HOW WE SEE IT: We’re no heroes… we’re just doing our job

With Bryan Littlely and Shaun Hollis

Last updated:
Cartoon by SHAUN HOLLIS

As a journalist for more than 30 years, I have interviewed hundreds of people hailed as heroes for saving the lives of others… firefighters, cops, family members who acted in the right way at the right time.

Overwhelmingly, the most common comment made by people whose actions prevented tragedy for another person has been: “I was just doing my job”.

The firefighter who runs into a burning building, the off duty doctor first on an accident scene… they are trained to make those in-the-moment life saving decisions, they go about those heroics, those actions which can preserve life, with confidence because it is “their job”.

I know of one time when I helped to save a life.

It was a Friday night in Alice Springs and I was out looking for my mate’s missing dog when I drove past the main shopping centre in the midst of an emergency evacuation. People were streaming away from the place, sirens were wailing and police and firefighters were, as they are trained to do, responding to the then unknown emergency.

Amongst the panic, in the darkened loading dock of the supermarket, I spotted a small framed woman standing over the body of a much larger man. It was obvious the man was in trouble, and the woman was in danger due to the man’s clear panic.

I ran into the darkness. The man was a victim of a payback stabbing. Blood was pouring from a wound in his leg, his femoral artery severed.

The woman had gone to his aid and was captured by the man’s strong grasp as he feared his fate. She had been unable to get free from him for the minute or so she had been with him. She couldn’t communicate with him and her cries for help were drowned out by the commotion around us.

I was able to free his grasp - transferring it to my wrist - and release the woman to run and flag down paramedics. He was, by all accounts, “dead” when they arrived, but his life was saved by the paramedics “doing their job’’.

I wasn’t “just doing my job” in that circumstance. Nor do I consider myself a hero. I was just in the right place at the right time… or wrong time if I think about the trauma I witnessed in the couple of minutes I spent alone with that man.

While that is the one time I absolutely know that I played a part in saving a life… I am confident I have actually saved others - maybe hundreds - just by doing my job as a journalist and pushing out vital information to a broad audience that helped them to make decisions and choices to take action to avoid danger.

We often cop criticism for writing articles carrying information and warnings from experts and authorities… just take a look at the social media reaction to the feeds of all media outlets as Cyclone Alfred made its way down the coast from out in the Coral Sea off our coastline and on to Brisbane where it is wreaking havoc.

There’s no shortage of people claiming news articles giving updates of the weather system’s progress is media scaremongerIng and sensationalist journalism.

Thankfully, such stories do get lots of attention and drive up readership, because that means we are reaching more people as a trusted, informed source so that they can make their own minds up about how they perceive a threat and how they will respond to keep safe.

When disaster does strike, and information that can be lifesaving is needed, there is no better one stop source for that information than your local media outlet with the established direct lines to the right authorities…. those police, SES, firefighting and ambulance personnel who are just doing their jobs.

That is why there are mandates and protocols for local media outlets in place for emergency response broadcasting and publishing to quickly give good advice to large audiences.

Thankfully, we will never know just how many lives are saved when media outlets “just do their job”.

Stay safe Queenslanders, your local media outlets are here to help you do that.

 

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