The sensitivity issue

How do you encourage a victim of trauma to share the intimate details of their ordeal without seeming like a insensitive vulture? This is surely one of the hardest tasks facing journalists who have to interview victims of tragedy. I went to panel discussion on interviewing vulnerable people who suddenly find themselves in the news a few weeks ago, it consisted of Andrew Hogg, ex-Sunday Times news editor, ex-Medical Foundation for the Care of the Victims of Torture and now at Christian Aid, Caroline Hawley, BBC correspondent who has covered Iraq, the McCanns and dozens of other conflict situations, Vanessa Jolly, who sets up such interviews for the Sunday Times News Review and Steve Swinford, now on theSunday Times news desk who was the first journalist to interview Kate McCann.

This panel went some way to prepare us for an assignment to write a first-person 'Best of Times, Worst of Times' feature. I interviewed a woman who underwent a double mastectomy after she was diagnosed with vicious breast cancer. She has recently set up a charity which provides a support network for women who have lost their breasts - the Bosom Buddies Trust . I've posted the piece below.

Chrystalla Spire, 49, had both breasts removed when she learnt that she would be plagued by tumours for the rest of her life. As a divorced mother of three children, she wanted them to see that something positive could be created out of her experience so set up a charity to support women who have lost their breasts, the Bosom Buddies Trust.

I realised there was something wrong when the nurses started holding my hand all the time. I had found a lump the size of a large pea when I was in the shower and I had a history of cysts in both my breasts.
I saw this creep of a doctor and he made me feel I was riddled with cancer. He said because of where it was it had to be elsewhere, if it’s in the stem of the breast tissue then it must have spread there from somewhere else.
I remember sinking to my knees in my corridor and thinking “What on earth…?”
I saw another doctor who reassured me it was just in one place and I had an operation taking out the whole tumour and a large chunk of breast tissue.
The tumour was so severe the oncologist said, “If you were my wife, I would tell you to have chemo” but I knew how I would react to chemotherapy, or at least I felt I knew how I would react. I was scared of losing my hair and being sick all the time. I knew I wouldn’t handle it.
Instead I had radiotherapy for 6 weeks. The week I started was the week of the 7/7 bombing. The day it happened was the only day I didn’t have to go into London to see a dietician or something before it started.
I went in the next day and London was so dead. I became terrified of the tube so I started getting different trains and walking 20 minutes to the hospital. I was 7 1/2 stone by the time I finished radiotherapy.
We went on holiday soon after and when we came back I had a post-radiotherapy check. We were all so breezy about it, thinking how we could go for lunch afterwards but they found abnormal tissue.
I got to the stage where I didn’t ask questions anymore. You get to the point where you don’t want to know. It started all over again with biopsies and scans, the doctor said he regarded the abnormal tissue as a marker for future tumours. He suggested I have a bilateral mastectomy where they remove both breasts. No one had ever mentioned that before but I knew I couldn’t live with scans all the time. Every single time you feel something your life goes on the pause button, you can’t make plans for the future.
I had the mastectomy and it was just massive, a huge operation, nothing prepares you for what it’s going to be like. I was in hospital for 2 weeks, 10 hours in the operating theatre. I couldn’t get out of bed for five days.
I had reconstructive surgery at the same time and the first thing I remember was lifting up my gown and seeing that I still had two breasts. I thought however bad it is, it’s ok.
The first implants were horrible though, like having two rocks strapped to my chest, I couldn’t wear a bra at all and one was floating under my armpit.
The recovery was so slow and when I mentioned it to my doctor he said, “You do realise I’ve skinned you from your neck to your breast bone?” That shut me up.
There was a Muslim woman opposite me in the ward. She was in the middle of her chemo and they were advising her to have a mastectomy but her mother was saying, “Oh you won’t be a woman anymore.” She was betrothed so the mother said “He won’t want to marry you anymore.”
It is hugely traumatic to lose your breasts. Before I had my nipples reconstructed I hated the sight of them. They just put on a disc of skin, flesh coloured and flat so you have no nipple. Sally was in the bed next to me and she showed the women the outcome of her surgery. That’s when we decided to set up the Bosom Buddies Trust so women who have had the same experiences can support each other. We made a calendar of women who have had mastectomies and I’m so proud of it for what it stands for. It proves that it’s not just me and that when you have to face something hard there’s no point thinking how difficult it is.
I had my implants changed and I like my breasts now, they’re obviously not normal but put it this way, I had had three children and breastfed them all so my original breasts weren’t that great. It’s a little bit embarrassing that they are always perky and I’m thinking about what it’s going to be like when I’m 70, an old lady with such perky boobs. I hope I get there though.

