Trauma-informed journalism is changing the way traumatic events and stories are being told and is giving journalists a greater understanding of the effects of vicarious trauma on their own mental health
“I believe in journalism. We need good journalism now more than ever and for that we need healthy and resilient journalists,” says clinical psychologist Kimina Lyall.
That’s the response of Lyall, deputy chief executive of Melbourne’s Dart Centre, to an email checking that it’s okay to report on her personal details in a story on trauma-informed journalism.
Among her disclosures in an interview was a post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosis that cut short her 15-year journalism career.
Lyall had been working as a foreign correspondent in Southeast Asia, covering the 2002 Bali bombings and 2004 Boxing Day tsunami.
Subsequently she retrained as a psychologist and now works for Columbia University’s Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma.
The centre, a pioneer of trauma-informed journalism, advocates ethical and thorough reporting of trauma and the compassionate and professional treatment by journalists of trauma survivors.
Dart raises awareness about the effects trauma coverage can have on both news professionals and consumers and researches the psychological effects traumatic-event reporting can have on journalists.
The centre runs training and support programmes for reporters exposed to such events as Hurricane Katrina, the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US, the Iraq war, the Northern Ireland conflict and the war in Ukraine.
Avoiding powerlessness
The centre’s starting point is that trauma-informed journalism avoids the clichés of standard disaster reporting.
For trauma survivors, it means being interviewed by journalists who are aware of the effects their questions can have.
Invasive questions should be avoided and interviewees should be treated in such a way that the powerlessness caused by disaster is not compounded.
In anticipation of increased frequency and intensity of natural disasters, a trial workshop for journalists was run in Queenstown in June by Jen Andrews of Te Hau Toka Southern Lakes Wellbeing Group.
Andrews believes trauma-informed practice for news staff and other professionals is more important than ever.
Sarb Johal, a psychosocial recovery and disaster communication specialist and workshop co-organiser, says storytelling that involves people affected by trauma should be a collaborative process between journalist and interviewee.
Because trauma robs victims of their sense of power and control over their lives, a guiding principle of recovery is to give control of their story to the survivor, he says.
That might mean ditching some of journalism’s standard practices by sharing questions beforehand, for example, so the interviewee can decide what they are comfortable answering.
It could also include allowing them to review or approve any quotes, returning their power and agency and avoiding a “doubling down” of loss of control, Johal says.
Trauma-informed journalism also includes avoiding certain questions or asking people to retell events in chronological order, says Johal.
Top of the list of what not to ask is “how do you feel?”, the question survivors and victims consistently say they find the most distressing and inappropriate. A better substitute is “how are you now?”.
Trauma is often at the heart of news, with national disasters, human tragedies and harrowing court cases part of the daily news cycle.
Lyall says journalists, practically all of whom witness trauma on the job, don’t usually realise the extent of their exposure. When she explains her work she is mostly met with puzzlement.
It’s common for others to view journalists as observers, unlike firefighters or first responders, who are shielded from traumatic events by their note pad or camera.
But they can actually be in psychological danger almost every working day, typically without support, says Lyall.
No escape from trauma
Reporters, photographers and camera operators don’t have to be reporting on wars to be confronted on the job.
A sports reporter at a football match might be caught in a crowd crush, or as in Australia in recent times political correspondents can find themselves covering a sexual assault, says Lyall.
Even fashion photographs are not immune.
“When 9/11 happened a lot of the first images of the World Trade Centre were taken by fashion photographers because they were at an event nearby,” says Lyall.
It’s often the cumulative effect of covering trauma-filled news that ends careers, says Lyall, rather than a single major event.
About 7 percent of journalists will be affected by PTSD, about the same rate as firefighters, she says, but most are “actually very resilient”.
Dart has seen great change in the support media organisations provide trauma-affected journalists over the past 25 years.
But most newsrooms and editors still have a “get a thick skin” response to any sign of distress, says Lyall, and even those that do a lot could be doing more.
There is often an attitude of denial among news managers who think “it’s been like this for all my career and I’m fine”.
But there can be a steep cost.
Reporting on numerous disasters and human tragedies and not getting help soon enough cost Lyall her career. She left journalism two years after a PTSD diagnosis.
“I think it was cumulative but the last thing was the tsunami,” she says.
When the Boxing Day tsunami struck Thailand, she was on the beach on Koh Phra Thong, a small island about 200km north of Phuket.
Lyall became a participant in and reporter of one of the modern world’s deadliest natural disasters that killed almost 230,000 people in 14 countries.
All about the story
Lyall managed to scramble to safety.
And when communications were restored, she was told by her bosses to get to another island hundreds of kilometres away where most Australian victims of the disaster had perished.
“I didn’t have a computer. I didn’t have any clothes. I didn’t have any money. It was crazy.
“It was very much about the story coming first and your well-being second.
“I was a young hungry journalist who just went with that without knowing the effects it would have down the track.”
