It was timing that allowed Melissa Chessher to connect with the townspeople of Lockerbie, Scotland, 14 years following the Pan Am Flight 103 tragedy.

It was timing that allowed her to speak to a woman who had 119 victims’ bodies fall on her farm.

But timing is something that can be hard to come by for journalists when reporting on tragedy, Chessher said.

Chair of the magazine department at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Chessher was joined by several other journalists and Syracuse University professors at a discussion Thursday night titled “25 Years Later: Reflecting on Pan Am 103 and the Media.” The 2013-2014 Remembrance Scholars hosted the panel, as a part of Remembrance Week, held to honor the victims of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing. A terrorist attack caused the explosion of the plane on Dec. 21, 1988 over Lockerbie, Scotland. There were 35 SU students on the plane.

Other panelists included Steve Carlic, who reported from Lockerbie for the Syracuse Herald-Journal, Joan Deppa, co-author of “The Media and Disasters: Pan Am 103” and associate professor at Newhouse, Tom Foster, who reported for The Post-Standard at the time and interviewed SU students abroad in London and Sean Kirst, a columnist for The Post-Standard who interviewed several people connected to the event.

The five panelists talked about important lessons from the Pan Am 103 tragedy. Molly Linhorst, a Remembrance Scholar and a senior international relations and political science major, served as the moderator.

Carlic said journalists have to be patient with the victims’ families and cannot force them to open up.

“Journalism is a long game,” he said. “You wait and you wait, you wait for the story until the story is there and if you do the story, it’ll come to you.”

The panelists also discussed how some journalists not only interrupted the victims’ families’ grieving, but also the healing process for friends and classmates. Deppa provided an example, of when a journalist held a radio recorder next to a couple crying in Hendricks Chapel.

“I’m a big proponent of the First Amendment, but that struck me as absolutely wrong,” she said. “So I stepped in between them and said to him ‘Back off!’ and he said, ‘I’m just doing my job, I’m just doing job’ and I said, ‘I don’t care.’”

At one point, the conversation shifted to a more political tone for Deppa, when she said the government refused to fully acknowledge the Lockerbie tragedy and the victims’ families.

“If what they were trying to do had been followed up adequately, 9/11 could not have happened,” she said, which was received by a large applause.

Billy Ceskavich, a Remembrance Scholar, said although it is hard to speculate on the past, Deppa’s point was valid.

“Following Pan Am, there wasn’t the same reaction that there was as to 9/11 or any other tragedy,” Ceskavich, a senior information management and political science major said. “People wanted to sweep it under the rug. It was different.”

 

Published on October 11, 2013 at 1:43 am

Contact Ellen: ekmeyers@syr.edu | @ellenkmeyers