In his 30-year career as a journalist, Manny Garcia has witnessed executions, covered murders, and once accidentally walked in to a crime scene, finding a dead person at the bottom of a pool.

While working on a story with a photographer, he came face-to-face with a drug dealer who pointed a gun at them and asked them why he shouldn’t kill them.

“Needless to say, we got out of it, but at no point, telling this to my editors, did anybody say, ‘Are you OK, Manny? Do you need to talk to somebody? No. In fact, it was like, ‘Well, you’re here. Work on the story,” Garcia, executive editor for the Austin American-Statesman, recalled during a panel about leading a newsroom during times of crisis at the 2023 Investigative Reporters and Editors conference in Orlando.

In 2020, with encouragement from his wife, he sought therapy and was diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

“I’ve been open about this, because you not ever suffer in silence,” Garcia said. “It’s very important to support each other now more than ever, because this is a beautiful profession. You can change lives.”

Garcia’s career unfolded during a time when there were barely any discussions about journalists’ safety and mental health. But that has changed dramatically, for the better, in recent years in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, a seemingly never-ending string of mass shootings, and increasing hostility toward journalists, particularly online.

Today more than ever there are resources for newsrooms to keep journalists’ safe, including from leading organizations such as the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma, PEN America and the ACOS Alliance.

And more journalism groups and conferences are devoting time to this topic.

During the IRE panel, Garcia, along with Cristi Hegranes, chief executive officer and publisher of Global Press, shared how they bring a culture of safety to their newsrooms — Garcia, managing a regional newspaper, and Hegranes, leading independent news bureaus, staffed by local, women reporters, in some of the world’s least-covered places. I helped moderate the panel.

Below are six tips from my conversation with Garcia and Hegranes.

1. Make safety and security a priority and part of newsroom culture.

At Global Press, safety practices are part of daily newsroom operations instead of being a reactive response.

“It’s making sure that duty of care and security is alive every single day,” Hegranes said. “It’s not just something we talk about when an emergency happens. It’s part of how the newsroom operates. We very intentionally don’t have one person who’s like the director of security or the director of duty of care. Duty of care is written into every single person’s job description. Everyone is responsible for their own security, the security of their colleagues and the risk management of the organization.”

2. Invest in mental health.

“There is oftentimes a misconception of like, ‘Oh, you have to be one of like those big newsrooms in order to afford resources for your reporter.’ And that’s false. We all need to stop believing that because there are so many resources,” Hegranes said.

At Global Press, 3% of every dollar they raise goes toward duty of care. Hegranes shared the three components of wellness at Global Press:

1. Psycho-education. “Psycho-education is critical,” she said. It’s about “giving reporters the tools to understand what is burnout. How do you mitigate it? How do you bounce back from it? What is stress? What is trauma? What is resilience?”
2. Culture. “We have wellness ambassadors for each region, who are responsible for making sure that their reporters in each region of the world know what services are available to them,” Hegranes said.
3. Wellness Network: The Global Press Wellness Network is a network of more than 30 counselors who speak the languages of the organization’s reporters all around the world and are available for free, unlimited sessions. A full-time wellness network manager recruits and trains the counselors. Reporters use a confidential system to request sessions.

“Prior to the pandemic, about 40% of our reporters were using the Wellness Network,” Hegranes said. “Today, more than 80% of reporters at Global Press use the Wellness Network. Most reporters use it for more than 12 weeks in a year.”

To provide services for its core staff in the U.S. and parts of Europe, Global Press has partnered with Talkspace, an online counseling resource. Global Press pays for every employee to have two counseling sessions a month on Talkspace.

3. Remember that framing matters.

When building safety programs, focus on resilience and wellness, not crisis response and trauma.

“It’s not about, ‘You’re in crisis, go get help.’ It’s about, ‘You’re well, stay well.’ If you’re well, let’s figure out how to keep you well,” Hegranes said.

4. Assess reporters’ risk tolerance.

Global Press has developed a tool that allows reporters to do a risk-profile assessment. There are four levels: Aggressive, moderate, conservative and casual.

The aggressive risk profile means the reporter is willing and able to tolerate a high degree of risk, while the casual risk profile denotes a reporter who is often surprised and unprepared for risk.

“This has been such a game changing tool for us because it allows reporters to really think critically about how they approach risk and so that we can help them prepare for big stories and mitigate that risk,” Hegranes said.

It also helps editors to better understand their reporters.

“If you’re sending your most conservative risk profile reporter out to a big protest where tear gas is being shot, the reality is you’re probably not going to get the story that you want, because the reporter is just fundamentally telling you, ‘Hey, that’s not my jam.’ And that’s okay,” she said. “So having frank conversations about risk and really diagnosing it, I think is one of the most powerful, simple tools that newsrooms can do.”

5. Stay in communication with reporters in the field.

Garcia said as part of his newsroom’s practice, editors check in with reporters before they begin a high-risk assignment: Where are they going? Where are they staying? Is their cell phone charged? Do they have backup battery? Do they have cash? Do they have pencils?

Before the reporter goes out the editor knows where they are going, especially if they are going somewhere with spotty cell service.

In some cases, the editor texts a reporter in the field to check on them.

6. Make reporters part of the safety planning process.

Too often the burden of security is on the journalist alone, Hegranes said.

“‘Oh, go take a hostile environments training. Oh, you should secure your social media. Oh, you should do this. You should do that.’ At Global Press, we know after 17 years that the best way for our journalists to find security is in solidarity with the newsroom,” she said. “It is absolutely a partnership and the newsroom has to take a heavy responsibility for the reporter security, both planning for how to mitigate it but also the services on the response after the fact.”

Hegranes advised newsroom managers to design their security and safety protocols with reporters.

“We just have to really shift this top-down mechanism where we tell you this is our security policy. It needs to flip for the reporter to say this is what I need in order to cover that story,” she said.

And sometimes that can be done with a simple survey to find out what the reporters need.

For example, a couple of years ago, Global Press conducted a survey of 300 journalists across East Africa and found that a vast majority of reporters said the most common physical injury in the field was to the palms of their hands from falling off the backs of Boda Boda motorcycle taxis.

“And the lesson there is not, ‘Don’t ride a motorcycle taxis,’” Hegranes said. “It’s, ‘We can equip reporters with the tools they need to mitigate risks and keep themselves safe.’ So we added to our training a very simple physical security training about what to carry with you and how to pack wounds on your own hand or somebody else’s hand.”

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When it comes to interviewing sources, one size doesn’t fit all.

When interviewing public figures, including politicians, journalists ask the hard questions, demand answers and set hard-and-fast rules about what’s on- or off-the-record.

But journalists should take greater care when interviewing private citizens, especially those who are suffering in some way and the survivors of traumatic events, by practicing trauma-informed journalism, which is acknowledging the impact of trauma on people and how an interview can create additional stress for them, and less-extractive reporting, which is about ethical ways that journalists can interview people who have experienced harm or are in some way suffering.

These interviewing methods were the subject of a recent panel, “Rethinking the Interview: In an Unequal World, Do We Need New Rules?” hosted by the NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, and part of the Kavli Conversations, hosted by NYU’s Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program with support from the Kavli Foundation.

During the panel Tara Haelle, a freelance science journalist who frequently speaks and writes about ethical dilemmas in journalism, and I shared some of our tips and advice with moderator Robin Lloyd, a freelance writer and editor, and a contributing editor at Scientific American.

Some of the takeaways:

• Remember that trauma survivors have just been through an event where they had no control, so give them a sense of control. For instance, instead of choosing how to start your interview, ask them where they want to start their story.
• Take extra care in protecting vulnerable sources with questions like, “What is the nearest metropolitan area you’re comfortable with identifying from,” instead of identifying their exact location, Haelle advised.
• Practice empathy. It’s OK to feel sad or shed a tear with your sources, but don’t try to process your own extreme emotions during an interview, as it could be distressing to your interviewee. Take a moment to acknowledge your feelings to yourself — maybe take a deep breath or drink a sip of water — and address it after you leave the interview. Talk to a friend, colleague, editor or a mental health professional.

You can watch the video below or click here.

More from The Journalist’s Resource:

• “Trauma-informed journalism: What it is, why it’s important and tips for practicing it.”
• “10 rules for reporting on war trauma survivors.”
• “Interviewing politicians and public leaders: Advice from TIME’s Molly Ball.”
• “Interviewing a source: Tips.”
• “Interviewing white-collar criminals: 6 tips from Harvard Business School’s Eugene Soltes.”

Additional resources:

• “The Dart Center Style Guide for Trauma-Informed Journalism,” Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma, June 2021.
• “Why Should I Tell You?: A Guide to Less-Extractive Reporting,” Natalie Yahr. Center for Journalism Ethics, University of Wisconsin-Madison,
• “Trauma & Journalism: A Guide for Journalists, Editors & Managers,” Dart Center, 2007.
• “Tragedies & Journalists,” a 40-page guide to help journalists, photojournalists and editors report on violence while protecting both victims and themselves. Dart Center, February 2009.
• “Trauma-Informed Journalism: Tips for Telling Important Stories, Better,” Tamara Cherry. April 2022.
• “Trauma Informed Reporting,” Alice Wilder. Transom.org, March 2021.
• “Trauma-Informed Interviewing: Techniques from a Clinician’s Toolkit,” Kate Porterfield. Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma, November 2019.
• “Best practices for trauma-informed journalism,” Maggie Doheny. Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri, December 2021.
• “A training session on trauma-informed reporting,” Nicole Froio. Hosted by The International journalists’ Network, December 2021.
• “Keep these seven lessons in mind when interviewing trauma survivors,” Lilly Dayton. Center for Health Journalism.
• “Trauma Reporting: A Journalist’s Guide to Covering Sensitive Stories,” Jo Healey, July 2019.
• “Weathering the Trauma Storms: Developing Interviewing Techniques,” Gavin Rees. Dart Center, June 2007.
• “Covering Children and Trauma,” Ruth Teichroeb. Dart Center, February 2009.
• “Resources: Reporting on Refugees and Migration Through the Eyes of Young Children,” Dart Center, September 2019.
• “Reporting on Sexual Violence in Conflict,” Dart Centre Europe.
• “How working with sexual assault survivors changed the way I think about journalism,” Samantha Caiola. Center for Health Journalism.

The post Video: Interviewing trauma survivors and other vulnerable sources appeared first on The Journalist's Resource.

Journalists are often encouraged to be active on social media and engage with their audiences, but their newsroom social media policies do little to protect them when they’re attacked or harassed online, according to a recent study that adds to a growing body of research based on surveys of reporters and editors across North America.

Women and journalists of color are particularly vulnerable to these attacks, notes Jacob Nelson, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah, and author of a recent study, “‘Worse than the Harassment Itself.’ Journalists’ Reactions to Newsroom Social Media Policies.”

His study, published last month in Digital Journalism, is based on in-depth interviews with 37 reporters, editors, publishers, freelancers, and social media and audience engagement managers in the U.S. and Canada, who were current or former employees of local, national, for-profit, nonprofit, print, digital and broadcast outlets.

It’s worth noting that Nelson’s study may or may not apply to other countries, as newsroom cultures and approaches to social media, free speech and online harassment vary depending on the country. It also focuses on how journalists perceive their newsroom’s social media policies, rather than textual data collected from the policies themselves. In addition, not all the journalists voiced the same criticisms of their newsrooms, he notes.

But his findings echo what previous small studies based on interviews with journalists have found, highlighting the complicated role of social media in journalism today. While many journalists find platforms like Facebook and Twitter invaluable in their reporting, they also see them as dangerous and unsettling places. And while many newsrooms encourage journalists to have a presence on social media, they do little to protect them when they’re trolled or attacked online.

Several studies in recent years have urged news leaders and organizations to find ways to protect their journalists when they’re harassed online.

“The Chilling: A Global Study of Online Violence Against Women Journalists,” published by the International Center for Journalists in November 2022, is a three-year study among 1,100 participants covering 15 countries, including the U.S., which finds 73% of respondents identifying as women said they experiences online violence. Black, Indigenous, Jewish, Arab, Asian and lesbian women journalists participating experienced the highest rates and most severe impacts of online violence. The authors emphasize the role of various entities, including news organizations, in developing “gender-aware protocols to respond to online violence, stop victim-blaming, and avoid disproportionate restraint on the speech of women journalists when they come under attack.”

A 2021 study published in Journalism Practice, based on interviews with 31 U.S. journalists finds “almost no system-level interventions regarding harassment from audiences on social media or journalists’ long-term mental health.”

The authors of that study find journalists face three types of harassment: “acute harassment such as generalized verbal abuse, chronic harassment occurring over time and often from the same social media users and escalatory harassment that is more personalized and directly threatening.” Women were most likely to experience chronic and escalatory harassment, the authors write.

Studies have shown that online harassment of journalists — particularly women journalists and journalists of color — can affect their mental health.

In the commentary “What Will it Take for Newsroom Leaders to Support and Defend Journalists?” published in September 2022 in Journalism & Communication Monographs, Tracy Everbach, a journalism professor at the University of North Texas, writes, “It shouldn’t require someone vandalizing a supervisor’s house to get newsroom leaders’ attention. We all bear responsibility for preparing, training, placing, and retaining journalists in safe and inclusive environments.”

“Have your own voice, but don’t use certain language, certain words. … There’s a lot of policing of language. How can you have your own voice when you have all these restrictions?”

Shree Paradkar, a social and racial justice columnist for the Toronto Star

Walking a “tightrope”

In many newsrooms, journalists are encouraged or even required to have a presence on social media and build an audience for themselves and the news organization. Many journalists also find social media an integral part of their reporting to find sources, connect with their community and even galvanize efforts such as union drives.

At the same time, newsroom social media policies can be confusing for journalists who want to be more authentic in their posts and interact with their audience.

Nelson quotes several journalists in his study.

Shree Paradkar, a social and racial justice columnist for the Toronto Star, told Nelson, “On social media, we are told to have your own voice because [the news organization] recognizes that, if you’re on social media, then your authenticity is really important if you want to have more followers. … Have your own voice, but don’t use certain language, certain words. … There’s a lot of policing of language. How can you have your own voice when you have all these restrictions?”

It’s a tension between mass media’s focus on neutrality and independence, and social media’s rewards for authenticity, popularity and connectivity, Nelson writes.

