Sarah Rachael Wainio is a documentarian whose credits include The Food Network, FacebookWatch, Netflix, Max and MTV, where she produced the first three seasons of Teen Mom: Young + Pregnant, and TLC, where she produced 90 Day Diaries: Ukraine. She also co-chairs the ethics task force of the Documentary Producers Alliance. In the piece below, she writes about her reasons for starting the Ethics Resource Library, a free resource that helps documentarians seek answers to ethical dilemmas.
When I set out to create the Ethics Resource Library, of course I had altruistic reasons, but it was also about my interest in true crime – and how that genre has contributed to my own pain and healing.
Typically, I’ll watch a documentary the day it’s released, recording the movie in my Letterboxd diary with where and who I watched it with, but without a review. I’m not ready to share unedited thoughts like, “the mother’s description of the lack of remains she received from the crime scene really hits home.” My compulsion to bear witness comes from a place of personal understanding. I feel uncomfortable about this, like maybe I should give others the privacy I’ve sought in my own life, and yet I can’t stop consuming it.
Sarah Rachael Wainio Remembers Her Sister With the Ethics Resource Library
My big sister, Honor Elizabeth Wainio, was murdered on September 11, 2001. She was a passenger on United Flight 93, the fourth of four planes that were hijacked that Tuesday morning. Suddenly my family was thrust into a media landscape that was barely chartered in the early aughts, before the “Golden Age” of nonfiction. In a pre-Facebook internet, I received DMs through MySpace and an AOL email address sleuths managed to find.
I was featured in several documentaries, asked to relive the moment I learned of the death of my sister. Since I know firsthand the ramifications of having my personal tragedy also be national news, I find myself asking: Why am I so obsessed with seeing my own pain reflected in the eyes of others? I think it’s because I feel least alone when I watch other trauma survivors in the exquisitely intimate way that only the documentary form allows.
I was 14 when my sister was murdered; hardly an adult, but also not a child. It was my second week of high school, during that terrible in-between stage of life that is tough even without a personal tragedy. I didn’t have the language to talk about the pain I was feeling, so I turned to my TV.
I felt a bizarre kind of hope as I heard the truly shocking, horrifically unique experiences others were articulating, because I understood them without needing any explanation: The interviewees, they survived. Look at them surviving. It was not always an easy choice for me to go on, and I suspect it was not easy for them either. But I was not alone.
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So although I find the desire perverse, I also understand why I find myself seeking out this informal televised trauma survivor support network. While I felt an intimate sense of connection to the documentary participants, I would also wonder how they felt about the films that featured them — not just how they were depicted, but what their experience was like throughout the process.
Almost 10 years ago I was invited to give a lecture on Visibility and Validation in Nonfiction Storytelling. While preparing for the lecture at Fordham University’s Center for Ethics Education, I came to a realization that stunned me: There is no code of ethics to govern or guide documentary filmmakers. How could this be?
Eventually I found the work of the Center for Media and Social Impact at American University. Its study, Honest Truths: Documentary Filmmakers on Ethical Challenges in Their Work, found that while filmmakers were extremely interested and motivated by doing the right thing, they were understandably resistant to a codified code of ethics.
I asked myself: Could I create a central location where filmmakers could access the work that already exists from thought leaders like the Documentary Accountability Working Group (DAWG), Kartemquin Films, Peace is Loud, Represent Justice, the IDA, FWD-DOC, and DocuMentality? And if so, what would it be?
My answer: a library.
Libraries have always been about access to information and culture. If I could create a free library, filmmakers would be empowered to create the best possible work with the least harm. As a producer, I understand the role. Often the producer is responsible for the care of the team both in front of and behind the camera. And in situations where you’re dealing with trauma, life, and death, that’s an immense responsibility.
The Documentary Producers Alliance, with its tireless advocacy for filmmakers, was the perfect home for the Ethics Resource Library. Having this tool available for producers has the potential to raise the standard for our entire industry.
And so a task force of “librarians” was assembled from the Ethics Subcommittee: Steffie van Rhee, Charles Box Jr., Dawn Mikkelson, Simon Mendes, Chantal Encalada, and Risé Sanders-Weir. We began collecting podcasts, articles, videos, and frameworks for ethical filmmaking. The primary question the librarians ask themselves when considering a resource for inclusion: If faced with a choice point, would this help a filmmaker to make a decision?
If a film team is discussing compensating their participants, they could select “compensation” from a menu in the online library and see what others have done when faced with the same challenge.
A person doesn’t become ethical with a single decision. Ethics are a practice, and showing up for your practice makes you better at it. The library is intended to spark discussion and provide opportunities for practice, so when a filmmaker is faced with a decision, they feel more prepared.
I hope that participating in the documentaries I’m watching brought interviewees some kind of narrative justice. And for those whom that isn’t the case, I hope the filmmakers from those movies learn something from the Ethics Resource Library.
I hope you explore the library and visit it often. You’ll leave armed with new perspectives that will make your filmmaking better and help others like me.
You can visit the Ethics Resource Library here: www.docproducers.org/erl.