Coverage of the Dunblane tragedy – a massacre of children in a small Scottish town – raised serious questions about media intrusion. But a new report casts a gentler light on the old Grub Street image, writes Peter Preston
THE newshound of myth and legend has a soft smile and a hard heart, a grey conscience and a dirty raincoat. Reality? I have just put together, as a single report, almost two dozen remembrances of what it was like to cover the Dunblane massacre: a tapestry of surprising testimony.
Dunblane was an appalling disaster, the mass murder of little children by a demented gunman. News: news anywhere in the world. So the newsmen of the world descended, en masse, upon a shocked, tiny Scottish city. That was bound to raise passions. Some who stood witness on the sidelines were sickened. It was also bound to raise issues.
Today’s new report, published by the British executive of the International Press Institute, concentrates on reflection rather than polemic. It puts down, in their own words, the things that struck – and sometimes overwhelmed – the journalists who lived through Dunblane’s week of desperate distress.
Many broke down and cried, and say so. Women reporters with children of their own endured tears and traumas. Gillian Bowditch, of the Times, lives in Stirling, 3km from Dunblane. How do you come home from the shattered school and organise your own daughter’s birthday party?
There is a poignant moment when Christian Gysin of the Daily Mirror goes to church to pray, and finds himself ostracised as yet another intruder into a grief which is, in fact, his own. Such feelings, individual and collective, set Dunblane apart. They also, at least in intent, produced a sombre, sober reporting presence. The real debates weren’t about feet in doors: they were about when to pack and leave the funerals alone.
Is there a continuing issue? One, among many perhaps. The reporters who went did not believe, in the first hours, that they were intruding on profound sorrow. Time and again, the people of Dunblane wanted to talk.
But then that relationship began to fracture under sheer weight of numbers and weight of kit. How could 500 or 600 journalists stand quietly aside in a city of 7 000 inhabitants? How could the cathedral seem the same with camera towers shadowing its spires?
Even the best of intentions (and the best of police operations, like this) would buckle under such stress. It is a point, I think, for urgent pondering. Shawn Pogatchnik, of the Associated Press, wonders whether the news agencies shouldn’t, in the first instance, be asked to serve their clients alone. There’s a parallel TV proposal. Difficult propositions to convert into reality in a mle of competition.
But the experience of Dunblane – manifest here – is that the descent of the media essentially changed the experience of the tragedy itself. Is that what we want some next, unimaginable time? And is there anything we can do about it?
Christian Gysin London-based reporter, Daily Mirror
I WENT by my own rules – deal with people as you would wish to be dealt with yourself in such circumstances. My door knocking involved shopkeepers and neighbours well down the street. One woman – living eight doors from a victim’s family – suggested that she’d speak herself to the family; they were her friends. It was her suggestion.
She rang me on my mobile four hours later and said they didn’t want to talk. But, she added, she’d been given permission by them “to tell me all about their dead daughter”. It was more than I could reasonably have wished for.
Increasingly, I felt many of us were struck by the futility of writing obituaries of five-year-old children. As the parent of a four-year-old and a seven-year-old, I didn’t feel there was anything one could write to do justice to such brutally shortened lives.
On the Sunday after the massacre I went to a Catholic church service with a Mirror colleague from Manchester. We needed an hour to ourselves – for some reflection and meditation.
At the entrance to the church, we were asked if we planned to report the service. We both felt slightly guilty and dirty as we explained we were Catholics and simply wanted to attend a church service. We even emptied our pockets to prove we had left our pens, books and tape recorders in the car.
The man who had questioned us realised as he watched us praying that we were there as churchgoers and not as journalists. I arrived home on Monday morning, the day after the first funeral, to be greeted by my son. He was in tears. He told me that there had to be a funeral – his goldfish had died. That evening we buried the goldfish in the garden and cried together. The next morning he told me that if we exhumed Pinky, he was sure he would be “all right”.
I thought of the Dunblane classmates, just a year older, who couldn’t understand death either. At that moment I certainly couldn’t explain to him why I was crying.
Fiona Barton Chief reporter, Mail on Sunday
AS a Sunday newspaper, we worked very much on our own while the daily pack raced from press conference to photo opportunity. We aimed to build up some sort of individual rapport, but the sheer volume of reporters in Dunblane meant everybody was interviewed endlessly.
