For decades, researchers have urged journalists to avoid framing gun violence solely as a crime issue and provide a broader public health context. Yet, as evidenced by the findings of a recent study of local TV news in Philadelphia, the focus on the crime angle remains very much at the forefront of gun violence coverage.

The researchers’ call for change was further underscored on June 25, when the U.S. surgeon general declared firearm violence a public health crisis for the first time in a 40-page advisory, calling on the nation to take a public health approach to address gun violence, much like it has done before to address tobacco and car crashes.

In “Public health framing of firearm violence on local television news in Philadelphia, PA, USA: a quantitative content analysis,” published in BMC Public Health in May 2024, researchers analyzed 192 TV news clips aired on four local news stations between January and June 2021 and found that 84% contained at least one element that could be harmful to communities, audiences and gun violence survivors. Some of those elements are visuals of the crime scene, not following up on the story, naming the treating hospital and the relationship between the injured person and the shooter.

Meanwhile, public health elements such as root causes of gun violence, solutions and sources other than law enforcement officials were missing from most news clips.

“The main message is that the majority of reporting on firearm violence, at least in TV news, has many harmful content elements and we have to do better,” says the study’s lead author, Dr. Jessica Beard, director of research at The Philadelphia Center for Gun Violence Reporting, a trauma surgeon at Temple University Hospital and an associate professor at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University. “The public does not have an accurate understanding of what gun violence is and the policy implications are huge.”

Beard was part of a panel on covering gun violence as a public health emergency at the Association of Health Care Journalists’ annual conference in New York City earlier this month. She also spoke with The Journalist’s Resource after the panel.

Previous studies have shown that when the news media covers community gun violence as a single incident in isolation, audiences are more likely to blame victims. This approach also reinforces racist stereotypes and suggests that policing is the most effective way to prevent violence, undermining public health measures that could curb gun violence, Beard and her co-authors of the BMC Public Health study write.

This type of coverage also has a negative effect on people who are injured in shootings, they point out.

Injured people say that graphic content, inaccuracies and mention of treating hospitals resulted in distress, harm to their reputation and threats to their personal safety, according to a 2023 study by the same research team, which included interviews with 26 adults who had recently sustained a gunshot wound. They said that news reports that neglected their personal perspectives left them feeling dehumanized and compounded their trauma.

“Some people were afraid to get discharged from the hospital,” Beard says.

More about the study and its findings

The researchers chose to study TV news because more people in the U.S. get their news from TV than other legacy sources such as radio and print, according to a 2023 survey by Pew Research Center. (That same survey found that more Americans get their news from digital devices than from TV, and there’s a need for research on firearm violence content in digital news, the authors note.)

They focus on Philadelphia for several reasons. The city is the birthplace of Eyewitness News, which launched in 1965, and Action News, which launched in 1970. The two newscasts pioneered reporting approaches that have been criticized for the way they are produced and for casting a negative light on Black communities, the authors write. A 2022 story by The Philadelphia Inquirer delves deep into this history.

Moreover, the epidemic of gun violence in Philadelphia reflects a trend across the country where shooting rates have increased since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, disproportionately affecting young people and Black people. A June report from the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report finds that between January 2019 and September 2023, rates of emergency medical services encounters for gun-related injuries were highest among males, non-Hispanic Black people and people between 15 and 24 years old.

The study compares Philadelphia news clips based on two main characteristics: news clips that focused on a single incident in isolation, called episodic framing, and those with more of a public-health approach, exploring the broader social and structural context in which the violence occurs, called thematic framing.

Among the findings:

• Nearly 80% of the stories used episodic framing.
• In 21% of the clips, a law enforcement official was the main interview source.
• In 50.5% of the clips where the journalists were the only news narrators, police were the predominant source of information on firearm violence.
• More than 84% of the stories contained at least one harmful element, such as a visual of the crime scene, not following up on the story, the number of gunshot wounds, the name of the treating hospital and the relationship between the injured person and the shooter. About 7% of the clips included video or audio of the shooting.
• The 192 news clips mentioned a total of 433 injured people.
• More than 80% of the clips mentioned an injured person, although in 67%, the only information about injured people was age or gender.
• None of the 192 news segments included a health or public health professional or an injured person as the main interview source.
• Only 10% of the clips included discussions about public health solutions.
• And only five stories (2.6%) used the word “prevent.” Another four stories (2.1%) offered resources related to firearm prevention.

The authors point out that the study findings may not be generalizable to all U.S. cities, to national TV news, or to print, radio, or social media content.

Also, it’s still not clear whether harmful reporting on community firearm violence increases rates of gun violence. The connection between the two is complex, Beard says, adding that she’s hoping to explore and study the topic in the future.

In their 2023 study, Beard and colleagues asked injured participants if they would be willing to speak with a journalist about their shooting incident and what would they tell the journalist.

One participant said, “You report the gun violence, but why not do a follow-up report […] for the victims, the survivors, the families that had to bury these people, the whole process? Just don’t do a guy got shot over there, a guy got shot over here. You’re making people more fearful. You’re more fearful, you’re going to arm yourself more.”

The authors underscore the study participant’s point: Reporting on firearm violence with limited information and no follow-up stories may perpetuate fear, which may contribute to increasing firearm use and, in turn, the increasing incidence of firearm violence.

The BMC Public Health study was funded by the Stoneleigh Foundation, Lehigh University Research Investment Programs, the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities of the National Institutes of Health, and the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Gun violence as a public health issue

Two days after the Pulse nightclub mass shooting, where 49 people were killed by a lone gunman in Orlando, The American Medical Association adopted a policy calling gun violence “a public health crisis,” which requires a comprehensive public health response.

In addition to death, gun violence can result in long-term physical, mental and financial burdens among injured individuals, studies show, including a 2023 study published in JAMA Network Open. It impacts communities, causing fear and economic decline. And compared with infectious diseases, it poses a larger burden on society in terms of potential years of life lost, according to a 2020 report by the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence (now the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions).

Gun violence affects the health of entire communities, said Dr. Ruth Abaya, an attending physician in the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia emergency department, during the panel on covering gun violence as a public health emergency at the Association of Health Care Journalists.

“We’re seeing young people who have crippling anxiety that is limiting their abilities to participate in daily life, they’re being medicated and even being hospitalized, and that’s directly related to this other public health crisis of gun violence,” said Abaya, who’s also the senior director of health systems and CVI — community violence intervention — integration at The Health Alliance for Violence Intervention. “And I’m also seeing young people with other unrelated chronic diseases like asthma that’s out of control because their caregiver was killed in a violent incident.”

Recommendations for journalists

The study’s findings are not surprising to Rick Brunson, a senior instructor of journalism at the University of Central Florida’s Nicholson School of Communication and Media.

Brunson, who worked as a reporter and editor in Central Florida for 20 years, including at a local TV station, mentions several reasons why many TV stations’ coverage of gun violence lacks a broader public health context.

Commercial news stations’ economic lifeblood depends on ratings, and as much as audiences may say they are put off by coverage of crime and violence, stations’ internal research shows that people watch crime news, he says.

Also, with the plethora of streaming options and multiple screens, viewers are distracted and TV stations are often vying for their attention, which results in newscasts packed with videos and short stories without space for context and explanation.

And there’s the broader, growing trend of news avoidance among audiences.

“When they watch the news, it just makes them feel despair and exhaustion, especially the focus on crime coverage and because there’s no context,” Brunson says. “They’re just presented with problem after problem after problem. Violence after violence.”

“The question for news directors to ask in the face of this where people are just avoiding the news and you’re seeing your audience erode more and more, year after year, is can the news business also be in the hope business?” Brunson says. “It’s going to take some serious consideration and the reversal of the kind of coverage that you put on your air.”

Even though there are widely accepted journalistic guidelines to protect victims and audiences in cases of suicide, mass shootings, sexual assault, abuse, and crime involving minors, no such guidelines crafted by journalists and public health practitioners exist for reporting on community firearm violence, Beard and her colleagues note in their study.

