COVERING ANNIVERSARIES

As the anniversary of a tragedy approaches, stations inevitably begin planning to revisit the story. How can you mark these kinds of events without re-victimizing people who suffered the first time?

Here's some unsolicited advice. Please let us know if you find these suggestions to be helpful, and if you have other ideas to share, please send them our way.

• Take care with images. Assess the news value of the images you might show before deciding to run them. After 9/11, I moderated a focus group in Portland, Oregon, where viewers weren't shy about telling their local stations they did not want to see pictures of planes hitting buildings again and again. Why re-air the video of the World Trade Center collapsing? A Colorado woman told USA Today that as far as she's concerned, "replaying the same horrific images over and over will be like pouring salt in an open wound." Whatever you decide to do, take time to explain your choices to viewers.
  
  
• Advance the story. Viewers in the Portland focus group urged stations to spend more time looking forward than backward to the events of September 11. As one participant said, "It's time to move on." That could mean covering what's changed, by taking a look at airport security, restrictions on civil liberties, and how Muslims and non-Muslims in your community relate to each other today. Examine the cost of those changes to the local economy and to government budgets. Ask: "What comes next?"
  
  
• Show respect. Many stations want to memorialize local residents lost in a tragedy by talking with relatives. Recognize that anniversaries are painful and that reliving trauma takes a toll. Avoid exposing relatives to video of the event and watch your language. Terms like "victim" and "hero" are loaded words that can cause offense unintentionally.
  
  
• Be a watchdog. Seek a balance between emotional stories and stories that raise tough questions about what's gone right and wrong since the tragedy. Have local officials moved quickly enough to make changes? Have they overreacted? How prepared are your local health professionals for a possible bioterrorism attack? Review this list of story ideas for additional suggestions.
  
  
• Cast a wide net. Look for the effects of September 11 in lots of different places. Remember the stories about church attendance being way up after the attacks? What's happened since then? Some businesses have suffered enormously as a result of the attacks while others profited. What are things like now for local travel agencies, airlines, and security firms?
  
  
• Stay local. Expect to be inundated with national coverage from the networks, both broadcast and cable. What can you do to distinguish your own coverage? Focus on your community and how people's lives have changed, or not changed. How are your local schools handling the anniversary?