Subway Morality Play: What Would YOU Have Done?

For the past week or so, the New York Post photographer who took the picture of the guy on the subway tracks about to be hit by the train has been peppered with questions which are all basically the same: So why didn’t you put down your camera and act like a human being, meaning, try to rescue the victim?

The photog, who gamely submitted to the interviews to defend his reputation, said he was too far away, wasn’t strong enough to pull the guy out and that he was using his camera flash to try to alert the driver of the oncoming train. You can believe him or not, but is all this beside the point?

Newspeople, by inclination or by training or both, tend to perform in certain ways during crises. I had a similar train thing happen to me earlier this year. I was in the lead car of a commuter train that struck a man on the tracks as the train was pulling into a station platform, an apparent suicide. Was I trying to comfort my shaken-up fellow passengers? No, I was on the phone to the city’s top news radio station, where I had worked part-time once.

My wife reminds of the time an early-morning 7-point earthquake struck, awakening us. Did I roll over to see if she was OK? No, she, said, I was on the phone to a national radio network even before the shaking stopped.

So do I have ice water running through my veins? If necessary, I’ll get a blood sample for you, but the bottom line is, I had always behaved this way as a news professional. Someone asked me about this once, and my answer was that when disaster struck, I was more fortunate than most, because I had a job to do.

As has been frequently pointed out by reporters like Anderson Cooper of CNN, most people have no clue about how they might react in a crisis until that crisis arrives. The average milktoast wimp might perform like a superhero, while sometimes those who are expected to lead shrivel up in terror at the prospect of making a life-or-death decision under extreme pressure.

You can go back to the Bible for a perfect example. Jesus expected Simon Peter to deny him three times, and even told him so, saying a rooster would crow after the third time. Peter assured Christ that he would always have his back. But as predicted, when the bad guys asked Peter if he knew Jesus, he said in effect, never heard of him, and the cock crowed. And yet, Jesus shortly thereafter founded his church, naming Peter (Greek for “rock”) its leader. Was that the behavior of a “rock”? Go figure.

To return to that New York subway scene, many others besides the Post photographer maybe could have helped the victim, but didn’t, instead taking their own smart-phone pictures. And then, of course, we might consider the New York Post editors, who, under much less pressure, decided to publish their photographer’s shocking photo on the front page.

We are all very complex creatures, and “acting like a human being” can, fortunately or unfortunately, have many meanings. But judging too quickly can be a dangerous business too.