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I am on vacation in city X, and it starts raining heavily. I stop at a petrol kiosk, and a TV reporter is on camera reporting the extremely heavy rain.

I want to record the TV reporter and send the video to my friends to show how heavy the rain is in city X. It may not be nice to stop the reporter and ask for permission, since she's likely on live TV.

What would be the most polite way to approach this situation?

tennessee
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    This appears to be more of a legal question than an interpersonal skills question. – baldPrussian Mar 21 '18 at 20:05
  • The OP might be asking about the best course of action that demonstrates sensitivity to the reporter's feelings. From what I know, gas stations generally don't ban people from making videos on their premises. And even if they did, the reporter herself might be in violation. – wwl Mar 21 '18 at 20:07
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because unfortunately, this question appears to be asking “What should I do?”, which the community has determined to not be a good fit for Interpersonal Skills Stack Exchange. We can’t decide for you what to do; after you determine what you want to do, we can help you with your goal, but we can’t make these decisions for you. Sorry. – Tinkeringbell Mar 21 '18 at 20:14

1 Answers1

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This is an interesting situation.

You ask :

What would be the most polite way to approach this situation? [and get your recording].

There is a primary principle here Respect the other person and give them control over their image, and voice. Their Image and Voice are after all a part of who they are, their self.

In your specific situation I would say that if you are going to record her you need to do the following in order to still have a chance of being polite.

1) don't interrupt until they are done working (filming here news piece).

2) As soon as they are done (or take a break) ask her permission before sending off your video to friends.

Personally I don't think you should film other people with out their permission unless you are trying to protect yourself or another victim from a crime or corruption.

When my oldest daughter was 2 years old, my wife and I had taken her to a park. While there a man, who was already taking photographs with a friend, appeared to start taking pictures of my daughter. My wife was furious, and I was bit uncomfortable about it as well. We didn't know why he was taking pictures of her, I would like to assume the best of intentions for him, but as a parent in today's culture you become a little paranoid.

I've also been in situations were some one was holding up their phone as if they were recording me. I didn't like that either.

Basically what I'm saying is, unless it is a friend of family member who you are close to and know won't mind or if you feel the need to record evidence of a crime or of corruption, you should probably ask the persons permission first. It's just polite.

Dan Anderson
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  • I agree with the general principle (and it might be polite to ask even in this case), but a TV reporter giving a live interview is someone who is already aware that they are being recorded, and that anyone can watch the recording. (Much as with other similar situations, e.g. sports games, politicians giving speeches at their rallies, etc.) I think the likelihood that they’d be perturbed by being recorded when they’re already being publicly broadcast is quite low. – Obie 2.0 Mar 22 '18 at 22:15
  • @Obie2.0 you could be right, she might also before likely to be upset because her job is basically to be recorded saying the stuff OP wants to record. – Dan Anderson Mar 22 '18 at 22:53
  • Well, if it weren’t live, they might be worried about it being sold to a rival station or something, yes…I don’t think that would be a worry with a live broadcast so much…but I could be wrong. – Obie 2.0 Mar 22 '18 at 23:15