After a gruelling entry system and a big effort to move three hours from home to further my education, all it took was the very first hour of the very first class to know I didn't want to be a journalist.

I remember it well.

Ethics class.

Early morning.

Our first debate and topic of the day was regarding morals, including the decision and commitment you must make as a journalist.

Sounds easy, right? I have morals. I like journalism.

Well, this actually required something bigger.

Are you going to be loyal to the people, the truth, and the unfolding story?

Yes?

Then you must disregard some loyalty to your own humanity.

Suppressing the Natural Instincts

In the following unfolding debate, we were asked to picture ourselves as investigative journalists in a war-torn environment — terror, bombs, poverty, any challenging or horrifying scenes.

The well-known styles of Pulitzer Prize photojournalism from those environments depict things like starving children with protruding bones, details of dried blood in the wrinkles of a crying man, or capturing open-mouthed, silent wails of a grieving mother.

But you can never help, or intervene.

It's a similar principle with nature studies and wildlife journalism. You know the circle of life and the food chain, and you know what happens when a predator stalks the young.

Perhaps you and your team spent weeks studying the mother and watching the miracle of birth in awe and wonder, against all odds, watching from behind the curtain the incredible and tender moments of her raising and protecting them.

But the predator still looms, and it too requires the right to eat and stay alive.

You can never help, or intervene.

And likened again with humankind, you can never stop the killing, or the fight with evil, or the outcome... your job is to simply be the bystander, the capturer, the reporter, and the vessel to depict and portray moments exactly as they happen, exactly how things unfurl, naturally.

A fly on the wall.

An invisible barrier between real life and your role of just observing it.

Even if that doesn't feel natural at all.

So when you're inches from real human pain, most journalistic situations require that you cannot overstep the threshold and do the humane action — help.

Instead, you have to take the photos. Record the story. You have a duty to report and relay it back to the people, as documented as possible. You have to soak it in, assess the details, absorb the narrative, and convey the accuracy. And, you have to have enough to write about it fully later.

Commitment to Myself, or My Role?

I never considered that journalism would physically strongarm my morals, quenching my humanity and challenging my natural instincts.

But that requirement wasn't only in extreme environments either — your loyalty is always demanded for your local newspaper, media outlet, or news station.

A man mauled by a dog on a walk in the park.

A grandma that had her life savings stolen.

A family that lost their little girl to a murderer.

Whatever the situation, your creed as a journalist would ensure being the first on their doorstep and interviewing for their recounts, opinions, quotes, and context.

'News' literally means the reporting of the most recent events and occurrences — significant or sometimes otherwise — ensuring being up-to-date and delivering new information that wouldn't otherwise be known.

If the family told you they couldn't talk? The grandma wanted privacy? The man needed recovery time in the hospital to recover and recuperate?

Tough.

Your station would send you right back and be expecting you to be the first to claim the details and the story too, often in a harsh battle against other news stations to break the story first.

It never sat right with me. I guess my humanity prevails, and after that one-hour class, I think I had a different lens of which I also viewed the world.

Now, I work with artistic freedom and enjoy injecting heart and soul into my work too, instead of simply relaying facts or remaining indifferent in tone.

I also commit strongly to my morals — one of those being my commitment to authenticity vs artificiality in my writing. (Want to work together? View my services here.)

Keep carving your pathway, and staying true to you.

-fe