A Darkness Inside: The journalistic grey zone between ethics and success

“Everyone was an oppressor in someone else’s story- that’s life.”

A man is killed in South London, just another crime statistic for many, a sign of the Mayor of London's failure to tackle violence in the city.

Sid, a cynical and professionally frustrated journalist, goes to cover the murder and hopes to get a scoop no one else has. However, noticing the victim’s family has not come forward and friends of the deceased are reluctant to talk, Sid starts to unravel a web that unveils connections from South London to Syria, Libya and Pakistan.

The Darkness Inside is a thriller from debut novelist and award-winning journalist Tam Hussein. A classical story of a journalist becoming enthralled by an investigation that turns into a relentless obsession, which forces Sid to make all kinds of morally questionable decisions.

"The Darkness Inside is a thought-provoking novel that raises questions about the ethics of pursuing stories"

The novel can be divided into two halves, with the first part dealing with Sid’s pursuit of what really happened to Anis, the murder victim.

Facing conflicts on multiple fronts from his news organisation initially not believing in the story and trying to move him on, to trying to get Muslim individuals who are quite suspicious of the media to reveal what they know about the killing.

Large sections of the Muslim community tend to view the media as an outsider and hostile force, a perception that plays out in the novel, however, Sid plays up on the fact he is from a Muslim background to get sources to trust him.

There are many moments where Sid’s outsider/insider are a cause of tension with many either slamming the door in his face or cautiously trust him.

At times Sid’s attempts to get sources to trust him feel parasitic and lead him to cross the line in a number of ways. “What starts out as a simple knife story turns out to be Syria-related linked to Jihad.”

As Sid wades through Anis’s life, he discovers his involvement with Jihad and fighting in Syria, but more importantly, Anis was part of a circle of friends who served with him. One of them is possibly his killer.

Connecting with Anis circle takes us into the world of young British men who became seduced by Islamist radicalism. “Everyone has some darkness inside,” Anis remarks and in pursuing the story, the reader learns of the darkness that lurks within Sid. The mercilessness at which the Jihadists rampaged through Syria is juxtaposed by the mercilessness of journalists pursuing the story.

The second half of the book turns its focus from Sid to his Italian-born editor Martha. The shift in her character is an interesting thing to behold, at the start of the novel Martha represents this sensible, caring and ethical figure who has Sid’s best interests at heart.

She is the figure you expect to reign in some of Sid’s exploits but as the second section of the novel plays out, Martha herself becomes enthralled in the story and starts crossing ethical boundaries.

However, Martha is not without discomfort at her shifting moral compass, “I feel there’s a darkness inside me that has grown and grown and is about to bloom, or maybe it has already bloomed. It is killing me inside.” Yet despite having misgivings Martha pushes on as the need to break a critical story and enjoy the limelight is simply too strong. 

The Darkness Inside is a thought-provoking novel that raises questions about the ethics of pursuing stories. Often the issue with journalism is that it is reactive to events and things happening, when ISIS became a big story in 2014, many newsrooms were suddenly in a grey zone about how to cover them.

Some journalists were attempting to get into the so-called Caliphate while others took strong stands against it. But there were no hard and fast rules about what to do and different outlets as well as different journalists came to conclusions on what was appropriate and not appropriate.

It is in this that a novel like The Darkness Inside arises, often what can’t be covered by news stories themselves needs to take on different forms and in this case a literary one. The Darkness Inside will surely become a classic looking at our moment in journalism; Tam Hussein blends the needs of a fiction piece with the benefits of his expert analysis and critical journalistic eye.

Usman Butt is a multimedia television researcher, filmmaker and writer based in London. Usman read International Relations and Arabic Language at the University of Westminster and completed a Master of Arts in Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter.

Follow him on Twitter: @TheUsmanButt