Reporters are not supposed to give gifts to sources or pay them for stories, because readers would be right to doubt anything paid sources said.
Michael Wines, a reporter based in Africa for the New York Times, wrote recently about the ethical questions he faces in confronting common desperation. Two Star correspondents, who have frequently seen similar need, commented as well.
My name is on this column, but the rest of it, save the last paragraph, is theirs:
“I recently bought an elaborate dinner for some of my sources,” wrote Wines. “Given the jaundiced eye some people train on journalists these days … that may sound tawdry, if not downright corrupt.
“So be it. These particular sources live outside Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. They are stone-crushers, a class of labourers who cling to the lowest social rung even in this, one of the world’s poorest nations. Mostly women and children, they live by reducing boulders to gravel and powder, which are sold to local construction workers at starvation-level prices.
“After a few hours of interviews about their struggle to survive, I left them and drove to a grocery. There I bought about $75 worth of food: cornmeal, cooking oil, rice, orange concentrate, bread, milk, a big bag of candy. Then I returned and unloaded it, to undiluted pandemonium … actual dancing in the street … They were that hungry.
“This sort of thing happens all too often … and not just here.
“How to respond to it is a moral dilemma that lurks in the background of many interviews … In reputable journalism, paying for information is a cardinal sin, the notion being that a source who will talk only for money is likely to say anything to earn his payment.
“So what to do when a penniless father asks why he should open his life free to an outsider when he needs money for food? How to react to the headmistress who says that white people come to her school only to satisfy their own needs, and refuses to talk without a contribution toward new classrooms?
“Sometimes, an article moves generous readers to contribute their own money … But here, too, there are hurdles. How can money be funnelled securely to villages without banks, ATMs or even cash economies?
“What if, despite all best intentions, money is misused or goes for naught?
“Most wrenching of all, what happens when the money runs out?
“My own code is simple: I never give people money in advance of an interview, even when the person is clearly in need. I argue that the value of educating the world about their problems is reason enough to talk … I sometimes offer help after completing an interview, and tell myself that I cannot also help all his neighbours and friends.
“Better to light one candle.
“That said, it can be haunting to realize that it is in fact usually just one candle, and usually in places where bonfires are needed …”
Olivia Ward has spent months in war zones and other wretched and dangerous places for the Star. Her rules are similar. “I don’t interview anybody who asks for money first. But I see absolutely nothing wrong in leaving money or food, medicine or supplies behind for desperate people who often don’t admit how desperate they are.
“For example, on a bitterly cold winter’s night in Georgia (the Caucasus not the U.S.) I left a $100 bill under the pillow of a nine-month pregnant woman who was having her first baby at 40.”
She and her husband were childhood sweethearts who had finally earned enough to marry, when war broke out.
“They generously offered me a meal and bed for the night just outside the front line.
“When I asked her how she would get along, with the birth any day, she shrugged and said hospitals now ask patients to bring or pay for antiseptic, anaesthetic, antibiotics and food, as well as sheets and blankets, but she was strong enough to survive without most of that. Both she and her husband were unemployed. She refused my offer of a kit for the hospital, so I left the money in her bedroom when she wasn’t looking.”
Ward has dozens of similar stories, as does columnist Rosie DiManno.
“Just because I’m a reporter doesn’t mean I should stop trying to be a decent human being,” says DiManno. “When we write about people, especially those who are suffering, we steal a piece of their lives, for our own purposes. I see no professional conflict in giving a little back, if I am able.
“A few years back, I was in Uganda writing about child soldiers. The government had established a refuge for kids who had fled or been rescued from the Lord’s Resistance Army. These were deeply traumatized youngsters no longer welcome in their own villages because they’d done murder and been kept as sexual slaves.
“But there was hardly any money, not even sufficient funds to purchase school supplies.
“I gave all that I could spare and later appealed to Star readers to do the same. They donated thousands of dollars that I wired to the NGO involved with the mission. Readers also contributed tonnes of classroom supplies, clothing and shoes.
“I don’t, and would never, pay for a story. But oftentimes a story takes you someplace where a little bit of money goes a long way.”
Interviews done without promise of payment kept these stories and offers of help uncompromised. And that is crucial, because only great stories can inspire readers to light bonfires.