They say their research aims to lay the foundation for understanding harmful content in TV news clips and share several recommendations, including the practice of trauma-informed reporting.

Trauma-informed journalism recognizes the need for journalists to better understand how trauma can affect survivors and how to avoid reporting that could cause additional harm to vulnerable people and those who have experienced trauma. The practice also helps journalists to protect their own mental health.

When covering firearm violence, trauma-informed reporting would involve engaging with survivors using trauma-informed principles, including giving them control over the narrative of their injuries. It also minimizes harmful elements such as graphic visuals.

“This type of reporting could humanize firearm-injured people and build empathy in audiences, deconstructing the existing racialized news narratives around firearm violence in cities,” the authors write.

They also recommend:

• Public health practitioners partner with firearm violence survivors to offer alternative perspectives to journalists reporting on firearm violence.
• Journalists seek training in trauma-informed practices and solutions journalism.
• Newsrooms adopt a public health approach to reporting on firearm violence, provide resources to audiences and use the public health framing.

To help journalists and newsrooms meet these recommendations, the Philadelphia Center for Gun Violence Reporting and Frameworks Institute created a free gun violence reporting toolkit, which provides more information on trauma-informed reporting, the drivers of gun violence, and tips for more complete news coverage of gun violence.

Brunson advises reporters to seek out public health professionals as a source to help add context to their reporting and to read BMC Public Health study.

“People are always trying to tell us what to do,” Brunson says. “But we should take that as a compliment because the folks like the people who did this study acknowledge that they’re doing it because the media has influence, and journalists help shape and frame public debate and discussions and the problems that get looked at. Policymakers look at what journalists are doing.”

Additional research

Systematic disparities in reporting on community firearm violence on local television news in Philadelphia, PA, USA
Jessica H. Beard, et al. Preventive Medicine Reports, April 2024.

“Like I’m a nobody:” firearm-injured peoples’ perspectives on news media reporting about firearm violence
Jessica H. Beard, et al. Qualitative Research in Health, June 2023.

Firearm Injury — A Preventable Public Health Issue
Jay Patel, et al. Lancet Public Health, November 2022.

Making the News: Victim Characteristics Associated with Media Reporting on Firearm Injury
Elinore J Kaufman, et al. Preventive Medicine Reports, December 2020.

Resources

• To help journalists with better reporting of gun violence, PCGVR has created a free gun violence reporting toolkit.
• “Firearm Violence: A Public Health Crisis in America” is the U.S. Surgeon General’s 2024 advisory, a first of its kind for gun violence.
• The American Public Health Association’s Gun Violence page links to several useful resources.
• The Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC/Radio-Canada), and the Canadian Journalism Forum on Violence and Trauma recently launched a news industry toolkit on trauma-aware journalism.
• This fact sheet by the American Public Health Association lists some of the recommended public health responses to gun violence.

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In the face of increasing online harassment, an exploratory report published this month examines the role of peer support networks in reducing harm and increasing resilience among U.S. journalists, especially for women, journalists of color and LGBTQ+ journalists who are disproportionately targeted online.

“The Power of Peer Support,” published by PEN America, calls on the journalism industry to invest in creating peer support groups, modeled after evidence-based approaches in other high-stress professions like emergency services, where journalists under attack online can come together and find support.

The authors make the case that under the current industry pressures and without sufficient support, journalists, especially those from diverse backgrounds, will leave the profession.

“I genuinely see this as something that as an industry, especially if we come together, we can make work for journalists and for news organizations,” says Susan E. McGregor, one of the report’s authors and a research scholar at Columbia University Data Science Institute and a former journalist.

The report fills an important gap in knowledge about the existing structures of peer support networks inside and outside of the news industry, effective models from outside the industry that could be adopted, and journalists’ general views and needs for peer support.

In addition to McGregor, the report’s authors are Viktorya Vilk, the director of digital safety and free expression at PEN America, who has been focused on digital safety and online abuse defense for more than six years, and Jeje Mohamed, senior manager of digital safety and free expression at PEN America, a nonprofit organization that champions free expression and the freedom to write. The Democracy Fund and Craig Newmark Philanthropies funded the report.

The report is not published in a peer-reviewed academic journal, but the research behind it was approved by Columbia University’s Institutional Review Board. It is based on interviews with eight journalists of color and 17 support network organizers, newsroom leaders, and experts in peer support, mental health, HR and security, between March 2022 and June 2023.

Even though the authors interviewed eight journalists, they were able to gain a broader of view of journalists’ experience via peer support network organizers who have worked with many journalists in their groups.

The report’s findings aren’t generalizable to all journalists who have experienced online abuse, the authors note.

Despite its limitations, the report is a deep dive into peer support in journalism, says Matthew Pearson, an assistant professor at Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication in Ottawa, Canada, who researches mental health, well-being and trauma among media workers and was not involved in the report.

“I appreciate how [the report] connects peer support to the consequences of online abuse, but I also really appreciate that it makes a link between online abuse and how that abuse impacts the very people that we’re trying to get and retain and promote in U.S. organizations,” Pearson says, referring to women, people of color and people from diverse backgrounds.

Scott Blanchard, an editor and director of journalism at WITF in Pennsylvania, who has extensive experience in bringing peer support and trauma awareness to local newsrooms, said in an email that the paper “is the first report I’ve seen to drill down this specifically on peer support for journalists, and the first I’ve seen to draw conclusions and make recommendations.”

The report comes at a crucial election year in the U.S. and at a time when journalists, particularly women, journalists of color and LGBTQ+ journalists, face increasing levels of online abuse and harassment.

A 2022 Pew Research Center study of 11,889 U.S.-based journalists finds that 27% of Black journalists, 20% of Hispanic journalists and 27% of Asian journalists experienced online abuse based on their race or ethnicity, compared with 5% of white journalists surveyed.

Many times journalists under attack don’t know where to turn or don’t have a place to turn to, leaving them feeling alone and isolated.

“If you look at the literature, social isolation is extremely, extremely bad for one’s health, particularly if you’re going through these kinds of high-stress experiences,” says McGregor.

Peer support and small-group peer support in journalism

The authors of the report define peer support as emotional and psychological support provided outside of a clinical setting.

Research shows that certain kinds of support, including peer support, can be more effective at promoting resilience than working with a new therapist, the authors note, although it’s not a replacement for therapy.

“We explored all kinds of support networks,” Vilk says. “Not all of the support networks that we found were peer support, and they were all extremely different from one another, and they did very different things,” such as anonymous hotlines that people can call, online chat groups, mentorship programs in professional associations, or in-person programs.

In their search for the types of support networks for journalists, the authors find two main types of programs:

• “Structured” networks, which were created with a specific mission, such as professional development or providing emergency response services.
• “Organic” networks, originating in communities such as alumni of a given training or fellowship program, or among journalists who share a beat.

But while many journalists are proponents of peer support networks, and prefer to receive support from other journalists, many don’t reach out to the existing ones when facing online harassment or other job stressors.

The authors find several reasons driving this disconnect. Some journalists are concerned that the details of their experiences or their feelings might find their way to an employer, potential employer or future collaborator. Others might find it difficult to be vulnerable without knowing how their experiences in a group might be received or responded to.

The authors believe that another model called small-group peer support, could be the solution.

The model currently doesn’t exist in the news industry, according to the authors, but it is beneficial in other high-stress professions, research shows.

In the small-group peer support model, a trained individual facilitates a group of four to ten peers in providing support to one another. The facilitators don’t necessarily share the experiences of the group and they don’t provide direct support to the group’s members.

“The small-group peer support model is built on norms and expectations defined and maintained by the individuals in the group, with support from trained facilitators who can offer guidance and direction as needed,” the authors write. “In the examples we’ve studied, small-group peer support operated in ‘real time’ (e.g. in-person meeting or online call), so participants could be confident that, when sharing, they would get a response.”