And even if a journalist strictly follows a newsroom’s social media guidelines, no amount of policing and policy can predict how the public is going to respond to a post or a tweet.

As a result, many journalists end up having to navigate a “tightrope,” where the social media platforms they depend on are accompanied by the very real risk of professional, physical, and emotional harm, Nelson writes.

His interviewees expressed deep frustration that they couldn’t control when they might face punitive measures from their newsroom managers for something they posted, because they couldn’t predict what might cause the online audience to perceive something undercutting the neutrality of their publication.

They also were frustrated that the enforcement of newsroom social media policies focused on the organization’s credibility tended to skew unequally toward women and journalists of color.

“As the interviewees consistently explained, because social media policies tend to focus on how posts get perceived rather than how they are written in the first place, enforcement most frequently occurred when the online audience was upset about something,” writes Nelson. “And because the online audience tended to get more upset more often at things posted by women journalists and journalists of color, those journalists paid professional penalties for their use of social media more often than their male, white counterparts.”

“I think a lot of journalists feel like they’re out there on their own, and they are.”

Carla Murphy, a former editor for The View from Somewhere podcast and board member of the Journalism & Women Symposium

In their own words

Nelson’s 37 interviewees included 22 women and 18 journalists of color. They were based in print and digital newsrooms in the U.S. and Canada. One was based in the U.K. They were primarily women journalists and journalists of color. The interviews were done between July and September 2021 via Zoom.

Nelson lists four key findings from his interviews. Considering the risk of professional consequences, the interviewees could choose to be quoted by name, anonymously, or not at all. They also had a chance to review their quotes.

1. Participants consistently said social media platforms, particularly Facebook and Twitter, played an integral role in their work.

Sewell Chan, editor-in-chief of the Texas Tribune, told Nelson the potential for bringing new audiences to journalism was one of the biggest draws of social media platforms.

“When I’ve talked to journalists about reasons to be on social media, I have emphasized that, at the very, very least, you need to recognize at the point your content is published, that’s actually the beginning of a process, not the end of a process,” Chan told Nelson. “We are in the fight for our lives, for the lives of our institutions, and we need to find readers wherever they are.”

Renata Cló, Arizona schools reporter with The Arizona Republic, told Nelson that social media “gives us an opportunity for people to easily reach out to me and say what they think of my story or leave a suggestion or a criticism to my story or something I hadn’t thought about. When people call me or send me an email about any story, they are usually very mad, and they are very disrespectful. [When I respond to them,] it’s just a matter of me trying to tell people, ‘Hey, I’m not a robot.’”

2. Interviewees said online harassment was their biggest concern when using social media.

One journalist told Nelson when she shared the news about her pregnancy on Facebook, she was thrilled by the thousands of positive comments at first. But when some of her followers realized she wasn’t married, people attacked her for being a “bad role model.”

“They wished death upon my child because I wasn’t married … They were so absolutely horrendous and that emotionally took a toll on me,” she said.

Another reporter, Barbara VanDenburgh, the books editor for USA Today, told Nelson, “It is scary … for people to be calling you a ‘bitch’ or a ‘whore,’ and to come after you on Twitter in a really personal way.”

3. When asked what their newsrooms did to help support them in the face of online harassment, many voiced dissatisfaction.

One journalist summed it up to Nelson in one word, three times: “Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.”

Some said the social media policies of their news organizations did not include protections or resources for journalists facing either acute or recurring online harassment.

Jessie Shi, the former social media editor for the San Antonio Express-News, told Nelson, “Reporters are usually on their own when it comes to trolls.”

“The response to online harassment can genuinely be worse than the harassment itself,” Jamie Landers, a former health disparity reporter with Arizona PBS, and a former breaking news reporter with the Arizona Republic, told Nelson.

“You’re constantly told to ‘tough it out,’ which is possibly the most immature piece of advice I’ve heard in my life,” Paradkar told him. “Because not only does it mean that you are not allowed to acknowledge the fear and pain, possibly trauma, depending on the level of abuse, but it also puts in place the ability for someone to do it again to somebody else.”

“This lack of interest in addressing the threats, harassment, and abuse journalists face — particularly women journalists and journalists of color — left some of the journalists I spoke with feeling as though their editors were implicitly suggesting that online abuse was just an inevitable part of working in journalism in an era of social media,” Nelson writes.

4. Interviewees told Nelson their newsroom policies focused on advising journalists how they should or should not use social media instead of telling them what they should do when they’re harassed online.

“It’s pretty wild that there’s this double-edged sword where you’re not sure if you’re going to be punished for using social media, and yet you need to use social media in order to represent the outlet and the brand,” said Gabe Schneider, the editor of The Objective, told Nelson.

Carla Murphy, a former editor for The View from Somewhere podcast and board member of the Journalism & Women Symposium, said, “I think a lot of journalists feel like they’re out there on their own, and they are. They get hung out to dry. But then which journalists get hung out to dry? Some get hung out to dry more than others. Women, right? Black women. Black men. Some people get second and third chances. The penalties aren’t applied equally.”

“The response to online harassment can genuinely be worse than the harassment itself.”

Jamie Landers, a former health disparity reporter with Arizona PBS, and a former breaking news reporter with the Arizona Republic

Advice for news managers

“If I were to take this study to a newsroom, I would say, ‘Look, you’re not just looking at a crisis when it comes to your relationship with your audiences, but you’re looking at a labor crisis, because your journalists feel like they are being really left out in the cold by the policies,” Nelson tells The Journalist’s Resource. “It’s very clear from these interviews that [the lack of policies] is creating ill will between journalists and managers, because they feel like they’re being pushed to do something that carries a risk, but then they’re not given any protection from the organization when it comes to combating those.”

The Media Manipulation Casebook, a research platform on misinformation and disinformation at Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, which is also home to The Journalist’s Resource, offers several tips for newsrooms to support journalists targeted by online harassment:

• Provide every journalist with an annual check-up of their digital security, and prioritize those whose coverage puts them more at risk.
• Provide every journalist with a subscription to a password manager
• Have at least one person in the newsroom or on call who is a digital security specialist.
• Regularly communicate to staff that your newsroom cares about their well-being and demonstrate it by offering reporters an intake mechanism for sharing when they’re undergoing harassment.
• Have a chain of support ready to help.
• Validate reporters’ experiences and provide places to communicate about their well-being safely.
• Build email filters that scan for racist, sexist, and bigoted language.
• Monitor and report the journalists’ social media threats for them.

Research roundup

• “Occupational Hazards: Individual and Professional Factors of Why Journalists Become Victims of Online Hate Speech.” Magdalena Obermaier. Journalism Studies, January 2023.
• “Online Harassment and Hate Among Media Professionals: Reactions to One’s Own and Others’ Victimization.” Magdalena Celuch, Rita Latikka, Reetta Oksa and Atte Oksanen. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, January 2023.
• “You Have to Do That for Your Own Sanity”: Digital Disconnection as Journalists’ Coping and Preventive Strategy in Managing Work and Well-Being.” Maja Šimunjak. Digital Journalism, January 2023.
• “Dark Participation” Without Representation: A Structural Approach to Journalism’s Social Media Crisis.” Kaitlin C. Miller and Jacob L. Nelson. Social Media + Society, October 2022.
• “Tackling the Emotional Toll Together: How Journalists Address Harassment with Connective Practices.” Anu Kantola and Anu Harju. Journalism, December 2021.
• “Journalists on Instagram: Presenting Professional Identity and Role on Image-focused Social Media.” Diana Bossio. Journalism Practice, November 2021.
• “Hostility Toward the Press: A Synthesis of Terms, Research, and Future Directions in Examining Harassment of Journalists.” Kaitlin C. Miller. Digital Journalism, October 2021.
• “Not Their Fault, but Their Problem”: Organizational Responses to the Online Harassment of Journalists.” Avery E. Holton, Valérie Bélair-Gagnon, Diana Bossio and Logan Molyneux. Journalism Practice, July 2021.
• “A Conceptual Framework for Journalistic Identity on Social Media: How the Personal and Professional Contribute to Power and Profit.” Claudia Mellado and Alfred Hermida. Digital Journalism, May 2021.
• “Online Harassment and Its Implications for the Journalist–Audience Relationship.” Seth Lewis, Rodrigo Zamith and Mark Coddington. Digital Journalism, Septemeber 2020.
• “Dimensions of Social Media Logics: Mapping Forms of Journalistic Norms and Practices on Twitter and Instagram.” Alfred Hermida and Claudia Mellado. Digital Journalism, August 2020.
• “Attacks and Harassment: The Impact on Female Journalists and Their Reporting.” Michelle Ferrier, founder of TrollBusters. International Women’s Media Foundation, 2018.
• “Don’t Tweet This! How Journalists and Media Organizations Negotiate Tensions Emerging From the Implementation of Social Media Policy in Newsrooms.” Vittoria Sacco and Diana Bossio. Digital Journalism, March 2016.
• “Violence and Harassment Against Women in the News Media: A Global Picture.” Alana Barton and Hannah Storm. International Women’s Media Foundation, February 2014.

Resources for newsrooms and journalists

• “A Guide to Protecting Newsrooms and Journalists Against Online Violence.” International Women’s Media Foundation.
• “A Mental Health Guide for Journalists Facing Online Violence.” International Women’s Media Foundation.
• “Online Harassment Field Manual.” PEN America.
• Digital Safety Snacks. PEN America, the Online News Association and the International Women’s Media Foundation.
• Digital Security Resource. A collection of resources by ACOS Alliance.
• “Protect Your Staff from online Abuse with a Formal Policy and A Response Plan.” Naomi Ishisaka and Danny Gawlowski. Better News, January 2021.
• Coalition Against Online Violence.
• “Keeping Journalists Safe Online: A Guide for Newsrooms.” Reuters Institute and the University of Oxford.
• “Online Abuse: A Self-Defense Guide.” Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma.
• “How Newsrooms, Journalists, and Their Peers Can Combat Online Violence.” Nieman Reports.
• “Practical and Legal Tools to Protect the Safety of Journalists.” Thomson Reuters Foundation.
• “Resources for Protecting Against Online Abuse.” Committee to Protect Journalists.
• “‘Women journalists more vulnerable to online harassment’.” Rappler.com, December 2017.
• “Resources for Female-Identifying Journalists: Safety, Discrimination & Harassment.” Global Investigative Journalism Network.
• “Our Reporter’s Work on COVID-19 Has Saved Lives. She’s Getting Death Threats.” Matt DeRienzo. Center for Public Integrity, June 2021.
• From The Journalist’s Resource:
  • “13 Security Tips for Journalists Covering Hate Online.” April Glaser. May 2020.
  • “Study Shows Female Journalists Face ‘Rampant’ Online Harassment.” Denise-Marie Ordway. August 2018.
  • “Self-Care Tips for Journalists – Plus a List of Resources.” Naseem Miller. July 2021.

The post Newsrooms need to do more to protect journalists from online harassment appeared first on The Journalist's Resource.

About a decade ago, Dave Seglins covered the trial of a Canadian military commander who had turned into a serial killer. The trial was graphic, and it was not easy to sit through.

“A couple days after the sentencing, I had a total break, which I wouldn’t have used that word at the time,” recalled Seglins, an investigative reporter and well-being champion with CBC News in Toronto, during a one-hour virtual session about prioritizing mental health in newsrooms on Jan. 17. “I just thought I was dying, and I couldn’t get out of bed and I was having all of these responses that I did not understand.”

A family doctor referred him to a trauma specialist who told him that what he was experiencing was a normal reaction to what he had witnessed during the trial. He was having a post-traumatic stress response.

“We are incredibly good in this business to prioritize the story and the content and the product,” said Seglins, who recently co-authored a study on the mental health and well-being of Canadian media workers. “What we’re not great at is managing the people and making it okay for people to be imperfect and to be affected by the work.”

Along with Seglins, the webinar included Scott Blanchard, director of journalism at public media station WITF in Harrisburg, Pa., a board member for the Trust for Trauma Journalism; Sewell Chan, editor-in-chief of the Texas Tribune, who led his newsroom in the coverage of the 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde; and Dr. Elana Newman, research director of the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma and McFarlin Professor of Psychology at the University of Tulsa. I moderated the session, which was hosted by The Journalist’s Resource.

Below is the recording of the session and you can read the transcript here. I’ve also highlighted five of my favorite takeaways from the discussion and listed several resources, including two books mentioned by the panelists.

1. Learn about basic trauma terminology.

Trauma, stress and burnout are not the same and should not be treated the same.

Stress is not being able to meet the demands at that time, Newman explained. “We all have stress and stress can make traumatic stress worse. And in fact, I have research with my students that I have discovered that it’s trauma plus a toxic organizational environment for journalists that’s the lethal combination. And that’s why we can’t always reduce the exposure, but we can make the organization safer,” she said.

Trauma is a complex and ambiguous noun and can refer to a physical wound or psychologic injury, according to The Dart Center Style Guide for Trauma-Informed Journalism. “It can refer to a one-time experience or aftermath of overwhelming fear, or the cumulative, complex impact of ongoing abuse and threat, or both,” according to the guide.

Meanwhile, burnout is separate from trauma, Newman said. “It can be related, but burnout is when you have just too much to do and it overwhelms your resources and it usually leads to exhaustion, cynicism,” she said.

There’s also vicarious trauma, which refers to psychological changes resulting from cumulative, empathetic engagement with trauma survivors in a professional context, according to Dart’s style guide. It refers to a changed worldview. “And it’s actually technically refers to both positive and negative ways that your worldview may be changed,” Newman said. “You may see danger everywhere. You may see the world as only a terrible place.

“The world is a dangerous place, but there’s also safety in it. There’s also beauty in it, and trying to keep that balance is important,” she said.

2. Become a champion for mental health in your newsroom.

In Seglins’ case, he took an online course through Harvard Medical School, to learn about the concepts of global mental health and trauma, and the brain science of stress and trauma. He was a fellow of Dart Center’s 2022 Ochberg Fellowship, a program that deepens journalists’ reporting of violence and tragedy.

Holding a town hall meeting was one of the first things Seglins did at CBC News in his role as well-being champion.