Lyall says the dearth of support from her employer at the time was in some ways worse than the experience itself.
“It was a lack of them acknowledging or realising the impact,” she says.
Someone was concerned.
“Two days after the tsunami two people from Dart separately emailed saying they saw my story and was I okay? I had never met them or heard about the Dart Centre.”
Her tsunami experience is the reason she now works for the centre helping other journalists.
Targeting the messenger
There is another source of on-the-job trauma faced by reporters.
Senior media figures are concerned about an upsurge in vitriol directed at journalists.
Former Stuff head of news Mark Stevens, a 30-year industry veteran, says when the ballistic grading of the windows at a Stuff newspaper was discussed at a senior management meeting about 18 months ago, he realised things had changed.
“It dawned on me that it was sad but telling what New Zealand journalists are facing nowadays.”
Stevens wrote about the increased hostility in a Stuff opinion piece last year.
He noted a surging tide of the disenfranchised who wrongly view journalists as part of a pro-government propaganda machine.
And about journalists “just doing their job” having gear smashed, being punched and belted with umbrellas and facing harassment online and in person.
Most of the attacks on Stuff journalists and their peers elsewhere were from the ill-informed anti-vax crowd, he says.
Writing about it provoked its own backlash.
“The people I was writing about that were responsible for the hostility used it to be more hostile.”
But what is heartening, says Stevens, who in July was appointed RNZ’s chief news officer and who sits on the Media Freedom Committee, is that the industry is taking the issue seriously.
“Over the past few years there has probably been no topic more discussed than keeping journalists safe.
“I think it is a pretty good outcome to have everyone working together on this.”
Lyall says attacks on journalists are on the increase globally and she sees them as attempts at silencing the media. And it works, driving some journalists from the industry.
Those leaving are usually at a mid to late point in their career.
“That is when everything gets too much and they are like, 'I can go and get a comms job, get paid twice as much and be home for dinner every night'.”
Lyall says online trauma is what journalists talk to the Dart Centre most about, especially in the Asia-Pacific region. Female journalists cop the most abuse and any minority group is likely to be targeted, she says.
Pressures of the job
Stuff senior reporter Debbie Jamieson, who was at the Queenstown workshop, recounts another kind of pressure journalists can face.
A discussion about informed consent and giving trauma survivors greater ownership of their stories brought to mind for her a story she wrote in the mid-2000s about a young woman from overseas who was murdered in New Zealand.
“I managed to get a great scoop at the time. I talked to a friend of hers and she gave me these amazing photos.”
But later that day the informant called her saying she had realised publishing the photos and story would upset the victim’s family and asking for it to be pulled.
Jamieson told her bosses who decided to run the story.
The pressure for big scoops is being countered by recognition of the effect such stories have on the victims, particularly when they are published online where they remain forever, says Jamieson.
She says there is “a willingness to pull back at times”.
Journalism Association of New Zealand president Bernie Whelan says trauma reporting and self-care are today a facet of every New Zealand journalism course.
At Massey University, where he is a senior tutor, Dart Centre resources are used and the university weaves the teaching of reporting of sensitive news stories and trauma-related subjects throughout its undergraduate and postgraduate courses.
Self-care is also taught, he says, an acknowledgement of the increased attacks on journalists being slammed for the “most innocuous stories”, he says.
But journalists are looking out for each other especially when they are covering significant trauma events and graduates have strong collegial networks, says Whelan.
Keeping journalists safe
New Zealand newsrooms are putting more measures in place to protect their journalists.
Stevens says Stuff journalists use a phone safety app that will notify a security company, police and management if they feel at risk.
The security of news-staff members’ homes is also checked and in instances when a journalist is believed to be in danger Stuff has moved them to a safe location.
When covering protests, Stuff’s policy is to put safety ahead of the story, says Stevens.
Journalists can also get confidential counselling and support through an employee-assistance programme.
It was used by Press reporters who covered the March 15, 2019, Christchurch mosque attacks.
During one anti-vaccine mandate protest reporters and photographers from competing newsrooms shared phone numbers so they could call on each other for help, says Stevens.
Newshub reporters and field crew have “hazardous environment sessions” that aim to equip them before they are put into traumatic situations, says senior news director Sarah Bristow.
Once an assignment is over, managers check to see if any support is needed and to encourage news staff to use the employment assistance programme, she says.
Change for the good
Stevens admits earlier in his career getting a traumatic news story splashed across the front page was viewed by newsrooms as a badge of honour.
And if a journalist was affected by a story there was a “suck it up, toughen up” attitude.
A more-aware industry, combined with increased vitriol aimed at journalists, has probably led to greater care in newsrooms, he says.
The other side of the story is journalists have an obligation to treat vulnerable people with care and sensitivity, Stevens says, and safeguards are in place that include principles set by the New Zealand Media Council and the Broadcasting Standards Authority.
“There is a time for pressing hard on answers and there is a time for not,” he says.
Made with the support of the Public Interest Journalism Fund
