Empathy vs balance in VR journalism
For every story of significance, there are always more than two sides. While they may not all fit into every account, responsible reporting is clear about what it omits, as well as what it includes.
— RTDNA Code of Ethics
When telling stories to be viewed in a headset, we’ve learned you have to decide who is the camera. To me, it doesn’t always have to be the same person for the entire length of the piece. Perhaps the sweet spot for empathy in 360 journalism doesn’t lie totally in stepping inside someone else’s shoes; in certain cases, it also lies in stepping outside them. But combining two viewpoints creates a new problem: If one view is portrayed longer than the other, does that make the story unbalanced? VR journalism is raising new questions for all of us.
The E-word is already overused in VR, but placing someone inside the view of another person can create a unique sense of empathy. But what might that empathy do to the story’s balance? Several VR experiences labeled as journalism now, including our own features, tell stories from one side in order to allow the viewer to step inside the subject’s experience. I’m struggling with labeling these stories as journalism—my J school training tells me that storytelling has to represent all sides. The medium of VR begs for a first-person point of view, but my gut tells me that focusing solely on one viewpoint is an “error of omission.”
Case in point, our VR story in Zambia about disabled people who have to crawl on the ground because they lack access to all-terrain wheelchairs. At first, we thought we’d tell the story entirely from the perspective of the person crawling. In fact, we had a filmmaker tell us he only wanted to see the view of the person on the ground. But for a journalist, that’s missing a key viewpoint. We refined our thinking after showing some of our footage to people on the street.
We do “clinical trials” on our videos to make sure no one gets sick from slight camera movements. In our unscientific tests, we hypothesized that the first-person perspective of the woman with a disability—her view as she crawls on the ground—would resonate most with viewers. We were wrong. Instead, people who watched our story reported the greatest sense of empathy from being third-party observers—seeing the subjects crawl toward them and making eye contact. By talking with the viewers, I learned that relying totally on first-person perspective can be limiting, as you don’t always get the empathy, context or balance of seeing a situation through multiple viewpoints. Yet for other stories, an entirely first-person POV totally works. In our search for empathy in immersive journalism, are we diluting balance?
I kicked this question to my former boss Stacey Woelfel, who’s won a Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism and now leads the Murray Center for Documentary Journalism at the Missouri School of Journalism.
I asked him about “6x9,” the compelling first-person account of solitary confinement by The Guardian. I encourage all of you to watch the film in a headset. It’s nine minutes of being locked in a cell while you hear audio from inmates and statistics about solitary confinement. A couple minutes in, I wanted to take off my headset because I felt confined, locked in a cell. I’m guessing that’s what the creator wanted me to feel. Wow—that worked! But what about the perspective of the crime victims’ families? While the first person is a highly effective storytelling tool for the film’s subject, it’s only one perspective. Is it OK in VR labeled as journalism to show only one view? Would that story have been more balanced had it included audio from some of the families of victims killed or raped by the inmate in the cell? Or was the journalist’s intent to simply start a conversation for another storyteller to pick up from a different side of the cell wall? All of these great questions about the intersection of empathy, journalism and balance are popping up. I don’t pretend to have the answers but I find the way this medium is reshaping my thinking fascinating.
Stacey Woelfel’s answer surprised me. He says there’s now room in media and journalism to have different kinds of storytelling—even if some include only one view.
I don’t think that VR reporting needs to take the same steps that flat print or TV reporting would need to take on the same story. Because ultimately it’s NOT the same story — the medium makes it a new story that can’t be told on the old, flat media.
Part of those differences is the ability — or even the need — to be sure each medium does what it does best to tell the story. I think this works better now as people get information in so many different ways. So the part of the story that balances the needs of victims to see justice/revenge/reparations is one story that some media tell better — namely magazines for in-depth reporting or TV for a more emotional approach. But if we want to immerse people in the system of punishment we pay for with our taxes, I think the things that need balance are different. Then it’s no longer about the criminal versus the victim. It’s instead about the way we as a society decide to incarcerate people. Do we believe we should use solitary confinement as a humane way to confine people? I can enter that debate much more prepared if VR allows me to know what it’s like.
— Stacey Woelfel
What’s your compass as you explore storytelling in virtual reality? We would love to hear about the challenges you’re encountering on your own corps of discovery. You can follow our journey here: http://www.story-up.com/.
