Private grief and public news
“Ask him if it’s his birthday”, was the bizarre advice once proffered to me as a cadet reporter on a daily newspaper. The cadet counsellor – who lectured us once a week on different aspects of our job – was asking us to imagine attending an accident scene where an unfortunate man had become pinned beneath some kind of heavy machine. Our counsellor somehow pictured a scenario where this trapped person would be fine with answering questions from a cub reporter while simultaneously being rescued from his presumably life-threatening predicament. So, apparently, we would be asking…