Sketch comedy

I sometimes wonder why politicians feel such a strong desire to enter public life when they are so obviously exposing themselves to mockery, if not outright derogatory ridicule. On that note, Sheila Gunn ex-Major press secretary and Times politico set my UK Politics class the task of writing a sketch about party political broadcasts. The 5-minute wonders were rife with horrific haircuts and empty promises. I've posted my effort below.

Has anybody ever voted for a political party as a result of the 5 minute broadcast before Coronation Street? The people that have must be a strange breed – gleaning crucial conviction from the motion of Tony Benn’s chair-swivel and dashing yet earnest look into camera or the sight of Glenda Jackson in her potting shed.
Although the output of party political broadcasts has become distinctly more polished in the fifty-odd years since the first one was aired, the tone is yet to evolve. The message is simple and efficient: we are the best, therefore you must vote for us.
It would be silly to alter such a foolproof formula. The methods of delivery have, however, shown imaginative variety. In 1953 Macmillan was practically flirting with Sir Hartley Shawcross as he described his many positive qualities to eager viewers.
The Liberals were on equally shaky ground when they filmed a variation of Question Time in front of a politically diverse audience with horrendous haircuts. Jimmy Saville’s white bobbed barnet did little to distract viewers from an audience member who later became a prominent Tory.
It is yet to be determined whether the image of Shirley Williams filling shopping baskets with even more baked goods under Labour’s proposed economics improvements delayed the obesity crisis by a good few decades.
Using two wicker baskets Williams showed how much more food you could buy for your money under their proposed changes. If Tessa Jowell did such a thing today Jamie Oliver would be beating a path to her door before she could say “bakewell tart.”
That kind of message looks positively subtle when compared to the Tories anti-Callaghan broadcast in the mid-70s. The repeated boom of “Crisis? What crisis?” over images of strikers and unburied bodies probably gleaned votes in the vain hope the incessant drone would stop.
An early Thatcher video had an equally deafening message: talents are going to waste under Labour. One talent that certainly was not going to waste was that of her hairdresser: Maggie’s bouffant style had never looked so perfectly coiffed. She may have won the election with negative messages but she sent out positive vibes for all those contemplating pussy-bow blouses that season.
Labour’s 1981 video of “Neil Kinnock: the man behind the firebrand” gave discerning viewers a scintillating glimpse into the future. His black and white family photos and the emotional video testimonies from an aged aunt were the first step towards Tony Blair’s open neck collars and gruesome public displays of affection with Cherie.
In 1991 Major saw the genius of the personal touch and a broadcast showed him going back to his roots in Brixton, exchanging pleasantries with a market trader. But this genius was nothing compared to the unsung innovation of the Natural Law Party.
In 1992 they saw the truth that had eluded everybody else. In their short but effective video they shared with the nation their conviction that transcendental meditation and yogic flying were the key to reducing stress in society and making the nation strong.
They even had convincing data to back up their story: a group of yogic fliers had reduced the crime rate in Merseyside by 60 per cent. How? Nobody knows. Shockingly, the party didn’t see the success they were hoping for on polling day.
It just goes to show that people probably don’t vote on the basis of a party political broadcast. If they did, maybe we would be transcendentally meditating our way through rush hour instead of kicking fellow commuters on the sly and using our umbrellas as deadly weapons.

Stepping out

As a journalism Masters student I am constantly overwhelmed by the pressure on my colleagues and me to get work experience. Not just any work experience but great work experience on great papers that will then send our blossoming careers off into the media stratosphere. As the next vacation looms ever closer and the top nationals start slamming their doors, the prospect seems all the more bleak. This is therefore perhaps an odd time to start blogging, when the pressure to pick up the phone and fire off another CV seems particularly pressing.
Instead I am musing on the industry about which I hope to enter, an industry which seems so intent on eating it's young. I saw Nick Davies speak about his book Flat Earth News last week but instead of resigning myself to Davies' brand of inevitable doom, his talk made me more optimistic about the future and power of the press.
Now is a hugely exciting time to be a journalist, never have more mediums been available in which to communicate, never has the industry been so competitive and well observed. The fight for the best story in the shortest time may force more ruthless journalists to employ lower ethical standards but I will not be drinking Davies' Kool-Aid just yet.
The media is the modern marketplace and I'm still buying.