Public: Personal, intimate stories yield lessons that are universal
For the past month, journalists followed intensely every twist in the case of Terri Schiavo.
They detailed the unbreachable family chasm, the noisy encampment outside her hospice, and her final days. They explored the reach of an act of Congress, the minutiae of legal rulings and the ignited culture wars. Their coverage shed light on advance directives, persistent vegetative states and the intricacies of feeding tubes.
And at The Oregonian, journalists shared anew how death is treated differently here, from where we die to how we die, suggesting the first tides of a sea change in how Americans approach dying.
Yet for all of the thousands of words written about the case, journalists have all but neglected the deeply personal stories that convey why end-of-life issues are so important to us. We could learn more about this moment from each other than from yet another story describing a court filing, a fiery speech by Tom DeLay or an arrest of a Bible-bearing child.
Newspapers properly focused on the issues raised by this case because they speak to our core values about life and death, and as we’ve seen in Oregon, those values are undergoing changes. But newspapers are full of what editors consider to be news; this news demanded that readers become the storytellers and give voice to what they have learned through their own lives. The intimacy of those personal stories yield universal lessons.
Throughout time and across cultures, we have learned through stories — parables in cultural and religious parlance. Whether through the Gospels telling of Jesus, rabbinical teachers or the words of the Quran, parables have translated the complexities of life and death for us.
What we needed in recent weeks were the stories found in families discussing and debating the Schiavo case at the dinner table, during baby boomers’ visits with their aging parents and in the shadows of hospital rooms.
Many readers who called or wrote the newspaper about the Schiavo case described their end-of-life experiences, but generally there is no home for reader-generated stories in the newspaper. Yet more than any of the standard fare I read in the newspaper, they made me think about the Schiavo case in new and different ways.
Take the story of Ann Leuthauser of Gresham, who told me how she cared for her husband for many of the last 15 years of his life, after an accident caused a brain injury. For the last seven years, after a second accident, he was on a feeding tube and nurses described him as semi-comatose. She considered her care for her husband to be a duty, but also a privilege of love. “I could never have said, ‘You can’t eat’ ” she says.
Leuthauser, who also cared for aging parents in her home, was sick and told in 1962 that she had a year to live. “That is why I have a strong belief that you don’t believe everything doctors tell you. You always believe in possibilities.”
Then there is the story of the Rev. Don Jarman, a retired Beaverton minister and former hospital chaplain, who has spent countless hours with families talking about life and death in hospital hallways. One case that still stands out today is of a young woman who had an aneurysm. Many family members visited over the weekend, and left on Sunday, saying, ‘Where there is breath there is life.’ ” But in the cold light of Monday morning, her parents were left with a heartbreaking decision.
He says thousands of people face end-of-life decisions, but they face them with quiet strength, and we don’t hear or read about it. “They know where their strength is and they don’t make a circus of it,” he says.
Or take the story of Teresa Bright, whose mother was in a persistent vegetative state after an accident. Bright shared in a brief letter to the editor how she had to “pull the plug” after nine years. Bright says she thought it was important to share her personal story with readers because she didn’t see similar ones in the coverage of the Schiavo case. “There is so much hype,” she said. “There doesn’t seem to be much coverage of that experience.”
Their stories and the stories of many others offer lessons that all of us can learn from. And when told in their own words, the stories carry messages more powerful, personal and lasting than most of the Schiavo coverage. If end-of-life decisions are a shared experience, it’s one that mostly hasn’t been shared in the newspaper.
Readers who complained to me had grown weary of the relentless front page presence of the Schiavo case. But their weariness grew not out of the life-and-death issues raised by the case, but the predictable form of newspaper coverage.
The Oregonian generally selected the best wire-service stories that reflected the day’s developments and others that provided context for those events. It mined local angles, for example, describing Oregon’s unique status on end-of-life issues and providing key information on advance directives.
By many standards, the coverage offered context lacking in much of the coverage nationwide. Stories in The Oregonian even captured the humanity of at least one family struggling with end-of-life issues.
But journalists missed the opportunity to have a full conversation with readers — especially in Oregon, where so much thought and care have been devoted to how our lives end.
Kelly McBride, who teaches ethics at the Poynter Institute, a school for journalists, wrote in a recent essay that “unlike any story in recent memory, this one highlights the intimate connection between the personal and the political, the private and the universal . . .”
She argued in a recent essay that the Schiavo case should challenge journalists to provide leadership for the community, but in a new way — through connecting to their readers.
“If there were ever an opportunity for journalists to transform their work from lecture to conversation, as many journalism reformers are proposing these days, this is it,” she writes.
McBride said in an interview that journalists needed to move away from the particulars of the Schiavo case and focus on how other families talk and make decisions about death. They need to listen to the questions of readers and address those through the coverage.
A key way to do that is by giving readers a voice in the newspaper, providing a new form for journalists and a new forum for readers.
“Especially in Oregon,” McBride said, “where you have been having those discussions, there is more to be gained from the personal stories and the conversation that is going on among people who have a variety of experience with the issue, rather than lawyers representing this family and that family and politicians who see something to be gained politically through all this.”
Newspapers could learn from the blogging community on the Web, which allows people to share their views and stories. The Web logs not only enable, but also actively encourage, people to provide information and engage in discussions of current issues.
The personal story of Terri Schiavo is over, but not the conversation about how we die. Editors need to find new ways to let readers be part of a conversation in the newspaper, to tell and teach through their own parables.
