by Melannie Gonzalez

Created on: April 29, 2008

The truth is that rarely, if ever, is a journalist truly objective about what they are writing about. This is based on the fact that, in part, the definition of objective is to "not be influenced by personal feelings, interpretation, or prejudice." As writers, we are trained that we must maintain a neutral perspective and to just report the facts. But, even in choosing what we will report we are influenced by our own feelings, interpretations, or prejudices. However, just because a journalist has feelings regarding a specific issue does not in and of itself preclude a truthful presentation of the facts.

A journalist living in a country in conflict who is entrusted with the responsibility to report the goings on is especially susceptible to the effect of the experience on how they will report the events. How can one not be affected by the things that are happening right outside the door? When the journalist himself, family members and neighbors are affected by what is transpiring this evokes an emotional response. Therefore, journalists living inside the borders of a country in conflict have a particularly keen sense of the need to make the people outside those borders understand and feel what they are experiencing. They will search for just the right story, the interview, the photograph, or the sound bite that will convey the smells, the sights, the reality of what they are living. They want the rest of the world to know the heartache, the fear, and occasionally even the heroism that they are seeing first hand. Therefore, inevitably, their own emotions will dictate what words they choose, what tone their piece will have. However, that isn't necessarily a negative thing.

Journalists who experienced the genocide in Rwanda in the early nineties were exposed to horrific scenes on a daily basis. They witnessed the massacre of hundreds of thousands of people right in front of their eyes. They were forced to stand by, unable to do anything other than report the atrocities. It would have been humanely impossible to live through an experience like that and remain objective. Regardless of political, religious, or social background, remaining objective to the sheer magnitude of the evil that surrounded them was a weight that no person would have been able to bear. Time and again, we hear their cries for help through the stories they chose to tell. We are unable to watch, read or listen to those news reports without feeling ourselves the horror of what happened. Now, imagine

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