The absence of respect and sensitivity

Christie Blatchford hits the bullseye with this article from today's Globe and Mail:

In fact, the earliest of these reports, on a Canadian television website, preceded the release of the soldiers' names and simply reported that Canada had suffered more casualties, a nifty way to strike fear in the hearts of all soldierly parents who might have been perusing that website. "The military is not releasing the soldiers' names until all the next of kin are notified, but close family members have been informed of their deaths," this story said. Another story, done after the names had been released, referred to a Department of National Defence press release that said "primary next of kin of the deceased soldiers have been notified."

In other words, these organizations knew full well when they ran these stories that the notification process wasn't complete, and that there were Canadians out there who could learn from the tube, radio or website that someone they loved had been killed.

I don't know whether that actually happened this time - I hope not - but the potential was certainly there, and for what? A website scoop that might have lasted mere minutes?

Compare this casual attitude with the very careful handling of Ms. Fung's ordeal. Kidnapped in Kabul on Oct. 12, the 35-year-old journalist was held captive for 28 days, during which Canadian (and other) news organizations released not a word out of concern for her safety. And while the debate - to publish or not - sparked in newsrooms what my colleague Les Perreaux once described as "hand-wringing on an international level," mum was the word.

The situation with the soldiers is not perfectly comparable, of course, in that they conveniently already were dead, and it was only a question of whether everyone in their families had been told, or not. But at the least it reveals an empathy deficit within Canadian newsrooms, unless, of course, the affected is one of our own.

Too true.

And remember the real scope of these actions: I talked about this myself, back when Bob Fife and CTV decided to unilaterally break some casualty news a year and a half or so ago:

Assume each deployed CF soldier at KAF has ten people they know back home who would be devastated by their death. Just ten. Spouses, children, siblings, parents, best friends, coworkers. I'm not talking about people who played hockey with them in the second grade, or spent two weeks at summer camp with them in 1992. Ten is a conservative estimate.

With about 2,500 personnel in theatre, that means Fife and his producers at CTV News scared the hell out of at least 25,000 Canadians. Wives saw the news, and sat watching the phone, feeling like they were going to empty their guts. Sisters called each other at work to ask frantically if the other had heard anything about their kid brother. Toddlers knew something was wrong at home, but didn't know what. Tens of thousands of people knew soldiers had died, but didn't know if it was their soldier.

And for what? CTV has reporters in theatre to cover news like this, and they did once Col Cessford could confirm the incident in public. Fife couldn't actually tell us any details in his initial report - not who was killed, or how. The real story didn't come out until the embedded media could tell it anyhow.

No, all CTV gained through Fife's impatience was a sensationalized couple of hours between when he broke the word and when the details were released.

His minor scoop - one that was forgotten by the vast majority of his audience by the time the sun came up this morning - was worth more to him than the feelings of tens of thousands of Canadians with loved ones in Afghanistan.

Christie also ties in the Mellissa Fung precedent. I speculated about just how far that example would - or more precisely, wouldn't - go at the time:

Perhaps the full consequences of a Canadian news organization's reporting still don't really matter unless those consequences are measured out upon one of their friends, colleagues or family.

I certainly hope that's not the case, but given the precedent, I'm not holding my breath.

All the military is asking for is a few hours. That's it. Just a few hours to make sure the people to whom the news matters most don't have to find out on television or the radio. Just a few hours to make sure every other military family isn't eating their own guts out with worry that the dead soldier is their loved one.

I'm pretty close with soldiers who have had to deliver that awful news to a family, and I can tell you: it's one hell of a thing to have to do.

So to those in the mainstream news media: if you can't even give them a couple of hours, don't expect any of us in the real world - you know, the consumers, your audience - to give you either our respect or our business.