In the authors’ view, this model will likely work better for journalists if members are also given anonymity and confidentiality, It can also be a more inclusive space for freelance journalists who often lack support from news organizations, they say.

“Many initiatives that being in the newsroom begin with full-time, permanent employees in mind, or even employees who are on contract, and don’t necessarily consider freelancers,” Pearson of Carleton University says. “So I’m glad that this includes freelancers.”

The report suggests that professional associations, foundations, universities, unions, philanthropists or news organizations could spearhead the effort to develop networks, recruit peer support facilitators, coordinate training, help with finances, and help connect journalists with these groups.

“I would love to see as many organizations in the journalism industry as possible experiment with this model because small-group peer support has not been done in any kind of deliberate, structured, thoughtful way in the journalism industry that we were able to find,” Vilk says.

Blanchard of WITF is in support of the model but he’s also skeptical about how quickly and widely it could be adopted across the industry.

“I think there’s also a catch-22 here: Journalists and newsrooms are so stretched and stressed that they may not have the time and energy it would take to create a way to address how stretched and stressed they are,” Blanchard said. “That’s why the idea of philanthropic money could play a huge role in pushing this issue forward across the industry, including the model recommended by the report.”

Other findings in the report

The professional journalists interviewed for the report were based in the U.S., with staff and freelance experience on a range of beats and from two to 20 years in the field.

The authors recruited participants who identified as journalists of color, given the disproportionate impact of online harassment on them.

“We wanted to explicitly understand what kind of peer support exists for folks who are disproportionately targeted based on their identity,” Vilk says.

Six of the eight journalists identified as women, one as a man and one as nonbinary. The journalists worked at various mediums, including print, online and audio.

Even though the journalists interviewed described support networks as “safe spaces” that sometimes even took on a “familial” quality, “they said that they did not — or would not — turn to these networks when experiencing online harassment,” the authors write.

They also find that existing support networks mostly address either immediate distress — such as an active doxing campaign or threat of legal action — or career-level concerns, such as negotiating a raise. This leaves out journalists who experience ongoing distress such as online abuse.

The majority of support networks for journalists in the U.S. operate outside of news organizations, according to the report. However, they found four news organizations that ran in-house peer support networks or had explored the option.

In the in-house model, news organizations provide financial and logistics support to networks. Employees serve as peer support providers and an external clinician supervises the network. Although there are many benefits to this model, its exclusive nature to the newsroom makes it inaccessible to freelancers. Also, the expense of working with a clinical provider makes it infeasible for newsrooms with limited resources, the authors write.

When asked what they wanted from news organizations, most journalists in the report said they wanted their news organizations to “directly and explicitly acknowledge the occupational hazards of journalism, including online abuse, and to provide basic resources for coping with them constructively,” the authors write.

They also wanted news organizations to develop policies and procedures for online abuse, so that journalists know what to expect from their news organization, and said that employee assistance programs (EAPs) are not enough.

“I don’t think the journalism industry has fully come around to the idea the profession involves an enormous amount of stress and trauma and occupational hazard, the way that it is understood if you’re talking about first responders or other kinds of fields,” Vilk says.

Report’s recommendations for setting a peer support network

They offer several recommendations to news organizations and the wider journalism industry:

Strengthen existing organic or structured support networks. Some ways to do so include:

• Creating a “staffed” channel focused on online abuse, and recruiting and training members who can serve as support providers and offer specific hours of availability.
• Offering members training opportunities, such as psychological first aid; considering a compensation or recognition model for the trained support providers.
• Allowing support providers to take breaks from their duties to prevent burnout.
• Providing members with existing anti-abuse resources.
• And, importantly, emphasizing confidentiality and anonymity.

Build an in-house structured support network:

1. Set aside an hour or two per month during work hours for participants to connect and complete a support training program like psychological first aid.
   1. Get buy-in with the news organization’s leadership and potential participants. One way is to work with a trusted facilitator from inside or outside the news organization to collect anonymized staff experiences with online abuse and their desired interventions. This information can then help show the need.
   1. Assess your budget. “Think realistically about how your organization can provide support immediately, in terms of training time, administrative overhead, professional development, and other direct costs,” the authors write. Also, think about the cost of losing a staffer due to burnout.
   1. Connect with other organizations that have implemented peer support networks.
   1. Communicate within the organization consistently that the news organization wants to be more effective in supporting journalists experiencing online abuse and other job stressors, and that it has developed a support network where journalists can confidentially discuss their issues.

Adapt the small-group peer support model.

One example is peer support at Whitman-Walker Health, a nonprofit clinic in Washington, D.C., serving the local LGBTQ+ community. The clinic has been offering small-group peer support groups to the local LGBTQ+ community for many years.

A new group usually begins after the peer support coordinator identifies six to eight people interested in exploring a theme — such as the “Silver Circle” for LGBTQ+ seniors — and connects them with pairs of trained peer support facilitators, who help guide group conversations.

The groups are largely independent. Some have met consistently for years and some meet for just a few months.

Whitman-Walker peer support facilitators go through an application process and a nine-hour training. They also participate in sessions with more experienced supervisors. The typical time commitment of a peer support facilitator is four to five hours per month.

The organization suggested that journalists can form small-group peer support around beats, identities or locations.

“What you might say is, ‘Let’s have a six-session or eight-session group about dealing with small towns, or what’s it like being in a small town and knowing everybody?’ Or, ‘What’s it like being a woman of color [in journalism]?’” Whitman-Walker officials told the authors.

McGregor is now researching whether and how the small-group peer support model might work in the journalism community.

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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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Note from Clark Merrefield, senior editor for economics and legal systems at The Journalist’s Resource:

A couple of weeks ago, my son, Theodore, came home with a social studies assignment from his first grade class. He goes to public school in New York. The students were assigned to learn and write about a “community helper” — suggestions included a police officer, nurse, firefighter and other civic professions.

Being in journalism, I have talked with him about what a news reporter does. For his project, Theo was interested in doing something having to do with the news media, but he wasn’t sure where to start. I said, “What if you interviewed a local reporter, to find out what they do?” He asked what an interview was, and I explained it’s when you talk to someone to find out information about something they know a lot about.

He said, “OK! I think I could do that!”

As a reader of the Queens Daily Eagle, one of our local newspapers, I reached out to their reporter, Ryan Schwach, to see if he would be up for a grilling from a first grader.

Within a few hours, Ryan got back to me and graciously agreed. Then, to come up with questions, Theo and I talked about a few things he might like to know from Ryan.

(Disclosure: The last question Theo asked, on whether Ryan wanted to add any final thoughts, was my idea. I find this to be a useful closing question, as it gives a source some agency to mention anything the reporter didn’t think to ask.)

A few days later I set up a Zoom call and Theo conducted his first journalistic interview on May 1, 2023.

The transcript that follows of the conversation between Theo and Ryan has been lightly edited for length and clarity. It’s a reminder of the critical role local journalists play in informing communities large and small through breaking news, investigations and features on elected officials, organizations and neighbors that matter to their readers.

—

Theodore Merrefield: What does a journalist do?

Ryan Schwach: We inform people what’s going on in their communities. What I do as a local reporter is, I tell people what’s going on in their neighborhoods, and the things that matter to them. That could be anything from stuff that’s happening with the schools, stuff that’s happening with hospitals. It could be stuff that’s related to the police, it could be stuff their politicians are doing, the people who we vote for, it could be what they’re doing.

And we get to tell stories about people. We can find fun and interesting people, and we get to tell stories about them and tell people about their neighbors.

TM: How do you find stuff out?

RS: It depends on the story. Sometimes it’s just what I see. I’ve lived in Queens my whole life and I’ve been writing about Queens for about four years, and I spent a little while going all over the city. So sometimes my boss, my editor, will say, ‘Hey, I have this story, write this.’ Sometimes it’s stuff that I see, like I’ll notice something and go, ‘That’s weird. Why is it like that?’ So I’ll do research and I’ll talk to people and I’ll try to figure out what’s going on.