He and his colleagues started with a simple question: What can we do to build a culture of well-being around here? They recorded ideas, sent out short survey to their colleagues, published the results internally and prompted a company-wide discussion.

 “If you’re a reporter in the newsroom, own it. Just do it,” Seglins said. “Say, ‘Hey, let’s get together. Let’s have an event.’ We all know how to run a Zoom call now. Doesn’t take much.”

3. Develop protocols for covering traumatic events and hold training sessions.

Blanchard helped create a committee among several newsrooms on the East Coast and together, they developed a guide on how a trauma-awareness and peer-support program in a newsroom would operate.

They followed that with a day-long training for Central Pennsylvania newsrooms with experts, including Newman and a psychologist with a local healthcare system. That training included role-playing for peer support. They held another training, led by the Dart Center, for the broader East Coast newsroom cohort.

“We can change newsroom by newsroom, person by person. We can change. We can make the change happen,” Blanchard said.

Dart Center provides a range of training sessions to news organization and journalism-related nonprofits around the world.

4. Have a specific plan for covering mass tragedies.

“We should recognize and our default should be that covering a massively traumatic event demands that we think about the processing of it and the aftermath of it, and offer people the help, rather than waiting for them to come forward and say that they need it,” said Chan.

At Texas Tribune, following the Uvalde mass shooting, Chan reached out to the Dart Center and Trust for Trauma Journalism for guidance.

The news managers insisted that reporters who had been on the ground for a certain number of days had to leave even if they wanted to stay on this story. The newsroom held sessions for the entire staff to talk about processing what they had just seen and observed. And they brought in a counselor to help smaller set of journalists who were dealing specifically with very graphic material footage that had emerged from the tragedy.

“We can’t say anymore, ‘Well, these are exceptions.’ You have to actually build into your newsroom protocols [with the thought] that something traumatic is probably going to happen,” said Chan, whether it’s a natural or human-caused tragedy.

5. Put people first.

“We do need to be results-oriented as organizations, but we also need to be people-centered,” said Chan. “There’s a human capital crisis in much of journalism. If we’re losing people because we have not supported them, really shame on us, because that’s not only a sign of institutional failure, but also it’s not efficient.”

He hoped that people on the finance side of news operations hear the message and realize that there’s a cost associated with losing and replacing journalists.

“It’s much better to help your existing people to succeed than see a portion of them leave out of frustration or burnout,” said Chan. “There’s this opportunity cost. It doesn’t seem like a cost unless you think about all the other things that you now have to do to make up for that lost work or that lost talent. And that’s really a tragedy.”

Answers to some of the audience questions post-panel

Following the panel, Blanchard volunteered to answer some of the audience questions not addressed during the discussion because we ran out of time. We’ve included the questions and Blanchard’s responses below.

Q: I have conducted research among South African editors on how they are handling journalism related trauma in the newsroom. Firstly, many did not feel equipped to provide trauma support so I agreed with you, we need additional trauma support through in-house psychologists. However, the media economy is under severe strain. There is no money within media organisations. Budgets are tight. How does the panel propose for newsrooms that don’t have the resources that the BBCs and New York Times of this world?

Blanchard: Look for free training opportunities through the Dart Center or other organizations working in this space. Try to connect with a local clinician who understands, respects and/or is a ‘fan’ of journalism, to see if they can provide help with training or resources.

In the U.S. many communities have courses in Mental Health First Aid, which can be free and often don’t cost a lot, and can be helpful for newsroom editors or staff. If you can get a core of people in your newsroom (even just 2 or 3) who can get some training, you may be able to then train others in the newsroom.

Q: This is amazing! Thank you all for your work and leadership in this field. Curious to hear your thoughts on how we can extend these conversations with the people we cover? I recently worked on a project about military sexual violence, and had many conversations with some of the survivors about their experiences with journalists, and how we can better empower them to set boundaries or to care for themselves. Any thoughts on this?

Blanchard: One thing we did not do, but should have, with the program we put together at the York Daily Record, was bring in trauma survivors — including those who have been the subject of news coverage — to talk with staff so that we could more deeply understand the effect trauma has in peoples’ lives and do journalism that is smarter and more respectful of what survivors are going through. I also admit I never thought of it the way you presented it — how could a trauma survivor help others set boundaries/care for themselves? That’s really interesting.   

Q: I’ve been working on an important but difficult, traumatic story for the last year — since January 2022 — on human trafficking in our community. The personal safety of sources and myself have been a concern all along, The newsroom has been wonderful giving me time to investigate — and to walk away from the story and cover other things for my sanity. The time has come to write the first part of the story and I feel paralyzed, hesitating to immerse myself in this person’s trauma long-enough to write it. Do you have any advice for a journalist in the thick of it needing to produce the final product?

Blanchard: In working with both journalists and clinicians in the trauma-journalism space, I hear a common thread that once a person trusts you with their story, you can return that trust by telling their story authentically, truthfully, with humanity … in hopes that through your work, the survivor and their story will be understood. I don’t know if this helps at all, but I think by investing your time and heart in receiving this person’s story and then telling it to a wider world, you are doing something honorable.  

Q: Our newsroom is intentional in addressing trauma from journalism and general mental health, which is what most mental health stories and tipsheets deal with. How can managers support staffers who come to the job with generational trauma, trauma from racism, trauma from their everyday lives or are neurodiverse?

Blanchard: If you can establish a newsroom culture where trauma and mental health conversations are normal and accepted as a sign of a strong newsroom, and not something viewed as unusual or exceptional or to be avoided, I think you open the door for staffers and managers to discuss whatever individuals bring to the job. 

Q: “Any culture change is hard.” Very true. How would y’all suggest or have experience challenging ‘shame’ when it comes to needing to have mental health conversations in a newsroom? For young journalists in particular for whom it’s just occurring that they may be having trouble.

Blanchard: See if you can figure out ways to normalize conversations around trauma and mental health in the newsroom. You can do it in part by linking it to best practices as a journalist: The more you understand about these issues, the stronger your reporting and writing will be. If people feel comfortable in that space, they may feel more comfortable talking about issues they may be having. 

Q: What are some ways a small short-staffed newsroom start to address burnout?

Blanchard: If you’re sensing that there is staff-wide burnout, or that there could be, you could consider talking to staff about what’s going on and seeing if there are problem-solving opportunities. Just acknowledging it can be a big deal — I have heard a lot of people say that the thing that grinds on them the most is that leadership is clueless as to what is going on. I can speak from experience when I say that even well-intentioned managers will miss things or not be as aware/responsive as they should be. You may also find that some staffers just need to be heard and supported regarding frustrations they’re having, and simply having a conversation can be a helpful start to meeting challenges in the newsroom.     

Q: As a professor who teaches university students hoping to go into journalism, what would be the most important wisdom you would impart to them? What should they do to prepare?

Blanchard: As a manager who has hired his share of young reporters, I would say that they should understand that as journalists, they may or will be involved in or exposed to stories of trauma. They should learn as much as they can about trauma awareness, self-care and peer support. When they interview for jobs, they should ask newsrooms what is in place — infrastructure, training, commitment etc. — with regard to those issues.

Additional resources:

• The Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma has a wide range of resources for journalists and news managers, including a style guide on trauma-informed reporting.
• Here’s the Taking Care Report, resulting from a survey of 1,200 Canadian media workers.
• The panelists mentioned two books about journalism and trauma. One was “The Bang-Bang Club: Snapshots from a Hidden War” and the other was “Journalists Under Fire: The Psychological Hazards of Covering War.”
• Check out this resource list on self-care and coping with trauma for journalists.
• On The Journalist’s Resource website, you can find several articles on journalism and trauma:
  • Trauma-informed journalism: What it is, why it’s important and tips for practicing it.
  • Journalists are under stress. What’s the solution?
  • Self-care tips for journalists – plus a list of resources.

The post Prioritizing mental health in the newsroom: 5 tips to get you started appeared first on The Journalist's Resource.

Recent mass shootings, including one in which 19 elementary school children were killed in Uvalde, Texas, have pushed some journalists to suggest news outlets should publish, or consider publishing, graphic images from those shootings to show the unvarnished reality of what fired bullets do to human bodies.

The media debate that took off in late May was notable for its emotion and urgency, particularly in the language from journalists who have extensively covered gun violence.

A few examples:

• David Boardman, dean of the Klein College of Media and Communication at Temple University and former executive editor of the Seattle Times, told Philadelphia Magazine on May 26 that “we, as journalists, have to face up to the fact that our textual description of this sort of heinous crime, and pictures of these innocent young children, in their angelic form, isn’t moving citizenry and isn’t moving, certainly, the political machine the way it needs to be moved.”

• Sewell Chan, editor in chief of the Texas Tribune, told Vanity Fair, also on May 26, that he is “sympathetic to those who argue that we need to be confronted with the raw images of lives shattered by gun violence,” but “also concerned that could come across as exploitative or unethical or unseemly.”

• CNN host Jake Tapper on May 25, the day after the killings in Uvalde, which also left two teachers dead, said this: “There are images of these shootings that law enforcement — and, frankly, we in the news media — that we don’t share with you because they’re so horrific. They’re so awful. But maybe we should. Maybe the shock to the system would prompt our leaders to figure out how to make sure society can stop these troubled men, and it’s almost always men, from obtaining these weapons used to slaughter our children.”

• John Temple, who as editor of the defunct Rocky Mountain News in Denver published a photo of a dead student following the Columbine High School mass shooting in 1999, also offered a note of pause, writing in The Atlantic on June 6: “I worry that making public photos of obliterated children will motivate others to see how much damage they can cause, will normalize unthinkable violence, and will be used in a hateful way, against the families of the dead or as threats to others. Rather, I would look for photographs that won’t make people turn away, that will hold their gaze.”

President Joe Biden signed legislation on June 25 that expands criminal and mental health background checks for some people who want to buy a gun, and uses grant funding to incentivize states to enact red flag laws, among other measures. It’s the most extensive federal gun-related legislation in decades.

Still, the legislation falls short of more sweeping measures Democrats have pushed in the past. While the two major parties found slivers of common ground, when it comes to addressing gun violence the political climate remains divisive.

Likewise, the media debate about whether to publish graphic images is not over.

To publish or not to publish?

Newsroom debates over the appropriateness and consequences of publishing graphic images are not new. But following Uvalde, the tenor seems to have reached a pitch not necessarily unheard of, but perhaps more public and coming from more influential journalists than ever before.

Relatedly, there is the question of whether to show images that depict the reality of everyday gun violence in many American communities. In February, the American Academy of Pediatrics reported firearm injuries have surpassed car crashes as the leading cause of death for people 19 and younger in the U.S.

Beneath this difficult debate about journalism ethics, editorial control and dignity for the dead lies a serious consideration awaiting some newsroom in the U.S. the next time a mass shooting occurs:

To publish or not to publish graphic images?

In conversations over the past two weeks, The Journalist’s Resource gathered insights from a dozen experts to help answer that question.

And the answer is that there is no clear answer. But many other questions emerged for newsroom leaders to consider before publishing or broadcasting graphic images from a shooting. The outcome will hinge on context: what the image or images depict and the connections the news outlet has with local communities, to name two factors.   

The experts we talked with include a lawyer for The New York Times, a former longtime editor of a community newspaper in Minnesota and several academic media scholars, some of whom are former journalists. Many have published peer-reviewed research on how news outlets use images and how the public interprets them, with some of that research highlighted below.

Access to graphic images — whether a photojournalist would be able to take graphic images from a mass shooting — is something that came up during our conversations. As Temple, the former Rocky Mountain News editor, put it in The Atlantic, “editors can’t publish photos they don’t have.”

Several people we spoke with echoed that sentiment.

“In general, it’s highly unlikely as a journalist that you’re going to really get graphic, graphic footage — I mean like dead bodies,” says Karen McIntyre, a former local news reporter in northern California who is now an associate professor of multimedia journalism at Virginia Commonwealth University. “It’s just highly unlikely that you would be there before that would be all caution-taped off.”

On the other hand, McIntyre and others acknowledged it is plausible to imagine a scenario in which journalists covering a public event, such as a protest, parade or school board meeting, suddenly find themselves covering a mass shooting and serving as history’s first responders.

If the question does arise for a newsroom in the weeks, months or years ahead, the following questions and thoughts can help editors arrive at an answer that fits their organization’s standards and works for the communities they serve.

Everyone we asked agreed newsrooms should have these conversations and make a plan for how to handle graphic images before facing the choice of whether to publish.

Can we legally publish graphic images?

If your news outlet owns the image rights — if, for example, a staff photographer or freelancer takes the pictures or video — or obtains an image or video following regular journalistic standards, then yes.

“Typically, in the United States, there isn’t an issue,” says Al-Amyn Sumar, counsel at The New York Times Company and an adjunct professor at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. “If you were to get an invasion of privacy claim, you would say that the photograph is newsworthy, which is usually a total defense. The kinds of photos we’re talking about are taken in public places where the law tends to say there was no kind of expectation of privacy.”

The question at issue is almost certainly ethical rather than legal, Sumar says.

Are we asking the right fundamental question?

The framework for our interviews with experts assumed newsrooms would want to consider a range of potential consequences before showing graphic images.

Most experts we spoke with implicitly accepted this framework. They dove into a variety of dilemmas, including concerns about glorifying mass shooters.

“We know that these images act as a contagion for them to be outdone,” says Nicole Dahmen, an associate professor of journalism at the University of Oregon. “Somebody out there wants to outdo them and that’s a real risk of publishing these photos.”

However, one expert offers a different perspective: Barbie Zelizer, director of the Center for Media at Risk at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication.

Zelizer, who was a Reuters wire reporter in the Middle East early in her career, pinpoints an essential question: Is the event newsworthy?

“The point that needs to be made, and that should be made, and that has not yet been made, is the idea that the appropriateness of images is misplaced,” she says. “We don’t talk about the appropriateness of news. My argument has always been if we make an assumption about when something is newsworthy in terms of the words it uses, it should be the same in terms of the pictures it shows.”

In short, if an event is newsworthy enough to cover in text, it is newsworthy enough to cover in images, even if those images are more graphic than news audiences are used to seeing. Zelizer calls herself “a minority voice in this,” but says that while considerations about consequences are not without value, consequences are essentially unknowable.

