“Every parent’s worst nightmare.”
That overused expression has popped up more than once in recent days as journalists seek to convey the pain, fear and misery attending two high-profile family dramas.
The phrase actually performed double duty in the case of Baby Kaylee, the critically ill month-old infant at the centre of an organ-transplant case that has garnered tremendous public attention.
Some in the media attached the label in this instance to both Kaylee’s parents and to the parents of Baby Lillian, the two-month-old originally slated to receive a donor heart when Kaylee inevitably died.
The handy descriptor also came out in media reports about Victoria Stafford, the eight-year-old girl who went missing April 8, the day a surveillance camera captured an image of the third-grader walking from her Woodstock elementary school with an unknown woman.
“Every parent’s worst nightmare.” Gee, you think?
While we know as well as anyone the pressure to be eloquent under deadline, this kind of journalistic cliché is enough to induce despair.
Surely, we can do better.
For starters, reporters mustn’t try to pretend they understand what the parents of children like Kaylee, Lillian or Victoria are experiencing. Only those who have gone through a similar ordeal can possibly know. Affected empathy – most infuriatingly evident in many a TV interviewer’s furrowed brow and sadly shaking head – only demeans the real emotion felt by those living through whatever tribulation has attracted the media spotlight.
The job of a journalist requires a certain detachment, both as a coping mechanism and as a tool serving the cause of objectivity. Being human, perhaps reporters need a reminder about that once in a while.
What they shouldn’t need to be reminded about, though, is the need to tell people’s stories simply and in a straightforward manner.
Raising the emotional stakes with clumsy, hackneyed expressions like “every parent’s worst nightmare” is unnecessary.
The stories themselves say all that needs to be said.
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