This is an edited version of a column that first appeared in the May 28, 2004 edition of the Citizen:
In The Citizen newsroom, as in every newsroom, a group of journalists converge each day to offer readers the most complete package of news we can produce with limited resources and looming deadlines.
What's rarely discussed are the stories we don't tell you. In fact, a day rarely goes by that a decision isn't made to reject a story or photograph (in newsroom jargon, it's called spiking) based on disturbing content. Veteran reporters and photographers censor themselves to a large degree. They have a pretty good idea what editors will accept when it comes to sensitivity and taste, sculpting their work accordingly.
Occasionally, a debate will erupt when a story or photograph pushes those boundaries. A reporter or photographer will insist on the reader's right to know while editors -- the ones upset readers will flood with phone calls, emails and letters -- are more cautious and will ask if readers really need to know all the sordid details. These dilemmas, worthy of Solomon, require quick decisions. Every journalist I know has a story or two of going for it and living to regret it or holding back and being accused of censorship or even incompetence for not including those extra facts.
Perhaps the darkest job in our newsroom falls on the night copy editor. His task is to scour the wire services for the most important provincial, national and international news and photographs of the day and place them in the space available. That was my job when I first arrived at The Citizen.
On a nightly basis, the wire services present a gloomy picture of humanity at its most depraved and ignorant, with matching photographs, from across the globe. Frankly, it's a mental assault, an information overload of death, destruction and pain.
Flooding in Bangladesh kills 200. Pictures of bodies floating face down in muddy water.
A ferry sinks off the coast of the Philippines. Hundreds perish. Pictures of bodies being pulled out of the water.
A two-year-old in Edmonton is attacked by two pit bulls. A graphic story describes how her left arm was gnawed off at the elbow, how her nose and ears were chewed to ribbons, how her scalp was ripped away. Photographs show paramedics desperately trying to stabilize her wounds before racing her mangled body to the hospital.
The photo wire routinely sends images of broken bodies, lying in bloody pieces in the streets of cities and countries we're fortunate not to live in.
The names, places and atrocities change on a nightly basis but the horror is relentless.
Others have taken on the night copy editor job since and each one has been diagnosed with a condition I remembered having. I call it "desker depression." Symptoms include rage, increasing cynicism and a growing hopelessness for humanity. It eventually passes and you become professionally numb, in a way law enforcement and medical professionals must in order to still function.
Now, more than ever, reporters and editors are news filters. We pick and choose from the vast amount of information flowing through our community and our world, then give local readers what we think is the most important to their lives, that they'll care about the most on that day. Those decisions are subjective, of course, and often made hastily. It's not about sanitizing the news because newspapers aren't meant to serve as Hallmark cards but most newspapers try to make it palatable by adding lighter but still interesting and relevant news to the mix.
We don't always succeed and our readers don't always agree, as the recent letters to the editor about the front-page picture from the scene of last week's death of two pedestrians in Prince George. If the same photograph had been taken in Toronto or Vancouver, there would have been little reaction. It's the proximity that hurts. Those are our streets and those are people we know. The tragedy is not distant and abstract. It is here with us.
Yet, for every disturbing and upsetting story or photograph that appears in The Citizen or any other serious newspaper that attracts the indignant anger of readers, it's simply a brief and bitter taste of a larger horror.
Mostly hidden from that distasteful glimpse is our own sorrow and outrage, as well as our own fear and anxiety, of sharing such tragedies with you.
