From the outset of filming her report on college students who were not U.S. citizens, documentary journalist and then graduate student Catherine Orr steered clear of come common tools for crafting news stories about non-residents wanting to conceal their identity.
However, in light of several highly public situations, “What I didn’t want to do,” said Orr, 29, producer of “Dreams Delayed,” a 2011 long-form, multimedia news feature on college access for undocumented immigrants, “is put up a barrier between the viewer and the [interviewed] by blurring their faces. The blur almost automatically makes them seem criminalized.”
She aimed, instead, to explore the nuanced, everyday lives of her documentary subjects, the human beings forming the backdrop to the hot-button immigration debate. She was reaching for an expanded story that relied neither on pithy, if shrieking, sound bytes nor easy clichés, said Orr and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professors who oversaw her project and are among those trying to refine the standards for covering immigration issues, the simple and the complex.
For starters, Paul Cuadros, one of Orr’s UNC professors, provided advice derived partly from his prior experience as an award-winning investigative reporter on subjects including race, poverty and immigration. “Find out what is the general policy of that publication or station — or whatever medium you’re working in — about using sources who want to remain anonymous or have their identity protected,” said Cuadros, a former staffer at the Chicago Reporter and former researcher and writer for the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, D.C. Now a freelancer, he covers Latinos in the South for Time magazine.
Cuadros continued, “If they don’t have [a policy], negotiate with that editor a way to do your story about people who don’t have papers. After that, consider carefully, being truthful and honest with the source about what might happen, what impact that story may have in the media and in the life of the source. … Decide for yourself how much anonymity you want to provide for your source, how you’re going to end up shooting the story or reporting the story.”
The deportation dilemma