Sometimes, more often than not, we get these things called press releases, which a business or government people or different organizations will send me. This is what’s happening with something I’m writing about today — we got a report sent to us by a group that studies traffic accidents. They sent me a report about all the traffic accidents that have happened in the city. That wasn’t something necessarily that I found, it was something that was given to me. But then I find other information to make that more interesting.

A lot of it is taking stuff that happens city and statewide and localizing it. The Queens Daily Eagle has a specific angle toward the Queens judicial community and what goes on in the courts. That’s sort of our niche. That’s where our paper, the physical paper runs — in the court buildings.

TM: What is your favorite part of your job and what is the hardest part of your job?

RS: Those are two very good questions. My favorite part is all of the different things and people I get to experience with this job. The biggest thing that a journalist does, other than writing, is talking to people. I talk to different people on a daily basis. You probably know this: There’s so many different types of people who live in Queens from all different countries and they speak a bunch of different languages. I get to talk to all of those different communities.

I get to talk to some really cool, interesting people, people who really care about their community, people who have done really cool stuff. And occasionally, people who have done really bad stuff and I have to get them to talk about it. I think that’s the most fun, I get to experience a bunch of things that most jobs just don’t get to experience because I’m doing all these different things. I’ll talk to a police officer or a firefighter. I’ll talk to teachers. I’ll talk to really cool, interesting people from all over the world who have different ideas and I get to tell those stories.

The hardest part — I’ve been lucky, I have had some good editors in my life. My editor right now is fantastic, at the Eagle. Here’s the answer for me: It’s deadlines. We have a lot to do, and we have a very short amount of time to do it. I work for a daily newspaper, which means we do a newspaper every day, except for the weekends. Monday to Friday, we’re putting out a newspaper.

I was writing a story about a bunch of doctors in Queens who are very upset with how much they’re getting paid and how much they’re working. They want to strike. They want to not work for a couple of days as a show that they’re serious. And I wrote this whole story, this 2,000-word story about them getting ready to strike. And then, about 20 minutes ago, I got a phone call from one of them, saying, ‘Hey, we are striking on these dates.’ So I had to rewrite a bunch of things and Tweet something. That’s probably the most challenging thing, is doing it quickly and adapting.

TM: Why did you want to be a journalist?

RS: My grandfather did it, my grandfather was a reporter where I live in Rockaway [in Queens]. I was born and raised in Rockaway. Journalism and writing was something that was always very important in my family. My parents both worked on school newspapers, and my dad was always pushing me to read the news and pay attention when I was a kid and know what was going on in the world.

And I like telling stories. I like telling other people’s stories, that’s a lot of fun. I think that’s why a lot of people get into journalism, so they can tell stories, especially when those stories haven’t been told a lot — communities where people felt like they weren’t getting their voices heard.

I think probably more deep down the reason is I just really like knowing things before other people do. This is something that professors and editors have told me, that the biggest thing you have to be, to be a journalist, is curious. You just have to want to ask a ton of questions about different things.

TM: What is your favorite story you have ever done?

RS: I’ve gotten to do some serious things, actually what is called breaking news, which means it’s happening right now. But I think my favorite is when I was working for The Daily News, which is a newspaper in the city, I was covering another story and I randomly came across these guys in Springfield Gardens. They were all adults, guys in their thirties, and they had these little, very expensive remote control cars that went super fast — like 90 or 100 miles an hour. And I was just covering this other story that didn’t pan out. I was walking around Springfield Gardens like, ‘All right, guess I’ll get on the bus and go home.’ And I saw these guys and I’m like, ‘This looks interesting.’

So I walk over and I start talking to them. It turns out for a lot of them this was their hobby, they spend thousands of dollars making these cars super cool, and fast. They paint them all cool colors and give them names and race them on weekends and they have these leagues and they travel around to other states to go race these cars. I just spent the afternoon there, I didn’t plan it.

That was the first big story I ever wrote for something that wasn’t super local. That was the first time I had a two-page spread in a daily newspaper. That was a lot of fun because I like telling stories about people’s hobbies and interests that nobody would really notice. If I could afford one of what they had I would probably do it too.

TM: I have three remote control cars.

RS: Do you?

TM: Yeah.

RS: I had them when I was a kid. I never had a really nice one, I had little ones. I had a helicopter, I liked that very much. I like the flying ones.

TM: I only have ones that go on the ground. They probably go 10 [miles an hour].

RS: That’s fast, that’s pretty good.

TM: I have one that transforms, from a car into a robot.

RS: Like a Transformer?

TM: Yeah.

RS: I had one of those when I was a kid too. I had tons of Transformers.

TM: And the transformer one has autopilot.

RS: As in, it goes by itself?

TM: Yeah, if I press the button.

RS: That’s super cool.

[Edit: Dad nudges Theo to ask his next question.]

TM: Why is journalism important to our community?

RS: I think it’s important that people know what goes on around them, because there are people who make decisions in government, and we want to make sure that they’re doing the right thing. We want to make sure that our police officers and politicians, we want to make sure they’re doing the right thing. And it’s important that we have people who are making sure they’re doing that, to the best extent we can.

TM: Is there anything that you want to add that we didn’t talk about?

RS: The last thing I’ll say, since it ties into what you have to do for your assignment, is that local reporting, especially in a place like Queens, can be very important. It’s a big job, particularly because there’s a lot of people in Queens. It’s the biggest borough, and it’s good because there’s actually a lot of Queens newspapers. There’s us, there’s the Queens Chronicle, the Queens Courier. There’s a bunch of them that just cover Queens and I think that’s really good because people in Queens are a little spoiled when it comes to being able to know what’s going on.

TM: Thank you!

The completed assignment

The post How newspaper reporters help my community appeared first on The Journalist's Resource.

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.

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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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In recent weeks, hundreds of journalists have turned to Twitter to chronicle their experiences with overt and covert racism in newsrooms. The message is clear: whether national outlets or hyper-local brands, journalism has a race problem.

About three-quarters of newsroom employees are non-Hispanic white, compared with about two-thirds of all U.S. workers, according to a 2018 analysis from the Pew Research Center. About half of newsroom staff are white men, compared with about a third of the overall workforce. Newsroom diversity remains far below the goal the American Society of News Editors set in 1978 “of minority employment by the year 2000 equivalent to the percentage of minority persons within the national population.” Racial and ethnic minorities make up about 40% of the U.S. population, according to Pew Research.

“The thin ranks of people of color in American newsrooms have often meant us-and-them reporting, where everyone from architecture critics to real estate writers, from entertainment reporters to sports anchors, talk about the world as if the people listening or reading their work are exclusively white,” journalist Soledad O’Brien wrote in a July 4 New York Times opinion piece.

Time will tell whether this moment will lead to substantive changes in newsroom staffing, leadership and coverage, to include a diversity of perspectives that reflects the diversity of America. The fact remains that the conversation about race in journalism and coverage of race in the news is one the profession has been circling back to for decades.

In Spring 1991, Carolyn Phillips, the first Black assistant managing editor at the Wall Street Journal, wrote in the Newspaper Research Journal: “At least to a degree it’s reasonable to blame the industry’s hard times, the layoffs, early retirements and retrenchments. Fewer and fewer people are asked to do more and more; expansiveness goes out the window. And the hidden agendas, unspoken beliefs and fears, the prejudices that each human being harbors begin to surface. Too, the larger society is showing such intolerance. And newsrooms, like it or not, are a microcosm.”

The seven peer-reviewed articles featured below offer historical insight and perspectives on journalistic objectivity as a construct of a largely white mainstream press, in contrast to constructions of objectivity among Black news media; detail the experiences of Black women in local newsrooms; suggest that active objectivity — as defined below — can help fix what white reporters get wrong when they cover race; show that the path to diversity will likely be different for every newsroom; and much more.

