If you were born before 1980, you may remember a series of TV ads in the 1990s where actress Sally Struthers narrated heart-wrenching images of starving children, in a plea for viewers to sponsor those kids.
If you’re younger, you’ve seen singer Sarah McLachlan do basically the same commercial, but with sad kittens. The ads, and many others like them, follow a tried-and-true formula: Stir up the audience emotionally, and just when that reaches a fever pitch, hit them with the financial pitch. Just pennies a day can feed and clothe an African child, or rescue Fluffy. Won’t you help?
I (Jim) always felt like a heel if I changed the channel during those ads. Yet, I also resented the way they tried to manipulate me. I don’t like guilt as a motivator to give money, or to get involved in something I otherwise really do believe in, like child sponsorship.
People get uncomfortable when these ads come on, because we typically don’t watch TV to feel guilty or challenged. We watch TV to be entertained. On that note, the ads have been the subject of numerous parody videos: save the video game nerds, save the investment bankers, save the people traumatized by Sarah McLachlan commercials.
The reason the real ads continue, though, is that they work. They’re designed to make us feel uncomfortable and guilty. Images and music are powerful together. They cloud our critical thinking, and they elicit a response: give money. We aren’t surprised by a financial appeal in a TV ad or a mass mailing. That’s how advertising and marketing work.
For decades, some form of this approach has been part of the fund-raising mix for the nonprofit world, including missions. People need a compelling reason to give, and emotions of course play a strong role in those decisions. We’re not saying that’s always wrong; great good has been done through emotionally charged giving campaigns.
When the subject is a ministry, though, this approach can deny people the chance to thoughtfully and prayerfully assess a situation before either writing a check or looking away. That, by itself, is not the best way to form long-term, informed ministry partnerships.
We believe good journalism is the missing piece. Journalism, ideally, plays by a different set of standards. Our primary goal is not persuasion, and we are not the sales and marketing arm of ministry. If people think we are, our credibility is blown. Our goal is conveying accurate information through compelling stories.
What people do with that information is up to them. That’s a subtle distinction, but it’s important. Here’s where a Christian who reports on missions faces an internal struggle between doing journalism and promoting a need. Certainly our stories have a purpose for being told, and we needn’t shy away from that. But we remain more credible when we stay on our side of the fence separating journalism from advocacy. A news story about disaster relief, for example, can show people how they can get involved, but it shouldn’t tell them to get involved. It’s the difference between informing and persuading.
When a Story Isn’t a Story
There’s another journalistic problem with those heartwrenching TV ads. They’re delivered at a high cost: the dignity of the people they depict. A good reporter guards that, sometimes on behalf of people who can’t guard it for themselves.
While in Staten Island, N.Y., in 2013 to report on the continuing recovery from Hurricane Sandy, I asked crisis-response team leaders if they could point me to people they’d met who had compelling stories.
They immediately mentioned Lisa (not her real name). Lisa’s home had been severely flooded, to a point where it had to be completely gutted—walls, ceilings, floors. Her four kids were all staying in different homes, and she’d run out of options on paying for repairs. Things looked hopeless.
A crisis-response team was working on one of her neighbors’ houses that week, and someone noticed Lisa walking down the street pushing a baby carriage full of supplies. They struck up a conversation and learned of her grim situation. Within a couple of days, flooring was being delivered and a team was beginning work on restoring her house.
There’s another facet. Lisa also felt empty spiritually, and team members were gently sharing the gospel with her and helping her understand what true hope is all about. She was listening with interest, but also with caution.
I met Lisa the day her flooring was to be delivered. She glanced warily at the camera I was carrying, and when she learned I was a journalist, she didn’t seem like she wanted to talk, let alone be interviewed.
My reporting instincts told me to press a little. This was a really good story, and exactly the reason these crisis-response teams do what they do. My gut told me something else. After a quick, silent prayer, I decided not to press. I wished Lisa well and went on to my next interview. A greater good was happening, and my reporting that to the world might have hindered it.
Now, you might second-guess that decision. I certainly debated it with myself afterward, but I think I’d make the same call again. The ethical question raised is particularly touchy for Christians doing journalism in a missions context: Where is the line between reporting someone’s story and intruding on their privacy?
Ethical questions like that arise every day for journalists. In our roles as journalists with a missions agency, we’ve developed a guiding document that can serve as a conversation starter, a decision-making tool, or an explanatory sheet that we hand to a source. In Lisa’s case, it was a decision-making tool.
The document reads:
The purpose of Crossfield News is to publish stories about God’s work. We hope our stories will answer two questions for people: “What is God up to?” and “How can I participate in it?”
That means we have to do three things well:
• Observe without obstructing. To report a story thoroughly, we get as close to a situation as we can without interfering with what’s happening. We will never knowingly compromise anyone’s dignity, ministry, or safety.
• Report fairly and accurately. We will seek truth and report it. We will never deliberately distort facts, sensationalize a story, leave out key information, misquote anyone, or cast any person or situation in an untrue light.
• Do everything for the glory of God first. We are Christians tasked with publishing news of God’s work. Ultimately, we hope our work helps transform people’s lives and build His kingdom through the work of missionaries and their partners. We want to build good relationships with the people we cover, and to tell their stories well.
To have pressed Lisa for an interview and reported her in-progress story, I think, would have violated point 1. It was just too soon. At the time of this writing, I’m putting her name on my calendar for two months from now, and I’ll check back with the teams who worked with her to see what’s happened. She may have a marvelous story to tell.