“In a funny way, the tabloids have it right,” she says, “in the sense that the tabloids don’t censor themselves, they don’t harness what their representations are going to look like in accordance with questions of appropriateness or privacy.”

If you agree with Zelizer, the answer as to whether to publish becomes clearer. The more productive question, she says, centers on how images are displayed in print and online, which we discuss later on.  

What are your motivations?

By far the most common point the experts made was that a newsroom should honestly examine their motivations for wanting to publish photographs or video of dead, dying or seriously wounded shooting victims.

If the motivation is to drive website clicks or increase newspaper subscriptions, those are flat out not good reasons to publish graphic images, and could backfire.

But most news outlets will likely start from a place rooted in altruism. Some of the media debate so far has resonated as journalists, fed up with covering mass shootings, wanting politicians to “do something” about gun violence in the U.S. To “shock” the system, as Tapper said.

Yet an image that seems shocking inside a newsroom may not have a shocking effect once published, according to several people we spoke with.

“There’s a whole slew of studies on cognitive dissonance theory,” says Samuel Robert Lichter, professor of communication and director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University. “When confronted with a new piece of evidence that goes against what you believe, instead of changing your opinion, you tend to try one of many different strategies to avoid it.”

Jim Pumarlo, who as editor of the Red Wing Republican Eagle covered communities southeast of the Twin Cities from 1982 to 2003, says “there’s so many other ways that you can deliver the story, in word and in photos without going to that final, real graphic one.”

A more forceful case for publication could be made if a news outlet believes their role is simply to preserve history, others say.

“That’s probably the most compelling reason for publication of these kinds of images, is that they should be lodged in the evidentiary record,” says Jessica Auchter, research chair in visual culture in international studies at Laval University in Quebec City and author of the 2021 book Global Corpse Politics: The Obscenity Taboo. “The historical record is composed of both text and images and there is something of value added to the historical record to having this in image form, in addition to reporting on it in text.”

In that case, it doesn’t matter whether an image fails to affect policy — an unknowable outcome in the first place. Editorial leaders at The New York Times, while discussing whether to publish pictures showing the human consequences of the war in Ukraine, factored their role as purveyors of the historical record into their decision to publish.

“There was a photographer, Lynsey Addario, who had taken some particularly graphic images and we decided to publish them, of victims of the war, including dead bodies,” Sumar says. “And the point was made that publishing these kinds of photos can be important, because they’re evidence of potential war crimes.”

A note to national news outlets considering publishing graphic images from a small town: Think locally. 

The descent of “newspapers in glitzy markets like New York, Washington, Los Angeles and San Antonio” is something that Craig Garnett, editor and publisher of the Uvalde Leader-News, recently wrote about with palpable frustration. 

“In the blink of an eye, a force of state, national and world media launched an invasion of our city to rival the armed assault on a small nation,” Garnett writes. “Our grocery stores filled with unrecognizable faces and languages, giant trucks sprouted with satellite dishes and antennas squeezed into our back streets and news reporters and cameramen began probing our populace with hundreds of microphones and cameras.”

Pumarlo, the former Republican Eagle editor, offers this advice for a national outlet considering publishing graphic images from a shooting in a small town: 

“Connect with some locals and get a feel. At least reach out and give the rationale,” he says, “show that they do have some feelings for the impact of what has happened on the local community. And that they’re not just sitting in New York or Los Angeles or Washington, D.C. or wherever, and making these decisions without any feeling of what’s the impact on the town.” 

Do you have consent?

Most experts we spoke with agree it is essential for journalists to make their best effort to get consent of the victim in a photo or their surviving family.

This includes talking with people likely to be directly affected about the range of things that could happen once a graphic image of their slain relative is out there.

“It would really, I think, be the responsible, ethical thing for journalists to explain that these images will show up on 4chan,” says Jennifer Midberry, an assistant professor of journalism at Lehigh University who researches the ethics of photographing marginalized populations and worked as a visual journalist for the Associated Press, The Philadelphia Daily News and other news organizations from 1999 to 2005. “There’s going to be a lot of hurtful memes, it’s going to be nasty. It could also, though, lead to gun control laws that would make the family feel like at least their child didn’t die in vain. You have to really talk about the spectrum of things to expect.”

Another familiar refrain from the people we spoke with: Remove the breaking news pressure. The decision whether to publish a graphic photo doesn’t need to be made at the exact moment families are dealing with the unexpected, violent loss of a loved one.

“In a breaking news context, I don’t know that the images of deceased people on the ground is something that should be rushed to be published,” says Kaitlin Miller, an assistant professor in the College of Communication & Information Sciences at The University of Alabama.

What is the race or ethnicity of the victims in images?

It’s not a hard and fast rule and it’s not exclusive to U.S.-based media, but news outlets are sometimes more apt to publish graphic images from conflicts and tragedies that happen far away from their coverage areas.

“The problematic side of this tendency is that the media treats suffering bodies unequally depending on their cultural and geographical closeness,” Jenni Mäenpää, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki who has studied how news outlets make decisions about images, explains by email.

The more anonymous an image is — the harder it is to identify the people in them — the more graphic it will tend to be, says Zelizer, who is also co-editor of Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism, a peer-reviewed journal, and wrote the 2010 book About to Die: How News Images Move the Public.

Zelizer’s point is evident in the 2015 image of Aylan Kurdi, a drowned Syrian boy photojournalist Nilüfer Demir photographed lying face down on an Aegean beach in southwest Turkey.

The consideration is whether your news outlet is only showing people from certain backgrounds in certain situations — as crime victims, for example. Or, does your outlet successfully represent a range of people across a breadth of human experiences?  

“There has been some discussion in the past about whether our standards have been applied consistently,” says Sumar, the Times lawyer. “In my experience, we try very hard to apply them consistently and we have, in the past, published photos of victims of all races. But that’s something that you have to be attentive to.”

How will we display the image?

There is no way to gauge what will happen to an image after it is published — the extent to which it will be misused and manipulated, or whether it will spur policy change. But news outlets should strive to provide as much context about the image as possible.

Here are some ideas from Dahmen, the University of Oregon professor:

• Use a single, powerful photo rather than multiple photos.
• Before showing the image, warn viewers it will be difficult to see.
• If printing the image, remove any advertisements from the page.
• If showing the image on television, allow it to speak for itself on screen for a period of time without distracting chyrons or in split screens with hosts or guests.
• If publishing digitally, put the image on a single page that can only be accessed from a link that clearly identifies the news outlet.
• Do not send the image via the news organization’s official social media channels.

Again, these are ideas from one person who has spent her career thinking deeply about the shortcomings and potential of journalism. E. Alison Holman, a professor of nursing at the University of California Irvine who has studied how viewers respond physically and mentally to graphic news images, agrees that trigger warnings are essential.

Holman adds that “there’s so much variation in how people respond to these things. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to any of this.”

Auchter, the Laval University research chair, is less certain about trigger warnings. She suggests that people should feel disrupted. That there is an argument to be made in favor of an average person who is enjoying their morning coffee suddenly having to confront a difficult image conveying a tragic truth — without the ability to avoid it.

“We often assume that trigger warnings are objectively neutral, it’s just something you have to click through to get to it,” Auchter says, “but we forget they are actually shaping the story by telling us how we should respond and how to interpret these images, as much as they are just providing that barrier before we get to the image.”

Lichter, the George Mason University professor, offers that the viral nature of social media could be a force for positive change, by bringing attention to the issue of gun violence to a wider audience than was possible before computers and smartphones.

And not everyone is convinced that a single image is the right call.

“The professional gravitation toward that iconic image, is that really what we need?” asks Zelizer. “Or do we need more images? I think we need more images, because I think more images do more for us understanding what’s going on than one iconic image.”

Dahmen also advises against publishing crime scene photos obtained from law enforcement, assuming the police agency would also release the photos. Law enforcement photos leaked to a journalist would also give Dahmen pause because, she says, “being the one who had the crime scene photos, being the one who got to publish them, it’s all going to drive likes, subscriptions and the financial business model of journalism — it’s not serving the public interest for the journalists to reprint those.”

Dahmen equates the scenario to a news outlet publishing a terrorist manifesto. Others we spoke with disagreed that law enforcement crime scene photos should be off limits.

Miller, the University of Alabama professor, agrees with Dahmen’s recommendations. She adds that an image “needs to be surrounded by a greater context, solution and an understanding of why these things are happening and where we need to move forward.”

Are you ready and able to explore solutions to gun violence?

Lauren Kogen, an assistant professor at the Klein College of Media and Communication at Temple University, sums up the solutions-oriented sentiment we heard over and over in our conversations:

“The ethical thing to do, as a news outlet, is to make darn sure that you’re providing [audiences] with the information that they would need as democratic voting citizens to go out there and create change,” she says, “to leave your news audience feeling powerless, to feel like there aren’t any solutions, then you are getting into the realm of being sensationalist.”

It’s not just a matter of ethics. Research shows audiences want solutions journalism, says McIntyre, the Virginia Commonwealth professor.

Solutions-oriented stories about policies that have worked in the real world to reduce gun violence — or that focus on community groups working to reduce firearm deaths, or explore systemic breakdowns that allow gun violence to perpetuate — are essential but often lacking, according to several people we spoke with.

“In the medical community, gun violence is considered a public health issue,” says Midberry, the Lehigh University professor. “But by and large, in U.S. news media it’s not discussed as a public health issue. It’s largely discussed as criminal justice. What we have seen from preliminary research we’ve done, which is aligned with previous research, is that there’s not as much reporting on potential solutions to these problems, compared to the volume of the coverage of the crime itself.”

Are you taking care of your journalists?

In the past, when the tough-it-out mentality reigned supreme in most news organizations, reporters often suffered in silence after covering difficult stories or witnessing traumatic events. But today, as journalists can connect in more ways than ever and more reporters are openly sharing their own experiences with trauma, discussions about secondary trauma and self-care have become less taboo.

Holman offers several pieces of advice drawn from her experience teaching nurses. These tips dovetail with research-based self-care tips we have previously compiled.  

• Organizations need to give time and resources to help reporters process their own trauma.
• Journalists need to schedule breaks into their workdays and also make time for rest and relaxation.
• Crucially, reporters need to remember why they love gathering the news.

“If you feel like what you’re doing has purpose, has meaning — not just for you, but for other people — and you’re making a contribution, that’s going to be good for your mental health, ultimately,” says Holman. “That’s something I think is really important to keep in mind — to remember that you are doing this for a reason.”

What the research says

The Power of Images? Visual Journalists’ Assessment of the Impact of Imagery
Nicole Smith Dahmen, Kaitlin Miller and Brent Walth. Visual Communication Quarterly, March 2021.

In the authors’ words: “Study findings show that most participants believe images can be agents for change, but they have not necessarily seen higher-level impacts. A key finding reveals that participants believe graphic images are not inherently more powerful vehicles for journalistic impact than less graphic images.”

Distributing Ethics: Filtering Images of Death at Three News Photo Desks
Jenni Mäenpää. Journalism, February 2021.

In the author’s words: “If death is made invisible or aestheticized in media imagery, the media fails to show the world as it is. This may shape the societal understanding of violent death in a way that people do not feel an urgent need for action, for instance, in cases of injustice.”

Compassionate Horror or Compassion Fatigue? Responses to Human-Cost-of-War Photographs
Jennifer Midberry. International Journal of Communication, 2020.

In the author’s words: “More specifically, this study suggests that reaction-to-loss is a particularly useful type of human-cost-of-war visual frame because it taps into media consumers’ emotions without causing as much distress as graphic violence. Another implication is that feelings of helplessness appear to mitigate people’s desire to engage with imagery of war.”

Media Exposure to Collective Trauma, Mental Health, and Functioning: Does It Matter What You See?
E. Alison Holman, Dana Rose Garfin, Pauline Lubens and Roxane Cohen Silver. Clinical Psychology Science, October 2019.

In the authors’ words: “Using data from a representative national sample, we demonstrated that both the quantity and the visually graphic nature of media exposure to a community trauma were independently associated with subsequent mental health and functional impairment.”

Solutions Journalism: The Effects of Including Solution Information in News Stories about Social Problems
Karen McIntyre. Journalism Practice, August 2019.

In the author’s words: “For journalists, these findings indicate that individuals will like stories more (feel less negative and have more favorable attitudes) if reporters include discussion of an effective solution to the problem.”

“This is Still their Lives”: Photojournalists’ Ethical Approach to Capturing and Publishing Graphic or Shocking Images
Kaitlin Miller and Nicole Dahmen. Journal of Media Ethics, February 2020.

In the authors’ words: “This research uses in-depth interviews with photojournalists to explore the decision-making process and ethical considerations involved in capturing and publishing such images. Research found participants justify taking and publishing graphic images as a way to empower subjects, while also informing audiences.”

Visually Reporting Mass Shootings: U.S. Newspaper Photographic Coverage of Three Mass School Shootings
Nicole Smith Dahmen. American Behavioral Scientist, February 2018.

In the author’s words: “Given contagion effects, this study finding raises serious concerns about current practices in news media publication of perpetrator photos. Although the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics encourages news media members to seek truth and report it, the code also emphasizes moral imperatives to ‘balance the public’s need for information against potential harms’ and ‘avoid pandering to lurid curiosity.’”

News You Can Use or News That Moves?
Lauren Kogen. Journalism Practice, November 2017.

In the author’s words: “The literature reviewed here illustrates that eschewing solutions-oriented information — defined as information related to cause, context, solutions, or general steps that could be taken to address social ills — can have the effect of disengaging audiences, creating compassion fatigue, and even stirring up resentment for a population that seems to keep finding itself on the edge of disaster.”

Iconic Photographs and the Ebb and Flow of Empathic Response to Humanitarian Disasters
Paul Slovic, Daniel Västfjäll, Arvid Erlandsson, and Robin Gregory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, January 2017.

In the authors’ words: “The iconic image of a young Syrian child, lying face-down on a beach, woke the world for a brief time, bringing much-needed attention to the war and the plight of its many victims. But this empathic response was short-lived.”

Caution — Graphic Images: The Politics of Obscene Dead Bodies
Jessica Auchter. Critical Studies on Security, June 2016.

