Sometimes, media need to back off

SATURDAY MORNING EDITORIAL — The public has been inundated all week long with media reports about four young people who drowned in Slocan Lake north of Nelson when their canoe over-turned.

It’s a terrible story. Three guys and a young woman borrow a canoe to travel across the lake to see friends but don’t make it back. Nobody knows what went wrong.

It’s a story that, of course, must be told. People want to know how four young lives could be taken in such a tragedy. And, of course, the grief of the community of New Denver must be acknowledged.

But how many times must the people of New Denver be asked how they are coping? In one single interview, we heard a friend of the four asked the same question in half a dozen different ways. How are you coping? How is the community coping? How are people dealing with it? How are friends handling it?

On and on. Not one new fact came out of that interview, nor did it from many others. When journalists can find nothing new to tell their audience about a tragedy, they rely on the old standby — how are people handing it?

Covering grief is journalistically legitimate — until it becomes a replacement for actual news. Then it simply becomes intrusive. At some point, surely, the media need to back away.

Typically, when the B.C. Coroner’s Service issues a news release about the identity of a victim of sudden death, the last sentence says this: “On behalf of family members, the B.C. Coroners Service asks that the media respect their privacy at this difficult time.”

It’s a reasonable request. Sometimes, friends and family members want to talk about the loss of a loved one; sometimes they don’t. Media need to learn when to leave people alone, even if it means going without an “update” for a day or so until there’s new information to report.