Q: As part of my job, I have to put people in difficult and sometimes embarrassing situations. Normally it’s all in good fun but this week it went horribly wrong. An inappropriate interview with a minor turned very wrong. As soon as things were obviously getting out of hand I shut the interview down but the damage had been done, live on air. It’s been suggested that the whole premise of what we do is flawed, not just this particular situation but my employers and my fans are both very happy with me.
I’m good at my job even though sometimes it is controversial. We decided it was OK to talk to children about their sexual activity and maybe that was a mistake but when things didn’t work out we offered them counselling and maybe it’s best that this issue was outed. I think we’ve made the best out of a bad situation. Sometimes these things just happen. It’s part of my role to push the boundaries. I’m sorry if people were offended, and I’m sorry for the girl, but I don’t think I should change my style for anyone if it gets great ratings. Haven’t I apologised enough?
J.O, Sydney
A: How awful to find you’ve hurt someone deeply, unfathomably and publicly, almost without intention. I sense shame, guilt and bewilderment here J.O. Not comfortable emotions, and ones that demand action as well as expression. Wishing things were different won’t make them go away, it will simply prolong suffering and ignorance.
You courageously state your understanding that this young woman fell victim not simply by accident, but by design. By the very design of your work. This understandably leads to a dilemma for you. To continue to participate in work that can be harmful, or to change direction and risk some of your livelihood, comfort and reputation. One of the difficulties here appears to be that there remains something puzzling for you about what happened. This makes it difficult to resolve your dilemma, because right action needs first to be thoughtful.
Be fearless in your examination of the situation from all sides, particularly your own. Be especially thorough when you come to explore those points at which you felt a prickling of insight into what lay ahead. It is at these points that we betray ourselves and others by ignoring these messages and taking the soft option. And the soft option always involves causing pain to another rather than to ourselves.
This young woman has been betrayed. First violently, then by neglect and then by public exposure, exploitation and ridicule.
You were a part of that betrayal, which places you in a unique position to recognise and respond to the pain she has suffered. Do your best not to betray her and yourself by taking this lightly.
I haven’t yet heard why the mother exposed her child to this invasion of privacy for the entertainment of the multitude. Was she paid or promised some benefit for herself and or her daughter to appear on this program? Was the mother’s need of money so great that she would sell her daughter’s privacy for it? Was pressure applied to her?
You say that this child has been betrayed by ridicule. Why do you say that? Do you think that she is ridiculous?
Misjudgment is indeed greatly enhanced as a cause for blame and recrimination if it is done for money but there are more thoughts that are prompted by the unsavoury episode, as Gratton Wilson indicates. As in the case of the mother of Henson’s young photographic subject one *might* say that an outsider could reasonably presume that the mother knew what she was doing with that particular child and wasn’t seeking to harm her child or even to sacrifice her indifferently for money. Unless we are willing to condemn the mother outright it is possible to think of a number of good reasons why she might have decided to put her daughter forward for lie detection on her sex life and it may be that she has realistic idea of how much her daughter might actually suffer from ridicule, and for how long.
Besides, Charles Richardson as Crikey’s weightiest philosopher has suggested that the voting age be lowered to 14 (yes, check the blog) and other restrictions on the full legal adulthood of under 18s be lifted too. The girl was, apparently, 14.
I think it is clear that, after the age of 30 most of us begin to lose sight and memory of what teenagers are like and to be able to distinguish between confident 14 year old and still barely adolescent 16 year old which is necessary in the individual case. Mind you the broadcaster was making big assumptions if he/it supposed that the girl’s mother would necessarily be an adequate observer and judge of these matters and custodian of her interests.