Video Ethics

I had just arrived at Centro Latino and was getting my Merantz out of the bag and ready to record. As I was slipping in the batteries, the children arrived, running and screaming through the door. I scrambled to get everything together, and was frustrated when I missed their excited arrival. The door opening, the Spanglish, the laughter, and the greetings by the volunteers would have been a great sound byte, and all I wanted to do was ask them to go back out and do it again. But, I knew not only would the moment be less exciting and authentic, I knew it was simply unethical. I had missed the shot/moment, so all I could do was try to find something just as cool later. I think staging is just an easy fall fallback. Journalism would be cake if we could set up the story to tell it how we please, but then it wouldn't be journalism. We have to be careful to influence our environment as little as possible in order to observe and report authentically. Doing so with intimidating equipment means gaining a camaraderie and sense of ease with the people being interviewed before bombarding them with electronics. This means as journalists, we actually have to take time to get to know our interviewees as people. What a novel idea!