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Racialization of News: Constructing and Challenging Professional Journalism as “White Media”
Carlos Alamo-Pastrana and William Hoynes. Humanity & Society, December 2018.

The authors trace the evolution of the largely white mainstream press and the Black press during the 20^th century — and their divergent conceptions of journalistic objectivity. Carlos Alamo-Pastrana is dean of the Department of Sociology at Vassar College and William Hoynes is a sociology professor there.

Before World War I, mainstream reporters were “not concerned with the separation of facts and values” but remained “confident in their ability to identify the relevant facts and to report them accurately,” Almo-Pastrana and Hoynes write. During the war, many white journalists actively participated in pro-war propaganda, which prompted self-reflection within the profession after the war.

“The recognition that information could be manipulated and the rise of a new [public relations] profession that was dedicated to the shaping of public opinion left journalists with a crisis of confidence about their ability to report facts in any straightforward way,” a crisis that led to evolution of the modern conception of journalistic objectivity, according to the authors.

The development of the Black press during the late 1800s and early 1900s overlapped with the emergence of American academic sociology — and that wasn’t a fluke. “Segregated out of popular academic networks, the Black press was the next best thing where Black intellectuals and academics could reach broad audiences and present their research,” Almo-Pastrana and Hoynes write. “W.E.B. Du Bois and Charles S. Johnson are among some of the important figures in the early Black press who also enjoyed prominent careers as social scientists.”

The Black press “made no pretenses to objectivity and instead directly challenged the marginalization African Americans experienced within the U.S. empire state that required them to demonstrate their very humanity in the face of daily racial violence,” the authors write. Circulation among Black newspapers grew by the hundreds of thousands through World War II. The Pittsburgh Courier was the biggest Black paper in the country by 1940, with a circulation of more than 350,000, according to the authors. They point to a variety of reasons Black press readership declined after the war. These included McCarthyism, which “targeted numerous prominent members of the Black press,” and mainstream media outlets recruiting Black journalists during the 1950s and 1960s.

The authors then document the recent spread of two online media outlets that push white nationalist storylines and find that “the current visibility of white nationalist media highlights the complexity of the contemporary racial politics of professional journalism.”

They then contrast how the historical development of objectivity in Black media and white mainstream media persists today in perceptions of objectivity among Black and white media representatives. In particular, the authors chronicle the experience of former ESPN anchor Jemele Hill, who tweeted in 2017 that President Donald Trump’s election was a “direct result of white supremacy.” Even though the White House press secretary at the time, Sarah Sanders, called for Hill’s termination, ESPN executives declined to fire her. They did state in a companywide memo that “ESPN is not a political organization.”

“The resurgent visibility of white nationalist media may open new possibilities for conversation about the racialization of news,” Almo-Pastrana and Hoynes conclude. “But this will require journalists to look squarely at how professional journalism fails to explain historical forms of racial exclusion and, in its inability to confront its own enduring whiteness, helps to reproduce, even in its liberal critique of white nationalism, unremitting forms of white privilege.”

Repeating History: Has the Media Changed Since the Kerner Commission?
Michael Bowman. Race, Gender & Class, January 2018.

At the height of the 1960s civil rights movement, President Lyndon Johnson established The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders to investigate issues of structural racism. The group became known as the Kerner Commission, named after its chair, Illinois Gov. Otto Kerner Jr.

Michael Bowman, associate professor of media at Arkansas State University, compares coverage of civil rights coverage across two eras, drawing threads from the findings of the Kerner Commission to the 2014 uprisings against police brutality in Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore in 2015.

The commission found that news media largely made good-faith efforts to chronicle civil rights protests and marches in the 1960s, but there was little coverage of the systemic racism that spurred the movements. Bowman documents that the sensational, graphic images of burning buildings and looters that dominated news coverage in the 1960s persisted in coverage of Ferguson and Baltimore.

“Major media institutions possess a unique power to shape and mold public opinion on people, places, and events,” Bowman writes. “While good journalism still exists, too often intense coverage by national broadcast and cable news mesmerizes audiences with scenes of riots in the streets, burning building, and clashes between citizens and law enforcement.”

The Role of Minority Journalists, Candidates, and Audiences in Shaping Race-Related Campaign News Coverage
Mingxiao Sui, Newly Paul, Paru Shah, Brook Spurlock, Brooksie Chastant and Johanna Dunaway. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, May 2018.

The authors analyze local news coverage of 3,400 state legislative candidates across 663 news outlets in 14 states in 2012, to find out how reporters’ race affects coverage and how coverage changes given the race of candidates and the racial composition of the outlets’ audiences. They rely on the 2012 ASNE Newsroom Census to determine the racial composition of newsrooms.

The researchers “focus on how words have been attached to race, rather than how different ethnic groups perceive the effects of a given issue. For example, certain social agendas and policy measures — such as welfare, affirmative action, and immigration — are yoked to people of color, even though on their face these issues are color-neutral.” They find that the race of candidates and newsroom diversity did not particularly drive coverage of racialized campaign issues. However, diverse newsrooms with large Hispanic and Black audiences were more likely to cover those issues.

“The implication of this is that pressure for race-related reporting is a blend of both reporters’ racial and ethnic identities and the economically driven norms and routines of journalism, where the selection of news stories is made largely with presumed preferences of audiences in mind,” the authors write.

When White Reporters Cover Race: News Media, Objectivity and Community (Dis)trust
Sue Robinson and Kathleen Bartzen Culver. Journalism, August 2016.

In 2011, the Urban League of Greater Madison proposed a charter school that would aim to serve Black boys and reduce racial disparities in educational achievement in Madison, Wisconsin. From 2011 to 2015, 30 reporters — all of them white, according to the authors — covered the proposal and racial educational disparities in the city.

Sue Robinson and Kathleen Bartzen Culver, journalism professors at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, use coverage of the proposed charter school as a case study to explore ethical obligations white reporters have when covering race. They conducted three focus groups and 39 in-depth interviews with 24 white reporters and 15 community leaders of color. They also analyzed more than 1,000 news stories and social media posts about racial disparities in educational achievement in Madison from 2011 to 2015.

“We wanted to understand the following: How do white reporters conceptualize their roles in covering issues that have racial components, and how do they meet what they see as their obligations?” the authors write. Reporters interviewed mostly said they covered issues having to do with race through a traditional journalism lens of passive objectivity, “such as deferring to official sources and remaining separate from communities,” Robinson and Barzen Culver explain. Many of the reporters had trouble getting Black sources on the record and turned to personal connections, fell back on existing contacts with Black leaders, or turned to Black sources who had contacted their newsrooms. Some reporters asked sources trusted in Madison’s Black community to review their stories to flag potentially insensitive wording.

Black community leaders, for their part, wanted white reporters to be physically present in the community before newsworthy conflicts happened. “Reporters should not just show up in neighborhoods looking for comment without building trust: attend community events, develop long-term relationships with individuals, and cover community positives: ‘Trust is earned. It is not just handed over,’ said one prominent Black leader in town,” the authors write. Robinson and Bartzen Culver conclude that journalism institutions should aim for active objectivity, in which they “detach from power, emphasize social/historical/cultural contexts in stories, question explicit and implicit biases, build trust among communities via neighborhoods not often visited, and invest efforts over time to build relationships with people other than go-to leaders.”

Challenging Assumptions about Ownership and Diversity: An Examination of U.S. Local On-Air Television Newsroom Personnel
Amy Jo Coffey. International Journal on Media Management, January 2019.

Amy Jo Coffey, associate professor of communication at the University of Florida, examines the on-air diversity of 232 local television stations, representing about one-third of television markets in the country, and whether the organizational structure of those stations affects on-air diversity. “Of the 73 total markets analyzed, 15 were among the top African-American markets, 16 were among the top 50 Hispanic markets, and 16 were among the top Asian markets,” Coffey writes.

