Louise Tickle looks at when the line between the personal and the professional becomes blurred in reporting traumatic case studies


A life, not just a story


L


ast summer, a young man I’ll call Peter took an overnight bus from Newcastle to London Victoria. Shortly before 9am, he stepped out in front of an incoming tube train. Just 20 when he died, Peter was the eldest


child of ‘Annie’, who I had spent nine months working with as I researched how North Tyneside Council had removed her youngest son at birth. Interviewing Peter, it became evident that he had been deeply traumatised by watching his mother’s ordeal and the threat of losing his baby brother to adoption. The feature was published and, over the next year or so, I


kept in close touch with Annie. I had seen her at her most vulnerable but had also watched as, taking strength from the validation she felt from having her story told, she thrived professionally and personally. We became friends. Ten days after Peter killed himself, I went with her to see the spot where he had died. Then we drove to Westminster mortuary, loaded Peter’s body into the back of my car and drove out of London along the Edgware Road. Annie couldn’t afford a funeral director’s transportation costs to Newcastle and besides, because of her experiences with social services, she found any intrusion by officialdom incredibly painful. She was viscerally determined that she, his mother, would bring him home herself. I will never feel anything other than honoured that she let me


help her. However, it is also the case that I have never developed a relationship this close with a ‘case study’. It’s a fundamental aspect of a journalist’s role to interview people at the very worst of times – and we often disappear once the job is done. Talking to colleagues, it’s clear that this can lead to a sense of unease about how we navigate the ethics involved. What do we owe the people whose stories we tell? Anything? Nothing other than doing them justice in our copy? Do they have a call on us afterwards? How can we protect our case studies – and ourselves? And is it OK – or not – to get as involved in someone’s life as I did, eventually, in Annie’s? Kelly Rose Bradford has written numerous case-study-led


features for national media, and believes ‘we owe them absolute honesty and openness, and a lot of hand-holding’. Highly


16 | theJournalist


protective, she often worries something might happen further down the line that is out of her control: “A cruel or misleading headline, overzealous subbing, a thoughtless picture caption. Or, at the very worst, out-of-context paraphrasing or rewriting.” Telling someone how compelling and important their


experience is, while also trying to explain that an emotionally gruelling two-hour interview might result in only a couple of paragraphs in print, or indeed nothing at all, is a delicate line to walk. “People sometimes expect more emphasis on their


Being a case study


My initial feelings when Louise first approached me were apprehension and unease, writes ‘Annie’. I had visions of


sensationalist, clickbait headlines. I was concerned about being exploited and worried that my anger over the injustice of my experiences would blind me to this. I was desperate to


illuminate the problems I’d experienced in the care system, which I felt were damaging other families too. I’d also spent years feeling powerless and was anxious that this would


be repeated on a national scale – a nervousness that was replicated when I was asked onto the Victoria Derbyshire show, LBC and local radio. It’s frightening to let


yourself be vulnerable on this scale. I’ve been lucky, though, because through working with journalists who have respected me, I’ve learned how to distinguish between sensation seekers and those genuinely interested in telling my family’s story with dignity, respect and humanity. I’ve not liked it when I’ve felt someone is after me


simply as programme fodder, which has happened, just the once. Journalists have mostly


been clear that, while they will make every effort to be accurate, I might not like everything that goes out. I’ve also noticed that accuracy on a complex story takes a lot of time and care – and that means hours of the case study’s time as well! You’re not at the media’s mercy; you can retain a degree of control by being clear about boundaries from the start. To journalists, I would


say never make promises you can’t keep, always keep in mind this is someone’s life, and don’t abandon them afterwards.


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