In the author’s words: “Perhaps not pre-framing the encounter with the image would leave room for us to not be disturbed by the image, so that we can question our lack of disturbance, rather than feel self-righteous at our pre-formed disturbance that seems to linger only as long as the exposure to the image itself.”

Contagion in Mass Killings and School Shootings
Sherry Towers, et. al. PLOS ONE, July 2015.

In the authors’ words: “We find significant evidence that mass killings involving firearms are incented by similar events in the immediate past … We find that state prevalence of firearm ownership is significantly associated with the state incidence of mass killings with firearms, school shootings and mass shootings.”

Source list

Jessica Auchter, research chair in visual culture in international studies at Laval University in Quebec.

Nicole Dahmen, associate professor of journalism at the University of Oregon.

E. Alison Holman, professor of nursing at the University of California, Irvine.

Lauren Kogen, assistant professor at the Klein College of Media and Communication at Temple University.

Samuel Robert Lichter, professor of communication and director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University.

Jenni Mäenpää, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki.

Karen McIntyre, associate professor of multimedia journalism at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Jennifer Midberry, assistant professor of journalism at Lehigh University.

Kaitlin Miller, assistant professor in the College of Communication & Information Sciences at The University of Alabama.

Jim Pumarlo, newsroom trainer and editor of the Red Wing Republican Eagle from 1982 to 2003.

Al-Amyn Sumar, counsel at The New York Times Company and adjunct professor at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism.

Barbie Zelizer, director of the Center for Media at Risk at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication and a spring 2004 fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center, home of The Journalist’s Resource.

Learn more about trauma-informed reporting, research-based tips for journalists under stress, and 7 things journalists writing about guns should know.

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You may have heard the term “trauma-informed” in the context of health care, education and, more recently, journalism. In general, being trauma-informed means recognizing that trauma is common and people may have experienced serious trauma at some point in their lives.

Trauma-informed practices first took shape in medicine, after the medical community began to understand trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Other fields, such as education and law, have also been discussing trauma-informed practices.

“Trauma-informed journalism” is a relatively new term, even though covering trauma — ranging from storms and fires to sexual assaults and homicides to mass shootings and wars — has always been a part of journalists’ work.

Trauma-informed journalism can mean different things to different people, says Tamara Cherry, who worked as a crime reporter for nearly 15 years and is the author of upcoming book, “The Trauma Beat: Victims, Survivors & the Journalists Who Tell Their Stories,” slated for publication in Spring 2023.

“Trauma-informed journalism means understanding trauma, understanding what a trauma survivor is experiencing before you show up at their door, and understanding how your actions [as a journalist] will impact them after you pack up and leave,” says Cherry. “It’s also about creating the safe and predictable spaces. It’s about forgetting all the rules that we usually abide by when we’re interviewing school board officials and politicians and recognizing that when it comes to trauma, we need to be treating our interview subjects differently.”

Discussions about trauma-informed journalism are becoming more common due to a confluence of factors, including the COVID-19 pandemic and an increased hostility toward journalists. Together, these elements “have really made it clear that for journalists to do their jobs, they need to understand trauma more, so that they can tell better stories,” says Elana Newman, research director at the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma at Columbia University and McFarlin Professor of Psychology at the University of Tulsa.

This explainer and tip sheet on trauma-informed journalism is based on a review of several reliable sources on trauma-informed reporting and interviews with Newman of the Dart Center, and Cherry, founder of Pickup Communications PR agency, which provides services and tools for victims and survivors of traumatic events, the journalists who cover their stories and the criminal justice sector. We use The Dart Center Style Guide for Trauma-Informed Journalism as our source for defining trauma-related terminology.

“Trauma-informed journalism means understanding trauma, understanding what a trauma survivor is experiencing before you show up at their door, and understanding how your actions [as a journalist] will impact them after you pack up and leave.”

Tamara Cherry

1. Understand that trauma impacts the brain, including the memory and the ability to vocalize events as they happened.

Trauma results from an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that are physically or emotionally harmful or life threatening to an individual, and have “lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and mental, physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being,” according to the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Trauma can significantly affect a person’s perception and judgment. When faced with traumatic situations, the brain can go into survival mode and people can suddenly feel and behave differently from their normal selves. “That’s why eyewitnesses to traumatic events are notoriously unreliable. It’s also why even seasoned journalists at moments of high emotion can sometimes get it wrong,” according to the Dart Center’s “Trauma & Journalism: A Guide for Journalists, Editors & Managers.”

Trauma impacts the brain, memories and a person’s ability to vocalize their stories, says Cherry. Immediately after a tragedy, “we as journalists are asking people to tell their stories, when quite often they literally can’t,” she says. “So, we might think that we’re getting their story, but really, we’re getting whatever version of their story that their brain is coming up with in the moment.” 

But months down the road, when the sources have had time to heal a little and they’re not in fight or flight mode, we might actually get a more accurate story, Cherry says.

2. When getting informed consent to tell a trauma survivor’s story, err on the side of overexplaining.

In the context of trauma-informed reporting, informed consent means informing your sources about the nature of your story and having their consent to use their name and report on their experiences. While this is an important aspect of reporting many stories, trauma-informed reporting requires journalists to err on the side of overexplaining.  

“Don’t assume [sources] know what terms like ‘on the record’ or ‘on background’ mean. If that’s something you’re discussing, make sure to be extremely clear about how they will or won’t be identified,” writes journalist Alice Wilder in “Trauma Informed Reporting,” published for Transom, a nonprofit organization that brings new voices and ideas to public broadcasting via workshops and its website.

Give your sources the option to review their quotes or even to change their mind about being quoted before a story is published.

In writing her book, Cherry allowed the people she surveyed and interviewed — including more than 100 trauma survivors — to review the parts in which they were quoted or where their stories were used to ensure their continued consent and accuracy of the survivors’ accounts after her initial interview.

“I knew enough about trauma to really appreciate the weight of responsibility that I had to get this right and to not cause further harm,” she says. “I wanted them to be able to review their excerpt, but I didn’t want it to leave them in a dark place. I wanted it to leave them in a better place.”

“Don’t assume [sources] know what terms like ‘on the record’ or ‘on background’ mean. If that’s something you’re discussing, make sure to be extremely clear about how they will or won’t be identified.”

Alice Wilder

3. Give power to survivors during the interview and storytelling process.

Journalists are trained not to let sources pick which questions they want to answer, see the questions ahead of the interview or the story before it’s published. But when it comes to interviewing survivors of trauma, it’s OK to break those rules. Let your sources know that they have control of the situation.

“One simple way to raise their comfort level is by not pushing any questions that they are not prepared to answer,” writes Maggie Doheny in her article “Best Practices for Trauma-Informed Journalism,” published by the Reynolds Journalism Institute in December 2021.

The Dart Center’s guide, “Tragedies & Journalists,” has five tips for interviewing victims of trauma:

• Always treat victims with dignity and respect.
• Clearly identify yourself.
• Never say “I understand” or “I know how you feel.”
• Don’t overwhelm your source with the hardest questions first.
• If you receive a harsh reaction, leave a number or your card and explain that survivors can contact you if they want to talk later.

In the aftermath of a tragedy, prepare yourself for a wide range of responses from survivors. “Bear in mind the emotional impact of what has happened. Approach people with care, respect and kindness. Take a moment to introduce yourself, make eye contact and explain why you would like to talk to them. Take it slowly and don’t rush — however chaotic the circumstances. Don’t just stuff a microphone in someone’s face and expect an interview,” according to the Dart Center’s trauma and journalism guide.  

“Never ask that most overused and least effective of journalistic questions: ‘How do you feel?’ You may get tears in response, but you’re not likely to get a coherent, useful or meaningful answer. ‘How do you feel?’ is the one question survivors and victims consistently say they find the most distressing and inappropriate. Better options include: ‘How are you now?’ or ‘How did you experience that?’ or ‘What do you think about …?’” according to the Dart Center’s trauma and journalism guide.  

“Opt for open-ended questions and let subjects know that they’re not required to answer questions,” advises Wilder in her Transom article. “Instead of ‘Start at the beginning’ or other chronological based questions ask, ‘Where would you like to begin?’ or ‘Would you tell me what you are able to remember about your experience?'”

Wilder also advises against questioning why your source is emotional: “Even if the traumatic event was long ago, or if it doesn’t seem ‘that bad’ to you, their reaction should be respected,” she write. She also advises against saying “I understand what you’re going through” or “I know how you feel.”

Ask survivors what they would like to achieve in telling their story, advises Cherry.

And if you’re producing a podcast, video, or a printed story about a crime or tragedy that happened in the past, make sure the survivors are aware of it and are extended the opportunity to include their voice and be part of the process. “Because if they’re not, then they could really feel like we are talking about them behind their back,” says Cherry. “Or they can be surprised by it because they might not even know [the podcast/show/story] is happening.”

“‘How do you feel?’ is the one question survivors and victims consistently say they find the most distressing and inappropriate. Better options include: ‘How are you now?’ or ‘How did you experience that?’ or ‘What do you think about …?'”

Dart Center’s Trauma & Journalism: A Guide For Journalists, Editors & Managers

4. Have a plan for your interviews.

If you’re interviewing a trauma survivor, think about how you’re caring for them before, during and after the interview.

Let survivors pick the place of the interview, so they can feel safe. Tell survivors what questions you’re planning to ask, Cherry writes in her tip sheet. Ask if there are questions you should avoid.

During the interview, make sure survivors aren’t reliving the event. Find out if they want to take a break.

At then end of the interview, thank your sources and let them how their interview will be used and when to expect the story, advises journalist and author Jo Healey in “Reporting on Coronavirus: Handling Sensitive Remote Interviews,” published in 2020 on the Dart Center’s website.

5. Don’t forget about your own mental well-being.

Over the years, research has shown that journalists’ job can affect their mental health.

Depending on their beats or work locations, 4% to 59% of journalists have symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, according to the Dart Center.

Journalists should be aware of signs of trouble, which include inability to concentrate, feeling on edge or numb, or inability to feel compassion for sources, Newman explained in a 2021. Other signs include inability to sleep, feeling angry, or excessive use of alcohol.

Here are five self-care tips from the Dart Center’s 2009 guide, “Tragedies & Journalists“:

• Know your limits.
• Take breaks.
• Find a friend or colleague who is a good listener.
• Find a hobby, exercise, spend time with family and friends.
• Seek counseling if you feel overwhelmed.

Newman also shared self-care tips for journalists in 2021, which we summarized in “Self-care tips for journalists — plus a list of several resources.”

Recommended reading

• “The Dart Center Style Guide for Trauma-Informed Journalism,” Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma, June 2021.
• “Trauma & Journalism: A Guide for Journalists, Editors & Managers,” Dart Center, 2007.
• “Tragedies & Journalists,” a 40-page guide to help journalists, photojournalists and editors report on violence while protecting both victims and themselves. Dart Center, February 2009.
• “Trauma-Informed Journalism: Tips for Telling Important Stories, Better,” Tamara Cherry. April 2022.
• “Trauma Informed Reporting,” Alice Wilder. Transom.org, March 2021.
• “Trauma-Informed Interviewing: Techniques from a Clinician’s Toolkit,” Kate Porterfield. Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma, November 2019.
• “Best practices for trauma-informed journalism,” Maggie Doheny. Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri, December 2021.
• “A training session on trauma-informed reporting,” Nicole Froio. Hosted by The International journalists’ Network, December 2021.
• “Keep these seven lessons in mind when interviewing trauma survivors,” Lilly Dayton. Center for Health Journalism.
• “Trauma Reporting: A Journalist’s Guide to Covering Sensitive Stories,” Jo Healey, July 2019.
• “Weathering the Trauma Storms: Developing Interviewing Techniques,” by Gavin Rees. Dart Center, June 2007.
• “Covering Children and Trauma,” Ruth Teichroeb. Dart Center, February 2009.
• “Resources: Reporting on Refugees and Migration Through the Eyes of Young Children,” Dart Center, September 2019.
• “Reporting on Sexual Violence in Conflict,” Dart Centre Europe.
• “How working with sexual assault survivors changed the way I think about journalism,” Samantha Caiola. Center for Health Journalism.
• “Working with Traumatic Imagery,” Dart Center, August 2014.
• “Reporting on coronavirus: Handling sensitive remote interviews,” Jo Healey. Dart Center, April 2020.
• “Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others” by Laura van Dernoot Lipsky and Connie Burk, May 2009.
• “Journalism and Vicarious Trauma: A Guide for Journalists, Editors and News Organizations,” by Sam Dubberley and Michele Grant. First Draft, April 2017.
• “Resources for Journalists Coping With Trauma,” Dart Center, June 2021.
• “The Body Keeps the Score” by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, September 2015.
• Journalism and Trauma, a free course on how traumatic stress affects victims and how to interview trauma victims with compassion and respect, offered by Poynter.

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For decades now, researchers have documented the impact of journalists’ work on their mental health, even though there has been little discussion of it in newsrooms until recently. A string of mass shootings in recent years brought journalists’ mental health to the forefront. Then came 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic, a contentious presidential election and growing vitriol toward journalists. 

There may be a silver lining to the traumatic year that last year was. There are signs that the topic of journalists’ mental health is becoming less taboo. 

More reporters are speaking out about mental health. And more journalism conferences are dedicating panels to the topic. The Investigative Reporters & Editors’ annual conference, held virtually this year in June, for instance, had two panels focused on the issue: “Coping with Trauma” and “Conversation on Mental Health.” The organization has been highlighting the topic at previous conferences. And it dedicated the Q3 2020 edition of The Investigative Reporters & Editors Journal to journalists’ mental health. (The issue is free to IRE members.) 

“I’ve been doing this for 20 years and I think more and more people are studying [journalism and trauma] and more people are looking at it,” said Dr. Elana Newman, research director at the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma at Columbia University, during the “Coping with Trauma” panel discussion, which I moderated.

Paying attention to journalists’ mental health is important to prevent burnout and ensure the overall well-being of reporters and editors, who are doing more with fewer resources. 

“One of the reasons that I became a journalist ally and do this work is because you can effect change by stories you break at levels that can change the world,” said Newman, a clinical psychology professor at the University of Tulsa. “Not everybody listens, but it really is important work.” 

