The pack moves on, the damaged get up, tend to their wounds, and resume life. I’ve seen people destroyed between the jaws of a mauling media pack. Life delivered moments of intense vulnerability, loss of control over the way I, or people close to me, might be treated or portrayed.
The frisson has always been the same, when I’ve heard a story ‘with legs.’ But at some point, empathy kicked in hard. Certainly not enough to risk someone else getting the scoops. Not enough to consider not writing the stories. Did I care about the fallout for my friends? Not enough to pause and put distance between the source and the me, the writer. GOLDFISH SLAMMERS! The RSPCA organised a march down Willis Street, the goldfish came off the menu, my friend lost her job. Another distressed hospo friend mentioned that her downtown bar was offering shots with live goldfish in them. POOS IN PATE! the headline screamed the next day. A good friend who worked for the then Health Department once confided in me that traces of faecal matter had been found in a popular brand of pate.
I was competitive, hungry for the front page, and ruthless in my chase for it. In a previous life, with a different name, I was a daily newspaper journalist. Is it ever morally okay to write about someone else’s intimate trauma?
