BACKSTORY: How Reuters covered the massacre in Christchurch by char_greenfield TSWestbrook ReutersBackstory
CHRISTCHURCH - “Almost every person we spoke to was in some stage of grief, trauma or shock,” says Charlotte Greenfield, the first Reuters correspondent to reach Christchurch, New Zealand, on the night a gunman opened fire in two mosques and killed 50 people.
The challenge for any journalist covering the massacre was the struggle to remain dispassionate when the country was in shock and people being interviewed had suffered such sudden tragedy. Reuters had a team of nine reporters, photographers and TV journalists in Christchurch to report on the massacre.
“The only other place I had heard that sound at that intensity was in Kabul, where I had been working in January. That first night, I woke up often, thinking I was back in Afghanistan,” says Greenfield, who has also worked in Indonesia, where she covered a 2014 plane crash that killed all 162 on board.“The way that seemed to work best to speak to people was to always start first by asking how they were and trying to express compassion for their loss,” Greenfield says.
Sydney correspondent Tom Westbrook, who arrived in Christchurch the next day, says he was struck by the silence in the city. The man suspected to be the gunman had been apprehended and Christchurch was dealing with its grief. As a journalist, though, he had to set the emotion aside to make sure he was reporting the story right, Westbrook said.
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