This created a sense of frustration among the swelling ranks of journalists who continued to arrive by the busload in search of a line that would hold to the weekend. More importantly, the news coverage reached saturation point and started to become intrusive.
We had, I believe, taken every step to prevent this happening. The collective decision had been taken by the editors not to contact the victims’ families, and everyone, with few exceptions, acted with sensitivity and decorum.
But the decision by every news organisation to send teams of up to 20 meant our best intentions were unworkable. We were a constant presence; at the church vigil on Friday it appeared that almost every other person there was a reporter. It was an imposition.
The people of Dunblane were very patient, but there came a point, on Saturday, when they clearly wanted us to leave. They had answered all our questions, been photographed again and again laying flowers outside the school and crying in each others’ arms, without protest; but they wanted their town back, and time to grieve away from the press.
Television, radio and newspapers started scaling down their operations the following week; but I would have preferred a more measured approach in the first place.
As a reporter on the ground, I found the emotion of the tragedy overwhelming, and had to put it to one side while I worked. As a mother of young children, I had watched the television coverage on the day it happened and sobbed – but the following morning in Dunblane, I could not cry. That all came later.
It was mentally and emotionally exhausting. To report the story I had to experience some of the anguish of the community, but control my feelings so that I could operate. I relied heavily on colleagues for support during those three days and was irritable and tearful over ridiculous things. No story has ever affected me so deeply.
Shaun Pogatchnick Reporter, Associated Press
IN a situation like Dunblane, the proliferation of international media comes into depressing focus. Most journalists tried to do their jobs respectfully, and often with a sincere sense of dread in their hearts.
For Dunblane’s residents, though, this didn’t really matter. Their abiding impression must be that their small town, caught in shock and grief, was inundated by uncontrollably large pools of reporters, unnecessarily covering the same ground and pressing for the same access to painful places.
I recall one press pool at Stirling Hospital, where relatives of two wounded children spoke briefly. There were 10 photographers, six camera crews and a dozen writers. This saturation was totally unnecessary. The people involved may have spoken more if fewer reporters and crews had been there. As it was, the information passed on was almost worthless for journalistic use – prepared statements read barely audibly, interrupted by crying. A wrenching, but self-destructive effort.
Francesca Unsworth Home Assignments Editor, BBC News and Current Affairs
ON the face of things, it should have been one of the toughest decisions journalists could be expected to make: whether to pull out of a big story when it was still running near the top of every radio and television news bulletin. In fact, the decision not to cover the funerals of the victims was easier than could ever have been foreseen.
We expected the police to allocate a pool camera position outside each church. We did not expect to be allowed to film – or go – inside them. We all felt personally uneasy about witnessing such grief, but also believed there was a wider journalistic obligation to cover the events.
But we were already beginning to sense that Dunblane had had enough of the journalists who had overrun the town, after stoic acceptance until that Sunday. In reality, we failed to advance the story much after the first few days; but we raked over the coals for more than a week. It was time to leave Dunblane with its sorrow.
In an ideal world, two things would have happened: the media should have organised a tighter pool structure from the start, and the Strathclyde police should have been committed to gaining approved access to the relatives, based on that pool structure. Journalists stayed around in expectation of access to the most directly bereaved.
At a briefing, Superintendent Munn appealed to the BBC to set an example by agreeing not to attend the services. In fact, he said in the politist terms that he – and they – wanted us to pack up and go.
I immediately phoned the home editor in London, telling him we’d been asked to leave. The swift upshot was to tell the police we would take all our gear out of Dunblane. We decided not to go to the funerals. ITN and Sky also agreed to pull back.
Was it the right decision? Some American broadcasters were amazed that we could pull out before the most heart-rending pictures had even been put on tape, let alone broadcast. Some British newspapers took a similar view and some of our own staff wondered whether we had allowed ourselves to be manipulated by the police and politicians; those same politicians whose trail to the town earlier in the week had drawn the media behind them.
And what of any future requests about coverage of funerals? We have, after all, covered many funerals in Northern Ireland where the families of victims of terrorism would have preferred us to stay away. We have not heeded those requests. Would Dunblane mean a change of policy in Ulster? Probably not.
But Dunblane was different. I think the decision to pull out was journalistically right because of the particular circumstances of the tragedy and the mood of the public. Other instances might demand other responses.
Also, after reflection, the decision to pull back was journalistically sound as that was what the audience at home wanted too. The angles had been covered, the tears had been shown. The audience had had enough.