She explains that TV news journalists “who physically resemble the members of the communities they serve, signal to their constituents (the audience) that they are being represented in the newsroom and in the coverage of their community.”

Local news stations are, by and large, affiliated with major networks, like CBS, NBC, FOX or ABC. They’re typically owned and operated by a network or have shared services agreements under which stations share studio and office space under managing partners like Raycom Media or the Sinclair Broadcast Group. Network owned-and-operated arrangements are more common in larger markets while shared-service agreements among news stations are more common in mid-sized markets, according to Coffey.

When it comes to on-air diversity Coffey finds “ethnic composition within the market seems to be a stronger predictor of diverse on-air talent than ownership structures.”

African American Women in the Newsroom: Encoding Resistance
Marian Meyers and Lynne Gayle. Howard Journal of Communication, July 2015.

Marian Meyers and Lynne Gayle interviewed 10 television and newspaper journalists, all of them Black women with between 3 and 40 years of experience in a major U.S. city that is majority Black. Meyers is a communications professor at Georgia State University. Gayle was a doctoral student there.

Meyers and Gayle asked the journalists whether their presence as Black women changed coverage and newsroom culture, and if they actively tried to improve racial and gender diversity in their outlets’ coverage. Participants included three anchors and four reporters from three local network-affiliated television stations, and two editors and one reporter from the city’s major newspaper.

These journalists said they tried to amplify Black images and voices in the news, and corrected colleagues when they portrayed Black sources in negative or stereotypical ways. But they didn’t focus on amplifying voices and images of women, the authors found.

One broadcast journalist “commented that she had ‘given people an opportunity to comb their hair, to pull themselves together, to put on a more appropriate shirt — things like that.’ She added that her white colleagues might not make the effort to help their news sources look better on camera, with the result that their stories would be inappropriate or exploitive. ‘I’ve seen my colleagues do that before,’ she said. Although the TV journalists were concerned with visuals, the newspaper journalists dealt with grammar and whether to quote or paraphrase a source. For example, a newspaper editor said she would paraphrase the words of some news sources rather than use a quotation that was grammatically incorrect if ‘there might be a dead give-away as to the person’s race that will lead readers to form some type of stereotype about the person.’ However, this editor also stated that she would not correct the grammar of the city’s African American mayor because ‘he should know better.’”

Despite deadline pressure, participants strove to “include white voices and faces in stories that are frequently associated with African Americans, such as those involving poverty and crime,” in order to show that Black and white populations alike are affected by those issues.

Revising Legacy Media Practices to Serve Hyperlocal Information Needs of Marginalized Populations
Letrell Crittenden and Antoine Haywood. Journalism Practice, May 2020.

The authors track the efforts of two nonprofit news outlets — PhillyCAM Voices in Philadelphia and Public Source in Pittsburgh — to provide coverage reflecting their cities’ demographic makeup. Letrell Crittenden is an assistant professor of communication at Thomas Jefferson University. Antoine Haywood is a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania.

The researchers conducted nearly a dozen in-depth interviews with paid and volunteer staff across both news organizations, which differed in terms of their mission and reporting strategies. PhillyCAM, a mostly volunteer-run public access television network, has for years offered a platform for citizen voices. The network had extensive experience engaging diverse audiences, but not much journalistic polish. It hired a longtime television journalist to “inject a more professional focus” into its Voices community news program, launched in 2015.

Public Source was founded in 2011 as an investigative outlet before shifting to hyperlocal news coverage. It launched with strong journalism fundamentals, but lacked diverse community voices. To broaden its perspectives, Public Source began publishing first-person accounts alongside reported articles. Its 2018 series “Let’s Talk About Race,” for example, included a reported story on Pittsburgh’s low conviction rate for hate crimes and first-person essays on racism from Pittsburghers, including a Black couple who were victims of a hate crime.

“Given the different origins of both PhillyCAM Voices and Public Source, the needs of each organization were often mirrored,” Crittenden and Haywood write. “Thus, it would make sense for organizations with a greater connection to communities to partner with newsrooms that have a greater foundation in traditional journalism narrative practices.”

Learn why journalists should call racism what it is, and how voicing support for police can be a “dog whistle” politicians use to appeal to voters threatened by challenges to America’s racial status quo.

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Efforts to shape public perceptions of a given issue — also known as agenda-setting — are a mainstay of the tobacco industry, researchers show. Robert Proctor, a professor of the history of science at Stanford University, details the tactics industry executives deployed over more than a century to promote their products and cast doubt on the science documenting tobacco-related health risks in his 2011 book Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition.

“What kinds of strategies are used to manufacture doubt?” Proctor writes in the book. A few tactics used: “Hire journalists to write industry-sympathetic articles in the popular press and pressure media organs to ignore or suppress reports unfavorable to the industry. Threaten to withhold advertising from magazines that give too much attention to tobacco-disease links.” Other strategies: Divert. Distract. Deny.

“People tend to include or exclude from their cognitions what the media include or exclude from their content,” writes media scholar Donald L. Shaw in an influential 1979 paper on agenda-setting in mass communication. “People also tend to assign an importance to what they [the news media] include that closely resembles the emphasis given to events, issues and persons from the mass media.” Accordingly, the tobacco industry’s influence on the media in turn shapes public perceptions of the issues.

One example of agenda-setting that plays out through the media is found in its coverage of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. Tobacco industry CSR initiatives are projects — philanthropic or otherwise — undertaken “to shape public and policymaker understandings about tobacco control and the industry,” according to the authors of a 2018 study on the topic.

The study looks at 649 U.S. news reports about tobacco industry CSR initiatives published in newspapers, online and in television and radio broadcasts between 1998 and 2014. The news coverage was predominately positive, and rarely quoted tobacco control advocates, researchers found.

To what extent does news coverage still reflect tobacco industry efforts to agenda-set? How has the introduction of e-cigarettes complicated the issue? How has agenda-setting influenced public perceptions of tobacco control and, more recently, vaping?

This research roundup aims to answer those questions by examining studies published in the past five years on media coverage of tobacco and e-cigarettes. We hope to help journalists understand some of the forces that might shape their coverage as well as raise awareness about how the nature and tone of news stories have affected public perception and public policy.

Vaping in the news

Content Analysis of US News Stories About E-Cigarettes in 2015
Wackowski, Olivia A.; et al. Nicotine & Tobacco Research, August 2018.

This paper analyzes news coverage of e-cigarettes provided in 2015 by a variety of U.S. news organizations — four newswires, four online news outlets and the 30 newspapers with the largest circulations. In total, the researchers analyzed 295 articles. They found that 45.1% of stories focused on policy or regulatory issues around vaping. The next most common topics were health effects (appearing in 21.7% of studied articles) and e-cigarette prevalence (featured in 21% of articles). Articles frequently mentioned the following concerns: youth e-cigarette use (45.4%), e-cigarettes as a potential gateway to smoking (33.9%) and the appeal of flavors (22.9%). Articles that focused on Food and Drug Administration regulation of e-cigarettes more frequently mentioned youth prevalence of vaping (61%) than adult prevalence (13.5%).

“News articles more frequently discussed potential e-cigarette risks or concerns (80%) than benefits (45.4%), such as smoking harm-reduction,” the authors write. Similarly, when expert sources such as doctors, researchers and government officials were quoted, they were more likely to cite risks associated with e-cigarettes than benefits, such as avoiding the tar in traditional cigarettes. The researchers conclude, “While such coverage may inform the public about potential e-cigarette risks, they may also contribute to increasing perceptions that e-cigarettes are as harmful as tobacco cigarettes.” 

Youth and Young Adult Exposure to and Perceptions of News Media Coverage about E-Cigarettes in the United States, Canada and England
Wackowski, Olivia A.; Sontag, Jennah M.; Hammond, David. Preventive Medicine, April 2019.

