Journalistic integrity- Landon DeBoer

by Landon DeBoer

In the aftermath of the deaths of NBA legend Kobe Bryant, and his daughter Gigi; baseball coach John Altobelli, his wife Keri and his daughter Alyssa; mother and daughter Sarah and Payton Chester; Mamba academy assistant coach Christina Mauser; and helicopter pilot Ara Zobayan; the idea of journalistic integrity was brought to the table after it was reported that family members of the victims may have found out about the tragedy from news outlets rather than city officials.

This recent disaster showcases the dilemma between getting a story completely accurate and getting the story published in the quickest manner. A decision like this seems easy: Allow families time to grieve and be the first to learn of such an incident with 100 percent accuracy. However, in the hour following the helicopter crash, TMZ had already published a story covering the incident. After TMZ’s quick coverage in the race to be first and get clicks, many other media outlets such as ABC News and BBC were quick to publish stories and get TV coverage, all of which varied in total death count and who was in the helicopter. One such erroneous report concluded that Bryant’s entire family was in the helicopter. This report was sloppy and inaccurate to say the least.

Although breaking news is crucial in alerting people about disasters, it can be detrimental in many other ways if not covered in a respectful and accurate manner. Learning about the death of a loved one can be difficult in any situation, but learning such horrible news from the national media rather than a city official, who can correctly confirm the status of a loved one, can be even more difficult to families in the grieving process. Seeing a false report on TV can leave a person wondering whether or not their family member was actually in the reported incident, rather than hearing straightforward from an accurate source who is trained to break such difficult news.

There is little excuse for putting additional weight on many families’ shoulders during tough situations like the deadly helicopter crash. Inaccuracies in reporting on normal events can be fixed with a simple correction. However, an inaccuracy in a life or death situation is inexcusable and no amount of remorse can fix the permanent damage caused. No ad revenue or view count can be great enough to justify stealing impactful moments of grief away from families involved in a tragedy.

To be quite frank, as a journalist, I am appalled at how some news networks can report without knowing the full facts of a story. Accuracy should always be the number one priority over the number of views a story could accumulate if published as breaking news. Even though I am not a part of the poor reporting that went on after the Jan. 26, 2020 disaster, I want to apologize to the Bryants, the Altobellis, the Chesters, the Mausers and the Zobayans for the lack of attention to detail and sympathy the media acted with. As a journalist you can always do better and be better in the pursuit of getting a story right in an allocated amount of time after catastrophe.