To be sure, journalists are resilient. But there’s a psychological toll to covering tragic events, whether it’s a global pandemic, local crime stories or the recent collapse of a condo building in South Florida. 

Historically, journalists haven’t talked much about the stress and trauma they’ve experienced as part of their job. There are several reasons for this, including the stigma attached to mental illness and the traditional tough-it-out newsroom culture. Some journalists may think that they’re alone in experiencing stress and don’t speak about it. And some may feel guilty about experiencing the trauma of stories they cover, because the event didn’t happen to them. 

“I think that, as journalists, your mission is to cover other people, and your focus is on other people,” Newman told the audience in the IRE discussion. “And so, it is sort of a professional obstacle to focus on yourself.”

But it is OK to not feel OK when covering traumatic events, because even though bearing witness to a tragedy is not the same as experiencing that tragedy, it can have an impact on journalists’ mental well-being. 

Newman said the concept of experiencing a traumatic event has been redefined to include first responders, including journalists.

“This isn’t a competition,” said Newman.

Depending on their beats or work locations, 4% to 59% of journalists have symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, according to the Dart Center, which advocates for better media coverage of trauma and researching the psychological impact of reporting on traumatic events.

Taking care of yourself

There are many things journalists can do — regardless of whether or not they receive appropriate support from newsroom leaders — to better care for themselves.

Self-care might be an overused term, but there’s science behind it. 

“Technically, the definition is the practice of taking action to preserve or improve one’s own health,” said Newman. “Some of us are good exercisers. Some are good meditators. Some are good at making social plans or watching movies. We all have our own things. And we should be trying to have healthy habits. That’s in general — but you’re never going to be perfect. The goal here is to think about what are some things you can do to enhance your health.” 

Here are the self-care measures Newman recommended:

Breathe. “When you get tense, simply remembering to breathe helps,” she said. 

Take small breaks during your workday. Set up a timer on your phone or computer as a reminder to get up from your desk. Maybe take a walk. Grab a cup of tea or coffee. Studies have shown that small mental breaks can help with focus.

After big stories, take big breaks. Take a day off after finishing a large investigative story and before you move on to the next story or project. “Having a little bit of a break is one of the things that we found is helpful in reducing stress,” Newman said.  

Remember your mission and purpose. Write a short mission statement and post it where you can see it regularly — to remind yourself why you do the work you do and why you’re pursuing the story, Newman said. 

Have rituals to end your day. “During the pandemic, everything has been blurring and there’s been no boundaries,” Newman said. Shut down your computer at the end of the day. If you live in a small apartment, cover your computer, even if you use it later to watch a movie. Another option: light a candle so that your house smells different from when you’re working. 

“Some people take showers. Some people say some words,” Newman said. “Everybody has a different way of doing those kinds of things, but creating some routines and rituals around your work is important because [news stories] never stop.”

Get good sleep. Here are some tips from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, including weekends; remove electronic devices, including TV and smart phones, from your bedroom; don’t eat a large meal and don’t drink alcohol or caffeine before bedtime; and get more exercise.

Disconnect from your email when you can. “The people who do best with technology, in general, are people who see it as a tool and they are not controlled by it,” Newman said. Look at disconnecting as recovery time, just like a weightlifter needs days off between weight lifting sessions, she said. During your weekends or time off, look for a different kind of challenge or do an activity that invigorates you. 

Mentally prepare for covering tough stories. When working on a difficult story, think about what’s going to be problematic for you, said Newman.

“Can you think ahead of time what parts of this might be stressful to you, and if so, what would be a good plan for you to do?” Newman asked. “What’s helped you when you’ve been through a difficult time before? What are the signature strengths and skills that you’ve used that have helped you through a hard time? What are the things you’ve done that have been less healthy? Have you drunk too much or eaten too much? Then think about upping the things that were helpful to you and doing a little less of the things that were less helpful to you.” 

Building resilience

“One of the things that keeps people resilient is remembering why you do the work you do and the importance of it,” said Newman. Newsroom managers should convey that to the newsroom constantly. Complimenting reporting teams for the work they do is important, she said.

Some other things journalists can do to build resilience:

Build a supportive community, whether it’s at work with colleagues or at home with friends and family.

If you’re on social media, connect to groups where you can interact with like-minded people. I run a Facebook group called Journalists Covering Trauma, where we share information about self-care and journalists’ mental health. There are other Facebook groups like Journalism and Trauma and the Canadian Journalism Forum on Violence and Trauma.

Give emotional support. Giving support is just as effective for building resiliency as receiving it, Newman said. Ask colleagues how they’re doing. If you’re worried about someone and have a close enough working relationship, say, “Hey, I’m worried about you. What can I do? Is there anything you need?” Newman said. 

Do good work. Being ethical is a sign of resilience. Being a good journalist is itself being resilient, Newman said.

Cultivate optimism. “Many journalists are cynical by nature and when you do investigations, I think you’re particularly skeptical,” Newman said. “But you can be skeptical about things and still foster optimism.”

At the end of the day, write down two things you’re grateful for. They don’t have to be major happy events. “They’re like something decent that happened that day and I found that it was counter to my skepticism,” she said.

Have some sense of connectedness to the world. It could be through religion, spirituality or nature. Nurture the feeling of being part of something larger than yourself. 

Building resilience does take effort and it needs practice — just like your craft, said Newman. 

Signs of trouble

If you’re not able to do the work you’re assigned, cannot concentrate in a sustained way or are on edge all the time, that’s a signal that you may need assistance from a mental health professional, Newman said. 

If you’re no longer able to feel compassion for your sources, that’s also a sign that you may need some help.

“I think it’s fine to not feel the emotion of your sources. That’s healthy,” she said. “But if you’re feeling numb and not caring and not able to get into understanding their story, that’s a sign that one needs help.”

Monitor yourself and be aware of your emotions, she added. 

The Dart Center has a guide on finding a therapist. This month, it launched the Journalist Trauma Support Network to train therapists on journalists’ work and culture so that they can better help journalists. The program is in its pilot phase, during which therapists will start working with a small number of journalists, matched on a confidential basis by the Committee to Protect Journalists, according to the support network.

For additional resources, including vetted self-care apps, please see this tip sheet that I put together for the IRE conference, with guidance from Newman. The tip sheet is also included below, after this brief break of puppies, kittens and a fox.

A list of self-care resources for journalists

Self-care

• Self-Care Tips for News Media (Dart Center): “These tips are offered as suggestions only, to assist in fostering healthier newsrooms and better journalism. They are based on research findings on well-being and resilience and the practical experience of news professionals in the field.” 
• Safety and Self-Care Strategies for Every Beat (Dart Center): Video, where a “panel introduced safety, security and self-care strategies that should be in every reporter’s toolkit, for assignments ranging from neighborhood beats to disasters, mass shootings, and investigative projects.”
• Mindfulness Training for Journalists (Dart Center): On September 10, 2015, “the Dart Center hosted a special half-day workshop on mindfulness practice, led by teachers from the monastic community founded by poet, author and activist Thich Nhat Hanh.”
• Chair Yoga for Journalists (Dart Center): “This 11 min. chair yoga by former foreign correspondent Kimina Lyall, Deputy Director, Dart Centre Asia Pacific is for media practitioners working at their desks or working from home. You do not need to be a yoga practitioner.”
• How journalists can take care of themselves while covering trauma (Poynter): “Journalists can’t properly cover trauma if they’re suffering themselves — here’s a guide to self-care.” 
• Under Pressure: Coping with stress, and knowing you’re not alone: A tip sheet compiled by Ken Armstrong, senior reporter at ProPublica. 
• 6 tips for protecting your mental health when reporting on trauma (International Journalists’ Network): “The following techniques may help journalists build [their] own resiliency and learn how to report sensibly on trauma-related issues.”

Getting help

• Choosing a Psychotherapist (Dart Center): A guide for journalists seeking therapy for personal or work-related issues.
• The Journalist Trauma Support Network: A pilot program training therapists to help journalists.
• U.S. Journalism Emergency Fund and Black Journalists Therapy Relief Fund (International Women’s Media Foundation): “The International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) is partnering with the Black Journalists Therapy Relief Fund for this joint effort to provide emergency funding to Black journalists.” 
• AAPI Journalists’ Financial Assistance for Mental Wellness: “This fund, created in partnership with AAJA, is designed to provide financial assistance specifically for AAPI journalists to help you get the support you need during this time. There are no therapists designated for this fund, so the money can be used at your discretion, whether it’s to continue seeing your current therapist, to see a therapist for the first time, or to pay for your medication.” 

Apps and online tools for self-care

• Insight Timer: A free library of thousands of guided meditations
• PTSD Coach: Developed by the VA, the app provides education about PTSD, information about professional care, self assessment and tools to manage stresses of daily life with PTSD. 
• Mindfulness Coach: Developed by the VA, the app has been shown to be effective in reducing stress, increasing self awareness and helping with anxiety and depression.
• Insomnia Coach: Developed by the VA, the app is based on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia. 
• COVID Coach: Developed by the VA, the app supports self-care and overall mental health during the pandemic. 
• Provider Resilience: The app is designed to help users to stay emotionally healthy while remaining productive. Although it’s designed for health-care providers, it can be useful for journalists.

Resources for managers

• Tips for Managers and Editors (Dart Center): “These tips are for managers and editors to help them prepare and support the reporters who do this difficult and important work.”
• Leading Resilience: A Guide for Editors and News Managers on Working with Freelancers Exposed to Trauma (Dart Center): “A collaboration between ACOS Alliance and Dart Centre Asia Pacific, this guide is designed to help editors and managers understand and support their teams. It is divided into five sections covering both general information and specific suggestions and tips for working with freelancers.”
• Managing Stress & Trauma on Investigative Projects (Dart Center): “A tip sheet from [Dart’s] Executive Director Bruce Shapiro, originally released at the 2005 Investigative Reporters & Editors Annual Conference.”
• How to add well-being to a newsroom natural disaster plan (Radio Television Digital News Association): “Here are five strategies that are musts for any news team.”
• Newsroom depression: Warning signs and strategies (RTDNA): “News directors, you have a stressful enough job to deliver ratings, hire the right people and do the best you can to manage up every day. Pay attention. Here is a checklist of some of journalists’ vulnerabilities to emotional illnesses.”
• Are you ready for trauma in your newsroom? New research may help (RTDNA): “Managers who may have never experienced large-scale shocking events may lack needed experience to successfully navigate staff through unexpected emotional landmines. In Oklahoma City the [news] leaders learned [these lessons.]”
• Staff care tips for managers and editors of news personnel exposed to traumatic events (Dart Center): “Trauma and the coverage of extreme human distress is a core part of journalism. It can be important and deeply rewarding – but it can also affect us personally…. These tips are offered as suggestions to assist healthier journalists and ultimately better journalism.” 

Harassment

• Online Abuse: A Self-Defence Guide (Dart Center): “Online abuse and harassment come in many forms, from borderline incivility all the way up to systematic attacks that are engineered to inflict real psychological harm. This guide offers some thoughts on managing their potential impact.” 
• Maintaining Boundaries with Sources, Colleagues & Supervisors (Dart Center): “This tip sheet, drawing on interviews with nine leading women in journalism and other sources, offers strategies for recognizing, mitigating and addressing sexual harassment and other predatory behavior while reporting.” 

How our work affects us

• Covering Trauma: Impact on Journalists (Dart Center): “An overview of current research on the occupational hazards for journalists covering traumatic events, the risk factors that aggravate those effects, and some suggestions for mitigating those factors.” 
• How journalists’ jobs affect their mental health: a research roundup (The Journalist’s Resource): “Journalists report on complex and difficult topics, including natural disasters, political violence and human suffering. We’ve summarized studies that look at how occupational stress affects journalists’ mental health.”
• Journalists are under stress. What’s the solution? (The Journalist’s Resource): “A large body of research shows how journalists’ jobs can pose a risk to their mental health. We searched these studies for tips on preventing and addressing the stress and trauma of reporting the news.”
• News managers are traumatized, too (RTDNA): “Terror attacks, natural disasters, and other deadly events send shockwaves of trauma throughout newsrooms and entire organizations. Managers can feel guilt, regret, and secondary stress reactions when the journalists they manage suffer from traumatic events.” 

Additional resources

• The Dart Center Style Guide for Trauma-Informed Journalism: “This style guide is designed as a quick, authoritative reference for reporters, editors and producers working on tight deadlines. It includes brief evidence-informed guidance on news choices, language usage and ethics in reporting on the impact of trauma on individuals, families and communities; recommendations for appropriate use of relevant psychological and scientific terminology; and special considerations when reporting on consequential trauma-laden issues such as racism and sexual violence.” 
• Trauma & Journalism handbook (Dart Center): The handbook distills the expertise of international trauma experts.
• Mental health and journalism (International Journalists’ Network): A six-part podcast series featuring interviews with reporters and mental health experts. 
• Journalism and Trauma (self-directed course on Poynter): “This course will teach you how traumatic stress affects victims and how to interview trauma victims with compassion and respect… [and] how to take care of your own health after covering a traumatic event.”
• Covering Mass Tragedies: Tips, story ideas, resources and words of encouragement by members of ‘Journalists Covering Trauma’ Facebook group.
• Covering Sensitive Issues and Coping with Trauma: Moderated by Pulitzer Center Campus Consortium Coordinator Hana Carey, the panel focuses on reporting on sensitive issues and recuperating from traumatic experiences in the field. 
• Mental Health for Journalists (Journalist’s Toolbox): “This page features resources for journalists with mental health needs and also links for covering mental health.”
• When the News Breaks the Journalists (J-Source): “Journalists are coming out and talking honestly about mental illness.”

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Nearly two decades ago, Fred Fedler, a University of Central Florida communications professor, set out to explore how journalists in the early days of the newspaper industry, between the 1850s and early 1900s, coped with stress without the support of their employers. 

Stress, burnout and post-traumatic stress disorder weren’t formally recognized until the middle of 20th century, but after sifting through hundreds of documents, including books and magazine articles, Fedler found that even though reporters didn’t use the word “stress,” they expressed it: they were horrified by what they saw when reporting on crimes or fires, felt nervous and depressed. They had nightmares and felt despair. 

