A CAMPUS IN SHOCK
On March 29, 2009, in the early morning hours, USC freshman Adrianna Bachan (below, left) was killed in a hit-and-run accident as she walked back to campus. Bachan was accompanied by another USC freshman, Marcus Garfinkle (below, right), who was also struck by the car and who remains in the hospital with severe injuries. The students were crossing at the intersection of Jefferson and Hoover when a car allegedly ran a red light and hit them both.
Members of the USC community are still in shock over this tragic accident. LAPD and USC officials offered a joint reward of $235,000 to anyone with information on the identity of the hit-and-run driver or the vehicle. Shortly after announcing this award, an arrest was made.
As a young journalist, this has to be the toughest story I have ever worked on. As a reporter and anchor for Annenberg TV News, I was covering the story of the deadly hit-and-run accident the day after it happened.
Here is the opening of our newscast that evening.
A TOUGH DAY TO BE A JOURNALIST
I walked into the newsroom that morning knowing I had a difficult day ahead of me. No one, however, could have prepared me for what I was about to do. Adrianna’s mother and grandmothers had come to campus to visit the site of the accident and I was sent to interview them.
All the local channels and newspaper reporters had arrived and I felt so wrong walking up to these inconsolable, grieving family members with a camera. I had a serious moment of inner turmoil in which I wanted to turn back and thought to myself, “I can’t possibly do this. These people are hurting. The last thing I want to do is put a microphone in their faces.”
Adrianna’s mother was screaming, holding pictures of her beautiful daughter and pleading for anyone who had information on the hit-and-run driver to come forward. I put my camera away and approached her. I have never seen anybody so consumed by devastation or anguish in my life and this is no exaggeration. She kept repeating, “I have no more tears. I have cried so much” and I began to tear up.
As much as I tried to maintain my journalistic professionalism, I could not possibly remove myself emotionally from the situation. After several minutes of hearing the woman talk about her daughter, “her angel,” I simply sat down next to her. After the other reporters had gotten the sound bites they wanted, they retreated to their news trucks, preparing to go live from the intersection.
I had heard the mother say she was Cuban, so I started talking to her in Spanish, weakly offering my condolences. She turned to me and said in Spanish, “My daughter is just the news of the day. You don’t care. Tomorrow, she’ll be forgotten.” I replied to her, “I am a student here and I deeply care about what happened to your daughter. And I can guarantee that there are thousands of students who also care about what happened and want to hear Adrianna’s story.” She then told me that she had a message for USC students and that I should take out my camera. So I did.
Here is the story I shot, wrote and edited for ATVN on Mrs. Bachan's grief and devastation over the loss of her daughter.
A LESSON IN BECOMING A HUMAN JOURNALIST
There is no real journalism rulebook for situations like this. I know for a fact that my newsroom producers would have been disappointed if I had come back without an interview, but I was prepared to do that because—in my eyes—respecting this woman was more important to me and it was just the right thing to do. I was so grateful to her for sharing her daughter’s story with me though, and it reminded of why I love journalism so much. I feel a deep responsibility to tell stories like these, even if they are incredibly difficult to tell.
After interviewing the mother, I was approached by Adrianna’s grandmother who spoke limited English. She told me there was a reporter who would not stop asking her questions and she wanted to know if she had to talk to him. The man, a Los Angeles Times reporter, was standing nearby when I replied, “No, you do not have to talk to anyone you are not comfortable with.” The man came up to me and said, “And you call yourself a journalist?”
I could not even dignify his comment with a response and simply walked away, thinking to myself, “If your definition of a journalist is someone who hounds emotionally vulnerable people, then I do not want to be that kind of journalist.”
Covering this story has taught me a great deal about the type of leader I want to be in the journalism field. What I find most interesting is through the pain and suffering of other people, I have learned so much about my attraction to empathy and compassion as a human being, journalist and leader. In that order.
