Not even in death is our privacy respected

It is always a tragedy when someone dies in a work-related accident. There is something particularly painful for those who are left behind, when a person leaves the house to go and do a day’s work and never returns home.

It can be doubly devastating when the accident takes place close to Christmas time; a time when everyone looks forward to being with their families but which, for that family struck by sudden, tragic loss, will from now on always bring back dark memories of the harrowing episode which changed their lives forever. From now on, rather than looking forward to this holiday, it will become a cruel reminder of the person they lost. They will recall the exact moment and the exact place they were when they received the chilling phone call with the heart-stopping words, “I’m sorry, but there’s been an accident.”

I think if you had to ask most people, most of us would agree that death is a time when the family needs to be given time, space and above all, a dignified, respectful silence to allow them to mourn and grieve until they can slowly start to put together the pieces of their shattered lives (if they ever do). Most of us are emotionally intelligent enough to treat those who are in mourning with kid gloves – we speak in hushed tones, we are gentle with them, and we are sensitive about their need to be given time to heal.

So why is that when it comes to media reporting and Facebook sharing, all this is promptly forgotten and compassion goes right out the window? What I am seeing each time there is a tragedy is really terrible behaviour as everyone scrambles to be the first to upload the video footage which serves as prime click bait for a news story, while Facebook users ghoulishly share the footage for reasons I always fail to understand.

On Saturday a man died after the mechanical shovel he was operating toppled in a quarry and he was trapped under the water and mud. He not only suffered a terrible demise, but also had to suffer the indignity of being filmed while rescue workers worked for two hours to retrieve his body. Soon after the accident happened, a video was uploaded by maltarighnow.com with the wording IMUT FGAT: Filmati tal-mument li r-raġel inħareġ mill-kabina tal-gaffa, li għerqet f'għadira tajn u ilma. (loosely translated this means: A man suffocates to death: footage of how he was pulled out of the cabin of the mechanical shovel which sank in a pool of muddy water).

I did not press “play” to watch the video; I had absolutely no desire to do so, why should I? There was no information I needed that I didn’t already know: the poor man had died. Many people were likewise appalled by the sheer lack of insensitivity shown by whoever took the decision to upload the video which then went on to be shared 145 times and has been watched 46 thousand times. Several people asked for it to be taken down. As I’m writing this, however, it is is still there. It is obvious that no one had the decency to stop and think what purpose this video would serve except to satisfy the morbid curiosity of those who perversely enjoy this kind of thing. Surely, no one was thinking about the poor man’s family either, who were probably still trying to grapple with what had happened.

The only thing I could think about when I became aware of that video was that as the traumatized family was waiting in a state of stunned shock while the operation was taking place for the man’s body to be pulled out of the cabin, someone was filming it with the intention of publishing it online. Shortly afterwards, people were already sitting around in front of their laptops and phones and watching the video as if it was just another episode in the evening’s entertainment. Was the family consulted about this? Did they even get a say about whether they would want that footage to be aired?

This kind of thing has to stop and newsrooms need to put certain ethical guidelines into place of what is and isn’t acceptable (or even necessary) before this race to upload graphic video footage gets even worse. We have already crossed way too many lines, and tarnished the memories of too many accident victims who are treated as just another juicy “story” for the evening news, without stopping to think that that explicit footage is the last visual their families will ever see of their loved one. I also wonder whether newsrooms would behave the same way if (God forbid) the victim had to be someone they knew or were related to - would they use the same yardstick of what footage is or is not suitable for uploading as an online video? My hunch is that they would use the utmost discretion after first ensuing that they have the family’s permission. You know, like you are supposed to do as a professionally-trained, ethical journalist.

It is bad enough that people persist in sharing, exposing and revealing every single minutiae of their personal lives, and that of their children, but when we no longer have the slightest iota of respect for someone at their most vulnerable, at their moment of death, then I find myself wondering… what will we be filming next?