Coercing an Interview: Right or Wrong?

There have been two times in my career so far where I've approached a subject who was on the verge of tears in a state of confusion and asked them if they would talk on camera.

The first time, I met a man and his two friends in an empty softball field. It turned out, he was intimately connected (though innocent himself) to a major child molestation case we had around here. He brought along documentary evidence which proved beyond a shadow of a doubt the authenticity of his story. And as he related his story to me, he could barely get words through the tears that ran down his face. I asked him if he would go on camera, either his face or us shooting his feet, and he wouldn't say yes or no to me.

At the same time, my absolutely wonderful photog at the time was on the phone buying me time with my station that without a doubt wanted me to get an exclusive interview at all costs. Now I could have simply walked up with the camera and pushed the microphone in his face, and I doubt he would have objected. But I remembered that he is a human being who had clearly been through a traumatic event, and though it may be easy for those of us in news to appear on camera, the potential for retribution or unwanted fallout that can happen to our subjects should always be considered. Due to the nature of his connection to the events, I wanted to make sure he decided for himself, and not under duress, that he wanted to participate in the segment. So after hearing his story and still getting exclusive pictures he had brought on CD that nobody else had, I told him to think about it that night and call me in the morning.

I spoke with him the next day, and after talking about the matter with his wife, they decided that it was safer for their family to stay out of the matter and let the authorities deal with the situation. As a journalist, I was disappointed that I wasn't going to get an exclusive interview from a person no other reporter even knew existed on a significantly newsworthy event. But as a human being, I thought I had done the right thing and not taken advantage of the man's state of vulnerability to advance a news story. I'm not so sure others shared my thought process.

The second time, I was speaking with a soldier's wife who had been going through some tough news that her husband, despite health problems, had been assigned for another tour of duty overseas. She had just heard the news and was clearly shaken by the thought of her husband being away and in a dangerous situation when she felt his health problems hadn't been properly resolved. I sat down with her to begin the interview, but turned the camera off after a few minutes when she couldn't finish a sentence without a valiant attempt to hold back tears. I told her to just start talking and tell me how she was feeling and what their family was going through in an attempt to jumpstart a stream of consciousness that would hopefully calm her down and allow her to talk about the issue more comfortably. After an hour, her husband came to meet her and I decided to give her a day to calm down and let the news sink in so she would be comfortable with the idea of speaking on camera. I called the next business day to see if her and her husband still wanted to talk. After discussing amongst themselves, they decided they wanted to put off talking to the media until they felt they had exhausted other avenues of persuading the military before applying pressure on them through the media. Once again, I felt the disappointment that my story fell through, but glad that I had not taken advantage of a subject in a vulnerable state.

Looking back at these two situations, I still think I did the right thing but I'm not so ironclad about my decision as I used to be. In a situation you know to be ripe with potential consequences for a subject who has just witnessed a traumatic event and is in a highly suggestive state, is it right to coerce them into an interview knowing you'd get an exclusive before anyone else? Is that just the way of the business, or is that the path that will inevitably lead me towards the dark side of journalism.

Though I feel I have a lot of introspection on the matter before developing any sort of rule of thumb, my heart tells me I did the right thing in erring towards respecting a source rather than scooping the competition. If you show compassion and respect for your sources, it might not always pan out immediately but the trust gained from the situation may give you an even better exclusive down the road.