الحوادث المفاجئة .. كتاب معلم الصحافة والإنشاء

Sudden accidents:

The journalist who goes to investigate a sudden incident, such as a clash, fire, explosion, kidnapping, theft, suicide, drowning, etc., realizes that his first task is to collect clear, prominent, solid, tangible facts about what he went for. Therefore, when he arrives at the scene of the accident, he is not taken into account by the noise, rumours, exaggerations, and guesses he hears. Rather, he overcomes all these obstacles, maintains the balance of his thinking, asks a lot to distinguish between truth and lies, and reaches the people who tell the truth, especially those responsible for public functions, even if his arrival is late at the time of the accident. There will not be a person who can tell it in full. Only then does he begin relaying his news to the newspaper by phone without delay, noting that the loss of a human life is an incident that takes precedence over anything else. As the number of victims increased, the importance of the story increased and the title changed. A story in which a person is in danger is written in lines and in an inconspicuous corner of the newspaper. As for a story in which there is a dead person or a wounded person, it is written in a quarter column. A story in which the number of victims rises to twenty jumps to the front page. When the number rises to 100, the story becomes an international resonance. The first thing an informant needs to know about accidents is the dead and wounded, then the causes, manner, time and place of the accident. And that's what. He must record accurately and in the shortest possible time. Names, addresses, and jobs, and then other humanitarian factors come in importance, such as describing care for the wounded, the danger to lives and property, the fate of the dead and survivors, describing relief work and acts of heroism, listing the opinions of those who witnessed the accident, and describing their condition when it occurred. Once he has finished addressing the human side of the story, he will move on to answering the following questions: What is the cause of the disaster? Who is responsible? Who discovered the accident? What are the material losses? Is there insurance? Will he be and is he waiting for someone to be arrested? Is there a case that everyone should seek an official investigation to demand compensation?

These are the facts that make up the elements of the story. If the informant treats it with an accurate description of the incident itself, he has provided his readers with material that will relieve their feelings. If he finds that the list of victims is too long, he may separate it from the topic and list it in another column directly next to the story, or include it at the heart of the story. Then the introduction should not exceed one or two paragraphs that include answers to the questions (the eternal five). He will not find difficulty in formulating it if there are dead or wounded. Most stories of this type begin by narrating what happened to a man, woman, or child, followed by a list of victims, then narrating the incident in detail, explaining its cause, the outcome of the investigation and relief work, eyewitness accounts, and so on according to the importance of each part. Sometimes the facts change, but the wording takes the same form. In suicide incidents, the introduction can address the motive or method.

In all circumstances, the journalist must be very careful in narrating these incidents and not invent a reason of his own if he does not find the reason. He must leave room for doubt if he is not completely convinced of what is narrated to him. He must avoid exaggeration and the use of resonant expressions in descriptions, and this requires that he possess all the journalistic, artistic, scientific and cultural talents. In this regard, Elie Richard, who was editor-in-chief of the French newspaper Sossoir, wrote: “The truth is that the journalistic report is one of the fruits of this century in which we live. He is the representative who goes from you - the reader - to see the accident and uncover its causes with complete accuracy. He is not an itinerant writer, but in reality he is our sight with which we see, our hearing with which we hear, and our senses with which we feel. with it. He knows very well that he must convey all feelings to us as soon as he feels them and realizes them. As for contemplations and revelations, they are left to us alone after all that.”