
Those calls should be played if they advance the story “in a meaningful way,” he says, “but playing the audio simply to dramatize the depths of someone’s agony is abusive, not only of the privacy rights of the person who called 911 looking for help, not to offer up their darkest moment for the delectation of the masses, but also of the listener or viewer who’d rather not hear it.”
* Time for media to 86 the practice of reflexively playing 911 tapes (Chicago Tribune)
Some time in the early to mid-1990s, I believe it was when I lived in Colorado, a radio station talk show host played a 911 call of a woman calling for help. She died during the call as her attacker used, I believe, the telephone cord to strangle her.
It was after midnight and I was driving home from work when the recording was played, and I nearly had to pull over. As a journalist, I have seen some horrible things over the years, including gunshot wounds, mangled bodies in car crashes and countless expressions of grief that no one should have to experience.
But this was exponentially much worse and shook me to the core.
At one level, I think it was “good” for me to hear that, if only to reawaken the compassion that we tend to suppress as journalists. But at another, broader level, I could have gone the rest of my life without having heard that recording and would not regret missing it.
I think Zorn is correct: Yes, we often have the right to publish/air the public record, but that does not mean we should.