Last Thursday, as my fellow arriving passengers and I made our way down the platform toward the Hoboken NJ Transit station, word started to spread that, “You can’t take the PATH train to Manhattan because a train went through the gate.” Just as I couldn’t believe it when a coworker in my NYC office told me a plane crashed into the World Trade Center, this bit of information seemed like a bad game of telephone.
We turned the corner to head out of the station and there it was. Time stood still. A train had in fact crossed the station’s walkway, plowing into the waiting room, and the roof collapsed on top of it. What happened? Where do we go? How many people are hurt? I looked over and saw some people holding their bloody heads. They were being attended to by good Samaritans. How do we get out of the station? Then I noticed something that has bothered me ever since, countless cameras shooting images of the wreckage. People were focused on documenting their presence amid tragedy — before we even knew whether there were bodies trapped under the train.
I’ve given a lot of thought to how different 9/11 would have been if citizen journalism was a thing 15 years ago. It was hard enough to watch the news coverage. I can’t imagine — nor do I want to — what people in and around the towers would have captured with their smartphones.
I work in an industry where we encourage sharing stories and images, and engaging in two-way conversation on social media channels. So who am I to judge where the line should be?
Then I read an opinion piece written by a victim who was badly injured in the lead car of the train that crashed. As someone who was directly impacted, his words are a powerful statement on this subject:
“All things considered, most people were doing what they could to make the best of a bad situation, but I was unnerved by several people taking pictures rather than offering to help and wondered why someone’s first instinct would be to document, rather than assist, in that type of situation.”
I don’t know how you decide when documenting a tragedy crosses the line from helpful to harmful. Federal investigators have asked for people to submit their photos and videos to help understand the cause of the accident. We’ve also seen many citizen journalists break really important news in recent years because they happened to be on the scene before the media.
But it’s a conversation I think we should be having and we should consider the perspective of the victims and their families before we post anything on any channel. What do you think you would do if you were in the station that day?