“Journalists’ reputation made their jobs more difficult,” Fedler writes in his study, “Insider’s Stories: Coping with Newsroom Stress: An Historical Perspective” published in American Journalism in 2004. “Other Americans thought journalists were rude, prying, insensitive, irresponsible, dishonest, never entirely clean, and never entirely sober.”

So how did journalists cope? They became hardened or detached, misused alcohol and drugs, broke under stress or quit the profession altogether, Fedler concludes.

By the time Felder published his research, news outlets had covered the Oklahoma City bombing, the Columbine High School massacre and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Researchers had started publishing studies showing journalists were vulnerable to stress and at risk of developing anxiety and insomnia. And since then the impact of journalists’ work on their mental health has been well-documented.

Studies have found that, depending on the journalists’ beats or work locations, 4% to 59% have symptoms of PTSD, according to the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma, a project of Columbia Journalism School, advocating for better media coverage of trauma and researching the psychological impact of reporting on traumatic events.

Journalists have also been documenting the problem.

In a May 2021 article, “The COVID Reporters Are Not Okay. Extremely Not Okay,” journalist Olivia Messer, who left her job as the lead COVID reporter at The Daily Beast due to extreme stress, interviewed a dozen local and national journalists who were experiencing some of the despair and trauma that she had felt.

“Many of them told me they do not feel supported by newsroom leaders; that they do not have the tools they need to handle the trauma they are absorbing; and that most of their bosses don’t seem to care about how bad it has gotten,” Messer writes in the article, which appears in Study Hall, an online publication and support network for people who work in the media. “Some said they are still finding themselves sobbing after meetings, between meetings, on calls during work, or when the day ends.” 

A need for practical tips

Despite data on the impact of journalists’ jobs on their mental health, very few studies have provided practical tips for newsrooms or explored effective methods to prevent and address stress and burnout among journalists. 

In the 2015 study “Job Demands, Coping, and Impacts of Occupational Stress Among Journalists: A systematic Review,” published in the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, researchers analyzed 28 peer-reviewed studies published between 2002 and 2015 about journalists’ job stressors, coping strategies and the impact on their health and well-being. 

The authors found that even though there was an abundance of studies on impacts of journalists’ jobs on their health and well-being, studies about “coping strategies and occupational stressors in journalists are somewhat scarce.”

Still, over the years, researchers have dispensed some recommendations to newsrooms about addressing journalists’ stress and mental health. We sifted through several dozen studies about journalists’ mental health, shared with us by the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma — a project of Columbia Journalism School, advocating better media coverage of trauma and research into psychological impact of reporting on traumatic events — and teased out the following tips.

1. Offer trauma training in journalism schools and newsrooms

The 2007 study “Preparing for the Worst: Making a Case for Trauma Training in the Journalism Classroom,” published in Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, makes a case for trauma training in college journalism classes.

“Much like a police officer, firefighter, or paramedic, a journalist can suffer traumatic reactions due to his or her experiences on the job,” the authors write. “And while nothing can be done to completely shield someone from developing PTSD or its symptoms, training can help lessen the blow of a traumatic experience, thereby offering some protection against more severe psychological and emotional distress.” 

The authors add that budding journalists don’t realize they are unprepared to face trauma until they were already on assignment. 

In the 2018 study, “Are We Teaching Trauma? A Survey of Accredited Journalism Schools in the United States,” published in Journalism Practice, researchers found that only 1 of 41 journalism schools that responded to a survey offered a course that taught journalists how to protect themselves from psychological trauma and how to interact with trauma victims.

“Reporters need to be trained to recognize traumatic symptoms in themselves so they can take the necessary steps early on to keep those symptoms from developing into long-term or chronic issues that can impact mental and physical health.”

Are We Teaching Trauma? A Survey of Accredited Journalism Schools in the United States

Most schools said that they included lesson on journalism and trauma to varying degrees in other courses, but the time spent on the topic varied widely from one day to two weeks, according to the study.

“Reporters need to be trained to recognize traumatic symptoms in themselves so they can take the necessary steps early on to keep those symptoms from developing into long-term or chronic issues that can impact mental and physical health,” the researchers write. “They also need to be trained to recognize traumatic stress symptoms in others and how to properly approach someone who has been through a traumatic event.”

In “Fostering Trauma Literacy: From the Classroom to the Newsroom,” published in Journalism & Mass Communication Educator in 2020, the author surveyed 254 print journalists and interviewed 24 of them to find out how their journalism education prepared them for covering trauma. 

More than half of respondents said they never received any type of education related to crisis reporting. But those who had some type of education about trauma journalism reported higher levels of awareness about the potential effects of trauma and coping mechanisms, writes study author Natalee Seely, an assistant professor at Ball State University.

“Novice reporters who are unsure of how to interview crime victims and unaware of the potential effects of trauma, and thus may be more vulnerable to burnout, guilt, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, and unhealthy coping habits,” writes Seely. “Exposure to trauma reporting strategies and lessons in higher education can foster “trauma-literate” journalists and editors, resulting in a healthier workforce and possibly a more humanized newsroom culture.” 

A 2011 study, “Coping with Traumatic Stress in Journalism: A Critical Ethnographic Study,” published in the International Journal of Psychology, also points out that compared with professionals such as military personnel, police and firefighters, who receive training and organizational support for stress reduction due to exposure to traumatic events, “journalism as a profession is far behind.” 

“We believe it is time to address the needs of this understudied and underserved population of ‘first responders,’” the authors write. 

2. Offer peer support, a number to call, employee assistance programs and some time off

In “Addressing the Effects of Assignment Stress Injury,” published in Journalism Practice in 2009, researchers interviewed 31 Canadian journalists and photojournalists who were exposed to traumatic assignments. 

The participants listed several measures that could be helpful in battling job-related stress and trauma, including informal peer support groups, potentially facilitated by someone who can identify signs of traumatic stress and refer the journalists to appropriate resources. 

They also expressed interest in having time to reflect on their experiences, in other words, a “cooling off period” by taking a leave.

“When I went back to work on Tuesday, I recall going into my boss and saying, ‘Hey, I’m not handling this one well—I’m not sleeping, I’m not eating. What do I do?’ He didn’t know what to do … even when I reached out for help, they didn’t know what to do.” 

Addressing the Effects of Assignment Stress Injury

Editors participating in the study said that counseling services should be available and suggested checking in with reporters about their stress levels. But researchers also found that some editors were more understanding than others about overwhelming reporters with trauma-based assignments. 

Some reporters said their editors were unprepared to help them.

The researchers quote a participant who said, “When I went back to work on Tuesday, I recall going into my boss and saying, ‘Hey, I’m not handling this one well—I’m not sleeping, I’m not eating. What do I do?’ He didn’t know what to do … even when I reached out for help, they didn’t know what to do.” 

Study participants had other suggestions: editors’ recognition that they had just covered a traumatic assignment and lightening the reporters’ work load after a heavy story and trauma education for journalists.

“Several participants suggested distributing written material such as a small card with telephone numbers that could be called when assistance was needed,” the authors write, quoting a journalist who told them, “Editors should give everybody a card with a phone number that they can call at any time, 24/7, when they’re upset—people work late nights. The cop reporters are working till 2:00 a.m. and might be totally upset at that hour. They might be tempted to go out drinking, or go home and drink; so 2:00 a.m. would be a good time to make a call.”

Another suggestion in the study was creating an information booklet that describes the signs and symptoms of PTSD, acute stress, depression and anxiety, and includes a list of books and websites that may be helpful to journalists. (The “Trauma & Journalism: A Practical Guide” by the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma is a good example.) 

The authors also encourage newsroom managers to raise awareness about their organizations’ Employee Assistance Programs, with details such the programs’ offerings, the therapists’ specialties and the confidentiality policies of the programs.

And finally, the study suggests completing a “lessons-learned exercise” after major covering major stories involving trauma, disaster or conflict assignments. 

“Having the opportunity to sit with an editor to talk about what was experienced in the field, how it was handled (including aspects of planning, hostile environment training, techniques used in the field, what did/did not work), and what could be improved is an invaluable learning opportunity for both journalists and editors alike,” authors write. 

3. Train newsroom managers to talk about trauma.

In the 2015 study “Ethical Dilemmas, Work-Related Guilt, and Posttraumatic Stress Reactions of News Journalists Covering the Terror Attack in Norway in 2011,” published in Journal of Traumatic Stress, researchers suggest organizing meetings or individual discussions after tragic events with a focus on “how the case was handled, and on factors that can be improved for future cases.” 

These conversations can help reporters work through their dilemmas about their work and experience and diminish the underlying feelings of guilt or other negative thoughts connected with a story, researchers write. 

“Managers responsible for such meetings, however, would have to be properly prepared, and training would need to be provided,” they add. 

Encouragement from managers and editors also matters.

In a 2009 study, “Managing Vulnerability: Job Satisfaction, Morale and Journalists’ Reactions to Violence and Trauma,” published in Journalism Practice, researchers surveyed 400 U.S. journalists and found that “when journalists see managers as empathetic on these matters, job satisfaction and perceived morale are higher, and journalists also are more likely to remain committed to their careers.”

“Newsroom managers could easily poll staff members to assess their employees’ confidence about handling sources or subjects who have experienced tragedy.”

Managing Vulnerability: Job Satisfaction, Morale and Journalists’ Reactions to Violence and Trauma

Management support, the authors write, “may be critical in helping journalists cope effectively with trauma.” 

They advise newsroom managers to create an environment in which reporters feel safe talking candidly about emotional distress. 

In their study, only about 20% of the journalists said they felt well prepared to interview victims of violent or traumatic events. Nearly one third said they weren’t prepared.

“Newsroom managers could easily poll staff members to assess their employees’ confidence about handling sources or subjects who have experienced tragedy,” researchers write. “If training is called for, managers could use that occasion to sensitize journalists to their own potential vulnerability to emotional distress; to reaffirm support for employees who experience emotional reactions to tragedies; and to provide employees with the professional skills that they need to do their jobs effectively and sensitively.”

In the study “Post-Trauma Psychopathology in Journalists: The Influence of Institutional Betrayal and World Assumptions,” published in Journalism Practice in May 2020, researchers once again recommend creating a newsroom culture that destigmatizes psychological needs and call for more trauma-related training for journalists.

“In the current state of the field of journalism, with shrinking staff sizes, unstable career prospects, and increasing job responsibilities for journalists, addressing the aftermath of traumatic experiences via trainings or debriefings has often fallen low on lists of priorities, whether it is due to a matter of stigma or lack of time and resources,” the authors write. 

The feeling of lack of regard by their managers can increase the reporters’ level of anxiety, stress and fear, researchers write.  

They strongly encourage newsrooms to increase their knowledge on the prevalence and treatment options of relevant mental disorders for a variety of reasons: to increase the reporters’ comfort levels in discussing these problems; to encourage disclosure and decrease stigma; to become more proactive in screening for symptoms; and to prepare for directing journalists to mental health treatment resources as needed, such as PTSD, alcohol dependence, and depression are treatable disorders.

The authors of this study also call for trauma and stress training in journalism schools and newsrooms. 

Resources for journalists

Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma: the website is a treasure trove of information and tip sheets on covering various tragedies and managing stress and practicing self-care.  

Trauma & Journalism: A Practical Guide: the 31-page booklet by the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma gives guidance to journalists, editors and managers on working with traumatic material and what they can do to look after themselves while covering traumatic stories. 

An ongoing list of COVID-19 mental health resources for journalists and you: compiled by mental health journalism fellows at the Carter Center, a nonprofit organization that aims to improve mental health reporting, the list includes stories and resources for journalists covering the pandemic. 

Mental Health and Journalism Toolkit: a collection of resources to address issues ranging from PTSD to digital wellness, compiled by the International Journalists’ Network. 

“IJNotes” podcast series on mental health and journalism: the six-part series includes interviews with journalists and mental health professionals and provides practical tips to journalists about mental health. 

National Press Club’s self-care collection: the site lists dozens of articles that address topics such as how to identify signs of emotional exhaustion and how to practice self-care. 

Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA): the association has several articles about managing trauma in the newsroom and adding well-being practices to a newsroom’s natural disaster plan. 

Fear, Trauma and Local Journalists: Cross-Border Lessons in Psychosocial Support for Journalists: the report, published by the nonprofit organization International Media Support, discusses the cross-country lessons of psychosocial support used in countries in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America and offers ideas for future research. 

How Journalists Can Take Care of Themselves While Covering Trauma: the article, published on Poynter, provides a self-care guide and resources for journalists. 

Mental Health for Journalists: this collection of tips and stories is compiled by the Journalist’s Toolbox, which is part of the Society of Professional Journalists. 

Covering Mass Tragedies tip sheet: compiled by the members of Journalists Covering Trauma Facebook group, the tip sheet offers story ideas, links to resources and words of encouragement. The Facebook group was formed in 2017 by two reporters who had covered mass shootings with the goal of creating a safe space and support group for journalists who have covered tragedies. (Editor’s note: Naseem Miller, who authored this piece, manages the Facebook group.)   

How Journalists’ Jobs Affect Their Mental Health: A Research Roundup: Journalists report on complex and difficult topics, including natural disasters, political violence and human suffering. In this 2019 piece, we summarized studies that look at how occupational stress affects journalists’ mental health.

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Day in and day out, journalists report on complex and difficult topics — natural disasters, political violence and human suffering, for example — and often they do this work while also worrying about newsroom layoffs and the future of the industry. It takes a mental and physical toll. Below, we’ve summarized several studies that look at the effects of occupational stress on hard news reporters.

Covering trauma can generate another kind of trauma, Natalee Seely, an assistant professor of journalism at Ball State University, suggests. “Like therapists — who through the process of ‘transference’ can vicariously experience their patients’ emotional pain — reporters may also experience a type of indirect, secondary trauma through the victims they interview and the graphic scenes to which they must bear witness,” she writes in a 2019 study on the impact of covering trauma published in Newspaper Research Journal.

Seely’s research, and others’ featured below, examine the issue from a range of angles, from the U.S., to overseas, from covering natural disasters, to political violence and mass shootings, from working under a regime that is hostile to the press, to reviewing violent, user-submitted images in the newsroom.

Weathering the Storm: Occupational Stress in Journalists Who Covered Hurricane Harvey
Dworznik-Hoak, Gretchen. Journalism Studies, June 2019.

