I step out of my comfort zone – professionally

Ideally, people always move within their comfort zone. The optimum is when this also applies to working time. But what if the dream job itself constantly puts people in uncomfortable situations? Max Schäfer reflects on his career aspiration as a journalist.

It was Monday, 29 July 2019. Shortly before 10 o'clock, I was sitting in an editorial conference at Hessischer Rundfunk in Frankfurt am Main. I introduced myself to the editorial team, where I wanted to gain my first experience in television over the next five weeks. Because I was new to the broadcaster and to the medium of television, I was assigned to a colleague whom I was to support in his research. A few kilometres away at that time, a mentally ill man pushed a woman and her eight-year-old son onto track 7 of the main railway station. An ICE train pulled in; the mother managed to save herself on a narrow area between the tracks. Her son was struck by the train. He died instantly. The perpetrator also tried to push a 78-year-old woman onto the track, but she was able to resist and fell onto the platform. The perpetrator fled but was apprehended in the station area. 

At that time, I was sitting in the open-plan office of the editorial team and looking for my login details for the computer. Then the duty editor, who is responsible for planning the daily news broadcast, came into the editorial office. With her came the news: A boy and his mother were pushed in front of a train. That was the only information at that point. We drove to the station and tried to get more information. At that moment, work was in the foreground. That did not change until the report aired shortly after 6 p.m. in the broadcast. Almost all colleagues from the editorial team watched the broadcast together. The hectic atmosphere that had prevailed shortly before the broadcast, because reports still had to be dubbed and approved by the duty editor, had given way to a moment of calm. Only in that moment, when the report aired, did we have time to think about what had actually happened.  

Ideally, the profession is part of one's personal comfort zone. It is fun, you enjoy it and you move in areas where you are knowledgeable and confident. The boy's death was definitely the worst topic I have reported on in my journalism career so far. In such cases, there can be no talk of a comfort zone. As a journalist, however, it can always happen that something like this has to be reported. I would be happy to do without it; and I was only a reporter, not a participant or witness. 

But in general, the profession of journalism also repeatedly takes journalists out of their own comfort zone, if it is defined as I have just done. There are always new topics that need to be researched. That is also what makes the profession beautiful for me: I can learn many new things this way and meet different people. There are exceptions, as the example above shows. The challenge then lies in familiarising myself with a topic in usually a short time and informing myself sufficiently so that I can then inform other people about it. And in doing so, I must meet the criteria of objectivity, completeness and accuracy and, if all goes well, also that of entertainment. In theory, that already sounds difficult. In times of alternative facts, fake news, accusations of incomplete and lying press coverage, and conspiracy theories, it becomes even worse. 

Back then to Frankfurt main railway station in July 2019: On Friday, four days after the boy's death, I was back on site at track 7. A colleague and I were to speak to people to capture the mood at the station a few days after the incident. At the track, people had laid down flowers, candles and soft toys. A group of people stood at this spot. They too laid things down and paused. Some cried. But two people stood out from the rest. They were talking to people, and no, I am not talking about my colleague and me, who of course also spoke to people and asked them questions, which was also questionable because no real gain in knowledge came from it. But that is another matter. I spoke to one of the men. Through the microphone, I was recognisable as a journalist – and moreover as one from public broadcasting. The man was very unfriendly and said that he did not want to speak to me because I would not want to hear the truth about the case. He mentioned the nationality of the perpetrator, who came from Eritrea. It was all for political reasons; without the federal government's refugee policy in 2015, none of this would have happened. The man was a right-wing populist politician who wanted to abuse the child's death for his political purposes. When I pointed out to him that the perpetrator had been living in Switzerland since 2006 and had been considered well integrated there until a mental illness, he called me a liar. I ended the conversation.. 

These encounters have absolutely nothing to do with comfort either. On the one hand, it is unpleasant to be portrayed as a liar when you are doing your work to the best of your knowledge and belief. But above all, dealing with the behaviour of this right-wing politician was difficult. In my opinion, it is absolutely disgusting to abuse the death of a child for racist incitement. And I did not know to what extent I could have contradicted him as a representative of the broadcaster without that contradiction also being politically abused. 

This reporting has shaped me more than anything else so far, because it became clear that as a journalist I do indeed find myself in situations where I am confronted with terrible events. And it has shown how events are politically abused. I became more aware of this in this situation than in similar events, because in this case I was much better informed and had also heard internal editorial discussions. Apart from this momentous experience in July 2019, my journalism career has fortunately been less spectacular. But local journalism also took me to uncomfortable places. In November 2019, I had to report on a church festival procession in a small village with 200 residents: 

It was cold and grey and sometimes it rained. Ten minutes before the procession was supposed to start, there were no people to be seen. Only slowly did they come out of their houses and look at me as if I were an alien. That is not exactly easy either: reporting on an unfamiliar place, unfamiliar people who speak a different dialect that you yourself can barely understand. 

Publishing the articles and reports is sometimes unpleasant for me too. Of course, I am glad when they are finished and in the vast majority of cases I am also satisfied with them. But that is just my own opinion. What is really important is how it comes across with the viewers/readers. They should be informed and entertained. And I submit my "work" to their judgement and thus also myself. At the same time, they too are not spared from leaving their comfort zone: the profession does not only mean that one constantly steps out of one's own comfort zone and discovers new things; for the conversation partners and generally the people being written about, the reporting can also become unpleasant and tear them out of their comfort zones. After all, they are being looked at from the outside and written about. In the best case, they can handle it well, present themselves skilfully and use media attention as advertising for themselves. But very few people I have had the pleasure of meeting have been used to dealing with the media. Many of them showed a certain uncertainty. Some were careful with every word, others gave the impression that they had already prepared sentences beforehand. Both are absolutely understandable. After all, they are exposing themselves to the gaze of a stranger. And journalists have power: within the limits of truth, they have the power of interpretation. 

It may sound as if my dream job is not so great after all and as if I should perhaps have looked for something else. On the other hand, the selection of cases for this text is hardly balanced. I have clearly picked out the lowest points in terms of content. Perhaps everyone should do that from time to time to ground themselves and question their wishes. After all, it is not a life to just sit in your comfort zone. In journalism, that is also the beauty of it: the profession forces us to broaden our horizons. The reward is the stories we can tell.