MIKE WALTER
USA,
2009, 36 minutes, Color In Person: Director Mike Walter
You know Mike Walter as a broadcast journalist at WUSA from 2003 to 2009, where he was a reporter and weekday morning co-anchor. What you may not know about Mike Walter is how deeply he, as well as many other front-line print and television reporters, have been affected by their coverage of such catastrophic tragedies as the Oklahoma City bombing, the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina. Walter didn’t know, either: "Trauma journalism can be dangerous and emotionally devastating," he says in the preamble to the eye-opening film Breaking News Breaking Down, which reveals a host of newspeople, most from New Orleans, who speak of their personal journeys of discovery and hope via the global outreach organization The Dart Center. "Journalists should believe they are the eyes and ears of society," Walter cautions in this revelatory work, "never imagining what that might do to their minds."—Eddie Cockrell
You know Mike Walter as a broadcast journalist at WUSA from 2003 to 2009, where he was a reporter and weekday morning co-anchor. What you may not know about Mike Walter is how deeply he, as well as many other front-line print and television reporters, have been affected by their coverage of such catastrophic tragedies as the Oklahoma City bombing, the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina. Walter didn’t know, either: "Trauma journalism can be dangerous and emotionally devastating," he says in the preamble to the eye-opening film Breaking News Breaking Down, which reveals a host of newspeople, most from New Orleans, who speak of their personal journeys of discovery and hope via the global outreach organization The Dart Center. "Journalists should believe they are the eyes and ears of society," Walter cautions in this revelatory work, "never imagining what that might do to their minds."—Eddie Cockrell