This study analyzes what teens think about e-cigarettes. It looks at online survey data collected from 12,064 teenagers ages 16 to 19 in the U.S., Canada and England. The survey was conducted in July and August of 2017. It asked respondents about their exposure to news about e-cigarettes and their beliefs about the content of these stories. Respondents also answered questions about their perceptions of the harmfulness of e-cigarettes and their intention to use or stop using them. Nearly one-fifth, or 17.1% of respondents, reported encountering e-cigarette news at least “sometimes” over the past month. Most respondents thought the content was either mostly negative (35.7%) or mixed (34.8%). Only 19% viewed the coverage as mostly positive. White respondents were more likely to see negative e-cigarette news than their non-white peers.

“Participants exposed to mostly negative e-cigarette news were more likely to perceive that e-cigarettes cause at least some harm and, among past 30 day users, have intentions to quit e-cigarettes in the next month,” the authors write. Teens who reported seeing mostly positive news were more likely to report curiosity about trying e-cigarettes than peers who encountered mixed or mostly negative coverage. “E-cigarette news exposure may shape e-cigarette harm perceptions and use intentions, as well as reflect existing beliefs and product interest,” the authors conclude. 

To Vape or Not to Vape? Effects of Exposure to Conflicting News Headlines on Beliefs about Harms and Benefits of Electronic Cigarette Use: Results from a Randomized Controlled Experiment
Tan, Andy S. L.; et al. Preventive Medicine, December 2017.

This randomized, controlled experiment provides a complementary perspective to the more common observational research on the topic of news coverage of tobacco products. In this study, 2,056 U.S. adults between the ages of 18 and 85 responded to an online survey after viewing headlines about the safety of e-cigarettes. Each was assigned to one of four groups, reading headlines reflecting one of four of the following messages about the safety e-cigarettes: positive, negative, conflicting, or no message. Participants focused solely on the headlines and then answered questions about their beliefs about the harms and benefits of using e-cigarettes. The researchers found that participants who read negative headlines reported increased beliefs about harms and decreased beliefs of benefits, compared with participants who viewed positive headlines. These differences held when the researchers further analyzed the responses of only participants who had never used e-cigarettes. Adults who had never used e-cigarettes and read headlines with conflicting messages about e-cigarettes reported lower belief in the benefits of e-cigarettes than those who viewed positive headlines. The researchers suggest these findings demonstrate the link between the tone of news coverage of e-cigarettes and public beliefs about the product.

Tobacco control and industry in the news

A Multi-Year Study of Tobacco Control in Newspaper Editorials Using Community Characteristic Data and Content Analysis Findings
Stanfield, Kellie; Rodgers, Shelly. Health Communication, July 2018.

This study looks at the content of 1,473 editorials published in all Missouri newspapers between 2005 and 2011. Researchers chose Missouri because it has one of the lowest tobacco excise taxes in the country and does not have a statewide indoor smoking ban. At the community level, however, there have been successful initiatives to adopt smoke-free policies, the authors explain.

The researchers found that most editorials were about tobacco restrictions or ordinances, used neutral language and were factual in nature. However, they discovered that most of the editorials that took a position against tobacco control were published in cities with no clean air ordinances and the highest rates of smoking. On the other hand, cities that had low smoking rates and smoke-free policies had the highest percentage of editorials with a positive slant toward tobacco control. “The results show an agenda-setting function at the editorial level and a potential selection bias in selecting editorials according to topic, slant, and tone,” the authors conclude. “Not only were positive tones nearly non-existent in editorials, the majority of negatively slanted editorials were published in cities with the highest rates of smoking and no ordinance.”

Characteristics of Community Newspaper Coverage of Tobacco Control and Its Relationship to the Passage of Tobacco Ordinances
Eckler, Petya; Rodgers, Shelly; Everett, Kevin. Journal of Community Health, October 2016.

This study also looks at Missouri newspaper coverage of tobacco issues, but focuses on articles and editorials. The researchers looked at content published by all 381 Missouri newspapers between September 2006 and November 2011. In total, they analyzed 4,711 tobacco news stories. The researchers found that most were about tobacco control and were positively slanted toward it. “Stories with a positive tobacco control slant had information about enforcement, emphasized the lack of negative economic consequences or the health and economic benefits of policies or worker protection,” the authors write. However, editorials tended to be more negative in tone — in both the headline and text — than news stories.

Newspapers in towns that had smoke-free ordinances ran more stories about tobacco control than those located in towns without smoke-free ordinances. The authors write that this implies a connection between media coverage of tobacco control and the passage of tobacco control policies. Towns without smoke-free ordinances had more “non-tobacco control stories,” including news stories about youth smoking.

“We conclude that the tobacco industry may have had success in impacting news stories in no-ordinance cities by diverting attention from tobacco control to secondary topics, such as youth smoking, which meant stories had fewer public health facts and fewer positive health benefits in towns that may have needed these details most,” the authors write.

Setting the Agenda for a Healthy Retail Environment: Content Analysis of US Newspaper Coverage of Tobacco Control Policies Affecting the Point of Sale, 2007–2014
Myers, Allison E.; et al. Tobacco Control, July 2017.

This study looks at media coverage of point-of-sale tobacco control policies — interventions targeted at the place where people purchase tobacco products. Some examples are requirements for tobacco retailers to acquire licenses, prohibitions on the redemption of coupons for tobacco purchases and restrictions on the sale of tobacco in pharmacies.

This study looked at 917 news articles on point-of-sale tobacco control policies published in 268 regional newspapers and five national newspapers between 2007 and 2014. Nearly half of these articles focused on tobacco retailer licensing. Just over half had a mixed, neutral or anti-tobacco control slant. Articles that were framed in terms of politics, rights, or regulation, or that quoted anti-tobacco control sources (e.g., tobacco industry sources, tobacco retailers or tobacco users) were much less likely to have a pro-tobacco-control slant.

Tobacco retailers were cited in 39.6% of the stories studied, second only to government sources (52.3%) and followed by tobacco industry sources (22.0%). On the other hand, stories that focused on health issues and featured research and sources in favor of tobacco control tended to support tobacco control.

Trends in US Newspaper and Television Coverage of Tobacco
Nelson, David E.; et al. Tobacco Control, January 2015.

This study looks at newspaper, newswire and television coverage of tobacco issues in the U.S. between 2004 and 2010. The researchers looked at data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Office on Smoking and Health’s news media surveillance system. The CDC created this system in 2004 to track tobacco stories in the news. The system identifies tobacco news stories in 10 major newspapers, two major newswires and six national television networks. They found that, on average, there were three newspaper stories, four newswire stories and one television story on tobacco each day. Television stories tended to focus on addiction or health effects and were less likely to focus on secondhand smoke or tobacco regulation than newspaper and newswire stories. Newspaper and newswire coverage of tobacco issues varied more than television coverage. “Newspaper editors and television producers have an important agenda-setting role, serving as gatekeepers who make decisions about whether a topic or event is ‘newsworthy,’ and thus, reported at all,” the authors write. “Differences in tobacco themes among individual newspapers and newswire services also strongly suggest that news editors differ in whether and how they choose to report tobacco stories.”

US Media Coverage of Tobacco Industry Corporate Social Responsibility Initiatives
McDaniel, Patricia A.; Lown, E. Anne; Malone, Ruth E. Journal of Community Health, February 2018.

The tobacco industry’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives are projects meant “to shape public and policymaker understandings about tobacco control and the industry.” They include food aid, arts funding, youth smoking prevention programs, disaster relief, employee volunteer programs and research efforts.

This study looks at 649 U.S. news reports about tobacco industry CSR initiatives — including newspaper articles, online news stories and transcripts of television broadcasts and NPR broadcasts — available through online media databases. Publication dates ranged from 1998 through 2014. Tobacco industry CSR coverage was predominately positive, and rarely quoted tobacco control advocates. Local newspapers provided most of the coverage of tobacco industry CSR.