Dworznik-Hoak, a journalism professor at Kent State University, surveyed and interviewed 30 journalists who had covered Hurricane Harvey, a Category 4 storm that inundated Texas in August 2017. Respondents, who included reporters, editors, photographers, news anchors and meteorologists, worked at newspapers and television stations in the Texas cities hit hardest by Hurricane Harvey. During interviews, which occurred about two months after the hurricane, respondents were asked to reflect on their experience covering it. The interviews were analyzed for responses related to stressors and emotional responses. Participants also completed a survey that measured for symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression.

Key findings:

• According to the survey results, 1 in 5 respondents met the threshold for PTSD, and 90% experienced some level of PTSD symptoms related to Hurricane Harvey coverage.
• 2 in 5 respondents met the threshold for depression, and 93% experienced some symptoms of depression.
• Experiences of PTSD and depression were directly related to the hurricane, the author writes. Symptoms included disturbing memories and dreams and difficulty sleeping. Some respondents reported experiencing disruptions in their daily lives due to their psychological symptoms.
• Duration of coverage and type of stories assigned during the hurricane were the most frequently mentioned stressors. Specifically, the unpredictable schedule, and the long hours and numerous days worked without a break contributed to journalists’ stress.
• One reporter said duplicate assignments also contributed to stress levels. For example, the person’s newsroom ran repeated stories about victims cleaning out their houses: “I can see doing one of those stories a night, but there were nights where we did two or three of those,” the reporter noted. “And I feel like there were other things that maybe could have been reported.”
• Journalists also felt stress about the importance of their role during the disaster. As one reporter put it, “With most breaking news situations we’re talking about the people just being curious about what’s going on, but when you’re talking about something like a region-wide disaster, you’re talking about peoples’ actual lives. The news can potentially save someone’s life.”
• Another source of stress was a lack of experience covering hurricanes and lack of direction and preparation from newsroom managers. As one reporter described it, “It was just like, to some extent we had some guidance from editors as far as what we should be doing, but they kind of expected a lot of self-sufficiency and fending for ourselves, which I didn’t necessarily agree with.”
• Journalists also felt stress related to the emotional hardship of covering disaster victims. One photographer described an assignment at a bowling alley being used as a shelter for flood victims as “hard to see.”
• An added stress was that hometown reporters often had to navigate the disaster themselves, seeking shelter with friends because their own homes did not have power or water, for example. One reporter described the problem: “There’s no electricity. There’s no running water. And if you don’t have electricity, you can’t turn on your A/C [air conditioner], so you want to open your windows. But you can’t because there’s mosquitoes. It was just this crazy time. For us, we live in the community. So try to tell the story while going through that!”
• Journalists most commonly reported the following negative personal responses: crying and feeling overwhelmed, frustrated and guilty.
• For reporters who must cover natural disasters, the author suggests taking consistent breaks, diversifying the types of stories assigned and having a newsroom coverage plan with well-defined roles and expectations as strategies that might reduce distress.

Journalists and Mental Health: The Psychological Toll of Covering Everyday Trauma
Seely, Natalee. Newspaper Research Journal, May 2019.

This study, authored by Seely, looks at survey responses from 254 daily newspaper journalists in the U.S. plus information collected during in-depth interviews with 24 of those journalists. Journalists from 16 states — Arizona, California, Delaware, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington, Wisconsin and West Virginia — were interviewed.

Respondents were asked about the frequency and intensity of their trauma coverage, as well as their job satisfaction and experience of personal trauma. Seely finds that as the frequency and intensity of journalists’ trauma coverage increased, so did the severity of their PTSD symptoms. Interviews revealed examples of the emotional drain, painful flashbacks, anxiety, depression, guilt and coping mechanisms employed, including crying and substance use, such as drinking alcohol. Seely suggests these findings indicate the importance of self-care, healthy coping strategies and newsroom-based strategies (such as offering trainings and professional development on crisis reporting and encouraging reporters to access mental health resources) to promote the well-being of journalists.

Witnessing Images of Extreme Violence: A Psychological Study of Journalists in the Newsroom Feinstein, Anthony; Audet, Blair; Waknine, Elizabeth. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine Open, July 2014.

User generated content (UGC) — for instance, cell phone videos and photos obtained from members of the public — can offer a window into a breaking news event that a journalist might not be on the ground to witness themselves. News organizations are tasked with reviewing such material, which often isn’t censored, to determine its newsworthiness. That means frequent exposure to disturbing images. This study surveyed 116 journalists working with UGC in three international newsrooms. The researchers — led by Anthony Feinstein, professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto — measured the frequency of UGC-based work and its impact on newsroom employees in terms of their mental health symptoms and alcohol consumption.

Key findings:

• Frequency of exposure to UGC independently predicted higher scores on mental health screenings for PTSD, depression and psychological distress.
• Duration of exposure to UGC — measured in hours per shift — was linked to higher scores for one component of the PTSD screening criteria.
• Nearly 1 in 5 respondents — 15.4% of male respondents and 17.4% of female respondents — drank to excess, meaning they drank more than 14 units of alcohol per week. Journalists’ alcohol consumption was associated with symptoms of PTSD and depression and frequency of exposure to UGC.
• The authors conclude that frequency of exposure to UGC, rather than duration of exposure, is linked to more symptoms of emotional distress. In other words, the number of shifts journalists spent looking at UGC mattered more than the length of a shift in terms of emotional impact. They suggest that news organizations might reduce the frequency of journalists’ exposure to UGC to minimize the risk of emotional harm.

The Psychological Effects of Reporting Extreme Violence: A Study of Kenyan Journalists
Feinstein, Anthony; Wanga, Justus; Owen, John. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine Open, September 2015.

This study was co-authored by a neuropsychiatrist, a journalist and a journalism professor. It analyzes survey responses from 57 journalists at two national news organizations in Kenya. The journalists were asked about their exposure to occupational stressors such as being physically injured or offered bribes or facing pressure to drop a story. They also were asked whether they had covered either of two traumatic events in the nation’s recent past: the ethnic violence around the 2007 general election and a 2013 mass shooting at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi. The survey was administered seven years after the election violence. In addition to being interviewed, the journalists completed three questionnaires evaluating their general health andsymptoms of depression and PTSD.

The key findings:

• Two-thirds of journalists said they had been offered bribes; a similar portion had been told to drop a story.
• Nearly 20% of respondents were wounded on the job. More than half of those wounded sustained these injuries while covering election-related violence.
• The single most likely predictor of emotional distress was if a journalist had sustained wounds.
• Journalists who covered the election violence had more PTSD symptoms than their colleagues who had not covered it. However, journalists who covered the violence were no more likely than journalists who had not covered the election violence to receive psychological counseling.
• There were no significant differences in psychological symptoms between journalists who covered the Westgate Mall attack and those who did not.
• To explain the difference in psychological responses between journalists who covered the election violence and the Westgate Mall attack, the authors suggest that proximity to danger could be a key factor. Journalists who covered the Westgate attack generally were protected by barriers created by the army and police, the authors explain. The election violence, however, “was experienced firsthand as neighbor turned on neighbor, communities were destroyed and the media in some cases became the focus of mob rage.” The authors add that the fact that journalists continued to experience symptoms of PTSD and anxiety seven years after the election underscores that traumatic nature of this type of exposure to violence.

The Psychological Wellbeing of Iranian Journalists: A Descriptive Study
Feinstein, Anthony; et al. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine Open, December 2016.

How do journalists fare in a country that is hostile to their livelihood? This study delves into the question through an analysis of survey responses from 114 journalists working in Iran and Iranian journalists working abroad. Iran places 170^th out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index — a ranking of the freedoms afforded to journalists throughout the world, as measured by their responses to a qualitative survey and quantitative data on abuses and violence against the press. (The U.S. ranks 48^th, between Romania and Senegal.) Journalists in Iran can face state interference, imprisonment, harassment and even death for their work.

Journalists responding to this survey provided information about their experiences with various occupational stressors, such as arrest, torture and intimidation. They completed screening questionnaires for PTSD and depression.

Key findings:

• Half of respondents reported that they had experienced intimidation, which, for the purposes of this study, was defined as a threat in the absence of torture, assault or arrest. Of those, 78.1% stopped working on a story because of intimidation.
• Nearly half — 43.1% — received threats against their families.
• 2 out of 5 (41.2%) were arrested. Nearly 1 in 5 were tortured. And 1 in 10 were assaulted.
• Arrest, torture and intimidation were linked to PTSD symptoms, and assault and intimidation were linked to depressive symptoms.
• Around one-third of journalists surveyed had moderate to severe depression.
• Nearly half of journalists surveyed — 46.5% — were not receiving therapy. For those who had sought treatment, 60% said they did so because of their experiences as journalists.
• Nearly a third of respondents seemed to self-medicate in response to the stresses they experienced — 30.6% said they regularly used barbiturates, a sedative typically used to treat insomnia and seizures that also has anti-anxiety effects. Barbiturate use was correlated with a number of PTSD and depressive symptoms.

Job Demands, Coping, and Impacts of Occupational Stress among Journalists: A Systematic Review
Monteiro, Susana; Pinto, Alexandra Marques; Roberto, Magda Sofia. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, September 2016.

The day-to-day newsroom grind can be stressful even for those not covering a tragedy. This review summarizes the findings of 28 research articles published from 2002 to 2015 on the impacts of occupational stressors on journalists’ health and well-being.

The authors find the following were the most common sources of stress:

• Job-role demands, such as ambiguous expectations or uncertainties about a particular role, or over-burdensome expectations.
• Interpersonal demands, such as problems among colleagues, competition and ethical issues in reporting.
• Physical demands, like the stresses posed by working in a busy newsroom without natural light.
• Working conditions, such as low pay, long hours and late-night deadlines.
• Task-related stressors, such as interviewing distraught sources, time pressures, violence and intimidation, and exposure to traumatic events.

The following were common impacts on physical and mental health:

• Osteomuscular disorders, orbone or muscle pain from work demands.
• Health risks associated with receiving irregular income, working long hours and neglecting symptoms of illness.
• Burnout, depression, anxiety, PTSD, alcohol and substance use, and job turnover.
• There was a small-to-moderate effect size linking exposure to traumatic events during work and symptoms of PTSD, according to the authors’ meta-analysis of 13 studies.

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In 2016, with the help of a successful Kickstarter campaign, Thomas Brennan launched The War Horse, a nonprofit news publication focused on covering war, trauma and veterans’ affairs in the post-9/11 era. (The publication is best known for breaking the story of Marines United, an all-male Facebook group in which members shared nude photos of servicewomen without their consent.)

Having served in the Marine Corps infantry for nine years before pursuing a graduate journalism degree at Columbia University, Brennan has first-hand experience both surviving and writing about trauma. And he knows that trauma reporting can cause further trauma if it isn’t done with care and skill. “The War Horse believes that reporting on trauma comes with a great responsibility,” reads a message on the publication’s website.

With that in mind, Brennan teamed up with Columbia’s Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma to create a set of standards for journalists to follow when interviewing trauma survivors. This is an edited list of those standards — 10 rules for responsible trauma reporting. Brennan has granted Journalist’s Resource permission to publish this list for our audience.

1. Resist the urge to say, “I understand how you feel.” No matter how much you’ve prepared for an interview, you don’t “get it” or “understand” what a source has been through. Every story is unique. Every experience is unique. If our stories aren’t unique, we are doing a disservice to our sources and our readers. Research conditions and circumstances. But once you have done your research, leave it at the door. It doesn’t matter how much knowledge you have on the topic, you can never predict how a particular individual experienced the events personally.

2. Truly prepare for the interview. Reporting on trauma demands special care and increased ethical sensitivity. It requires specialized interviewing skills, understanding of the law, and (at a minimum) a basic awareness about the psychological impact of trauma.

3. Use the term “trauma survivor” rather than “trauma victim.” Get the language correct. People are not “victims” unless they describe themselves that way.

4. Respect a potential interviewee’s right to say no. Nobody should be forced to give every detail about a traumatic event.

5. Take control of providing a safe space for sources to discuss their individual trauma(s). Tread carefully and do not exploit or belittle trauma survivors if they open up to you. If you’ve earned their trust, keep it. The secret to good interviewing is active, non-judgmental listening.

6. Don’t underestimate how your own reactions to traumatic details can influence the conversation. If you are finding the conversation challenging, acknowledge that silently to yourself, and bring your focus back to what is being said. Try to listen a little harder and to observe facial expressions and body language. The time for a journalist to process the personal impact of an interview is after it’s complete, away from the interviewee.

7. Be careful of asking “why” questions — which interrogators tend to favor. Trauma is often associated with high degrees of self-blame, guilt and shame. For this reason, avoid language that might imply the interviewee is responsible in some way. Don’t be surprised if accounts only make partial sense. Frequently survivors of trauma shut down emotionally: Their recall may become or seem fragmented, and in some cases they may have blocked out an event entirely. Incomplete and contradictory accounts are not prima facie evidence of deception, but rather of the struggle interviewees may experience in making sense of what has happened to them.

8. Know that journalists have a responsibility to do everything they can to avoid exposing the interviewee to further abuse and to avoid undermining an interviewee’s standing in the community. Be prepared for survivors to read at least portions of your story before publication, as it can lessen the impact — and possible trauma — of public exposure. (Note: After reading — and seeing evidence of your intentions — an interviewee may decide to share more of the story with you.) Tell the whole story. Sometimes media identify only specific incidents, focusing on the obvious climax. Reporters must understand that a failure to report wholly on a story is, in itself, a form of abuse. Learn how individuals have coped with the trauma in the longer term. Your stories and your relationships will be richer for it.

9. Remember that trauma reporting is an act for the greater good. Utilize information, data, resources and various experiences wisely to provide you with insight and to ensure you’re reporting the truth — not how things appear at first glance. There is never a simple explanation and during your reporting you should be prepared to explore the individual complexities of each story. Speculation has no place in trauma reporting.

10. Look beyond the trauma. A story is never just about what happened. Explore regrets and successes and how your interviewee’s life led up to this point. A person is more than just a singular event. Explore the survivor’s story with the same care, attention to detail and respect that you would want if roles were reversed.

For more tips on war reporting, see this list of safety strategies from the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma.

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