Death notices that hurt
Some people didn't care for our news obit on Maurice Sabbah yesterday. Sue, and others who don't blog, but who telephone. Here's what we were thinking.
A reporter walks a tight rope when he writes an obituary about a controversial figure, particularly one who has a history of good works to go along with the controversy. We know that friends and family members prefer the community remembers the deceased fondly. Writing ill of the dead is seen as unseemly and unkind. We try to balance the good with the not so good, knowing that, in many cases, it's the bad news about a person's life that makes his death newsworthy. (Not saying that's necessarily the case with Sabbah.)
I asked reporter Jim Schlosser about his thoughts as he was preparing to write the Sabbah story.
We have written dozens of stories about Sabbah and Kenneth Kornfeld and their companies. I believe that is how the general public knew the two, beginning probably when I wrote a story about Sabbath's charitable foundation. Shortly after that, the scandal broke about Fortress Re and Carolina Re that resulted in the two paying a $400 million settlement, biggest in state history. All of that had to be in the obit.
Starting with the first paragraph, I tried to achieve a balance between good and bad. I think the good got its share of the story. I wrote of his service not only in Israeli Army, but U.S. Army; his charitable work, such as building the gym at Beth David, a hospital wing in Israel and, of course, the American Hebrew Academy. But to leave out the bad would have been journalistically irresponsible. Ironically, when I wrote the story about Sabbah's charitable foundation in 2000 or 1999, I received calls from Sabbah's friends angry that I had disclosed the existence of the foundation. Sabbah wanted it kept secret because of his religious beliefs.
Comments (6)
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But did it have to appear in the first sentence?
Posted on April 19, 2006 4:31 PM
Well, to be fair, it's not really mentioned until the third paragraph, Don, and then it's pretty non-specific. His business dealings are merely called controversial in the first paragraph.
Posted on April 19, 2006 4:39 PM
Thanks for addressing this, John. Most community members I know probably won't ever see this online discussion, but I'm glad they called you (that's the editorial "you") with what I assume is a similar complaint. I don't fault Jim; not writing about it would have been ignoring the elephant in the room. I think the consensus was that it wasn't balanced. And there are cultural issues associated with death notices that affect certain community segments differently. He was a very private man and I understand his friends and his community's unhappiness with what they considered an unpleasant privacy invasion.
Public person? He never wanted to be one. Circumstances caused him to be. Delicate balance, fine line indeed.
Posted on April 19, 2006 5:57 PM
We understand the concerns and anger people have toward us when we write these kinds of stories. There are many opinions on how the media approach these sorts of obituaries. Even within our own newsroom people would have done the obit differently, stressing this or that. Could we have included more of his charitable acts? Certainly. Could we have pushed the controversy lower? Yes. But we had to include some of the things that made him known outside the Jewish community and that got him into the courtroom.
Posted on April 19, 2006 6:06 PM
Perhaps giving a thought to what could be written about us when we die ought to guide our behavior while we're alive.
Posted on April 20, 2006 11:50 AM
"Perhaps giving a thought to what could be written about us when we die ought to guide our behavior while we're alive. "
Somehow, I don't think we will care what is written about us after we die. I feel that it just won't seem important then in the grander scheme of things.
This is not to say that we should use that kind of reasoning to rationalize our behavior while we're still here.
Posted on April 20, 2006 7:23 PM