Saturday, April 19, 2014
Can journalists volunteer regularly for specific charities? An issue at Food and Friends
Will O’Bryan, a journalist with the DC area “gay
paper” Metro Weekly, makes an important and disturbing observation on p. 19 of
the April 17, 2014 issue, “A Thought for Food & Friends”, link here.
O’Bryan went to an event at the important Washington
DC charity, founded during the AIDS epidemic, with his husband, but notes his
position as a journalist with the newspaper would preclude his volunteering for
the group himself.
I wondered if that would be true of any blogger who
covers news extensively, even independent bloggers. That factors into the “conflict of interest”
problem I have discussed before, when I was writing a book about the policy
regarding gays in the military in the 1990s while working for a company that
sold to members of the military.
I volunteered for Food and Friends in the 1990s,
when the group was near the Navy Yard (and the current Nationals Park) in the
money counting area, once a month. A few times I delivered. I tried doing delivery the day after
Christmas in 2011. It felt like census
work. I volunteered for the Red Cross on the phone bank for a while in the fall of 2005 after Hurricane Katrina, but found there was little we could really do.
Over time, I’ve tended to find that volunteer work
tends not to work out particularly well unless you have a regular commitment to
a group and have internalized its aims. But I keep hearing about calls for “Meals on
Wheels”, transportation of patients (which I did one time for another substitute
teacher), and even at Hospice. What’s
asked for is something that costs something –- time, purpose, and personal
attention, sometimes in surprising situations where one would have thought only
privacy matters.
Is I noted in a review yesterday of a review of a
movie biography of Gore Vidal, writers (and journalists) keep their distance
from most people so they can “tell the truth”.
But that need for distance and objectivity can keep journalists from “giving
back”, something that sounds morally compelling, and matters very much for
social stability and sustainability, as well as supporting the intrinsic value
of human life. It’s a lot of what the
ethical teachings in the Gospels (and this is Easter weekend) is about.
Anderson Cooper usually hosts “CNN heroes”, and he
definitely has paid his dues reporting abroad, but I wonder if he really could
do this either.
You wonder if the Chinese were on to something in
the 1960’s with their idea of “taking turns”, even if that was Maoist. Or perhaps the intentional communities are
seeing the same problem.
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