Daring to Feel

Violence, the News Media, and Their Emotions

'Thou shall remain objective' is the number-one newsroom commandment, but lately cracks have begun to appear in the news media's objective fa_ade. American journalists have been pushed to the emotional brink with such recent tragedies and September 11th and Virginia Tech. Like social scientists, reporters are expected to be immune to, and even aloof from, the pain and suffering they chronicle. Daring to Feel: Violence, the News Media, and Their Emotions challenges this journalistic mandate, particularly as it pertains to the emotional topic of violence. Interviewing journalists who have covered some of the worst tragedies in our nation's history, Jody Santos shows what happens when the news media dare to feel. No longer detached observers, they are free to see violence in all of its emotional complexity. In allowing themselves to experience the rage, helplessness and fear of those who have survived violence, these reporters tell deeper, more moving stories-stories that hopefully will have a profound effect on the way society views and confronts devastating problems such as child abuse and school massacres. Daring to Feel is not a call to scrap objectivity but an attempt to rebalance journalism's hierarchical relationship between thinking and feeling; rather, Santos creates an insightful new dialogue about the value of emotionally engaged reporting.