The most common initiatives featured were unrelated to tobacco and aided “non-controversial” beneficiaries such as students, the elderly and arts organizations. Positive coverage was more common in the South — where many tobacco companies are headquartered — than in the West. When tobacco control advocates were quoted, news coverage was less likely to have a positive slant.

“The absence of tobacco control advocates from media coverage represents a missed opportunity to influence opinion regarding the negative public health implications of tobacco industry CSR,” the authors conclude. “Countering the media narrative of virtuous companies doing good deeds could be particularly beneficial in the South, where the burdens of tobacco-caused disease are greatest, and coverage of tobacco companies more positive.”

Read more: Teen vaping: Is it really a gateway to cigarette smoking?; ‘Causes’ vs. ‘contributes to’: Strong causal language on product warning labels more effective; E-cigarettes aren’t better at helping smokers quit than other strategies

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Jane Perlez began reporting for The New York Times in China in late 2011. The Times named her bureau chief in Beijing in 2016. Perlez filed hundreds of stories on China’s foreign policy and led a newsroom of 25 reporters, researchers, interpreters and editors until August 2019. She’s now a fellow at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy — also home to Journalist’s Resource — where she’s exploring how governments in China and the U.S. treat reporters covering the world’s most important strategic relationship.

Perlez and I sat down to talk about the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, how the U.S.-China trade war is playing in China, faking out security forces to score an interview and the thing she misses most about her bureau in Beijing. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Clark Merrefield: In a recent talk you described being followed by Chinese security personnel while reporting in a city near the North Korean border. Can you recount that incident and other challenges of reporting in China?

Jane Perlez: Whenever you go on a reporting trip into an area that Chinese security officials deem important to their security you’re always followed. But this was particularly noticeable because as soon as we arrived to the airport there were people who noticed that we’d gotten off the plane. As soon as we got there we were followed by six cars of plainclothes security people. We were there to look at how sanctions were being busted by Chinese textile manufacturers. They were sending raw yarn and materials into North Korea and having them made up into shirts and sweaters and coats and then being shipped back across the border. And so we wanted to talk to some of the Chinese factory managers. Having been tailed by six cars of young, plainclothes security people makes it very difficult because whomever you talk to is definitely compromised.

No one really wants to speak to Western reporters because in the last couple of years there has been a lot more emphasis on censorship, on shutting out Western ideas, on saying “no” to Western democracy. So Western journalists, unfortunately, are looked upon as potential spies. That makes it very difficult. Earlier this year I went down to Guizhou, which is the poorest province in the country, to do a fairly soft story, nothing the government should have minded about. But I was there for six hours and the provincial authorities came again in like four cars and talked to the people I was with and basically ordered me out of the province and straight onto the train back to Beijing.

CM: How did you overcome being followed near the North Korean border?

JP: We had a tough time but the most important interview we had was with a woman who was a factory manager. The interpreter that I was with suggested that I go to one end of the shopping mall where we were supposed to have pizza with her. And so I was sort of the bait and the security officials came to look at me while he ducked into the pizza shop and came out with a great interview in which she said they put a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of RMB, which is the Chinese currency, into a backpack every month and went down to Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, to pay the factory. So that was a great little detail that would have been hard to get if we hadn’t managed to get the interview.

CM: The big recent news out of China is the near sweep for pro-democracy candidates in Hong Kong’s district council elections, which also saw record voter turnout. What do those elections mean for the rest of China and is there any important but maybe overlooked context that people in the U.S. should know as the pro-democracy movement continues in Hong Kong?

JP: Most people in China don’t pay much attention to what’s going on in Hong Kong. If they do, they don’t, for the large part, share the pro-democracy sentiments. Many Chinese look upon the Hong Kong protesters as spoiled children who should be working harder and not protesting.

As for the Chinese government, I think they’ll be very concerned about the results. I mean, the results from their point of view are probably worse than they were expecting. I’m sure they were not so naïve as to expect there wouldn’t be a turn toward pro-democracy candidates, but the turn toward pro-democracy people was much larger than they would have expected.

CM: Turning to domestic concerns, what are some ramifications or potential outcomes for China from the 2020 presidential race in terms of relations with the U.S.?

JP: They see that both parties, both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, are intent on getting quote-unquote “tougher” with China. I think the Democrats realize that under [President Barack Obama] the U.S. allowed China to get away with some things that would have been better in retrospect to be tougher on.

I think in some respects the Chinese fear the Democrats more, because the Democrats, as [House Majority Leader] Nancy Pelosi said the other day, would reach out to Europe and would make the U.S. and Europe a united front against China. And [President Donald Trump] has alienated the Europeans, so it’s just the U.S. against China, but the U.S. and Europe against China is a much more formidable bloc. So I don’t think they look forward to the Democrats at all. They don’t love Trump, but they may fear the Democrats more. Of course, it depends on who the nominee is.

CM: The Times had a recent headline, “Trump’s Made-for-TV Trade War Keeps World Guessing.” I’m wondering how the trade war is playing in terms of media coverage in China and how people there are understanding the trade war.

JP: The first thing to recognize is basically there’s only good news in the Chinese state media. So there’s not a lot of coverage about the nitty-gritty of the trade war. It’s portrayed as something that China can and will win.

The U.S. is increasingly criticized as being obstinate and unfair. But there’s not a lot of negative coverage about Trump. There could be, because Trump keeps basically delaying or demanding this or that, or sending over a document as he did in May that the Chinese [government] just put a lot of red ink through. Trump was asking them basically to put into their laws ways for the U.S. to monitor whether China was living up to any trade pact, and I don’t think any country would want legislation written to commit them to keep up a deal with a foreign country.

It’s not covered in great detail but everybody knows in China there’s a great rivalry going on with the U.S. When [President] Xi Jinping put a lot of red ink through this agreement in May he went out the next day and made a big speech saying China is now in a long, long struggle with the U.S. So people are geared up there.

CM: Why hasn’t there been much negative coverage of Trump in China’s media?

JP: Because they don’t want to demonize him. Trump in many ways has been bad news for China but in other ways he’s been relatively good news. And they may not mind if he gets reelected.

CM: In what ways has he been good news for China?

JP: Chinese officials are telling American officials, “We couldn’t have ruined the American alliance system even if we tried nearly as well as Trump has.” They’re making friends in a lot of places where the U.S. is, or was, considered in high regard.

You’ve got to remember 8 million Chinese visit Japan every year, in the last two years now. That’s an enormous number of people. It’s doing a lot for the Japanese economy. It’s also doing a lot to improve relations between China and Japan, who were mortal enemies and in many ways are still very unfriendly. But the decision by the Japanese government to open the doors to Chinese tourists has got lots and lots of implications — particularly as Trump keeps bearing down and telling the Japanese they’ve got to pay more for the alliance.

CM: “Made in China 2025” and the “Chinese Dream” are two slogans Xi Jinping rolled out earlier this decade. I’m interested in the messaging aspect because they echo American slogans and characterizations, the American Dream being the most obvious. Was that done purposely?

JP: The China Dream and China 2025, these are slogans by Xi Jinping, who’s a very clever propagandist, to promote nationalism and to tell the Chinese people that China’s going to be number one — that China is going to reclaim the position that it had in the world many centuries ago and it’s now China’s turn to be number one.

China does seek to be a serious competitor and rival against the U.S. and I think many people here in the U.S. are asleep at the wheel about this. [Competition] is nothing to be afraid of, it just means that you have to know about it and you have to be alert — and don’t be so confident.

CM: China now has the biggest 5G network in the world, beyond anything available in the U.S. Shenzhen is China’s Silicon Valley for new tech hardware. What is China’s global standing right now in terms of tech and how did it get there?

JP: China wants to be the paramount tech leader in the world, there’s no doubt about it. “Made in China 2025” is more than just a slogan. It’s a campaign launched by Xi Jinping in 2015 to make China preeminent in ten tech endeavors in the next 10 years, from 2015 to 2025. That includes artificial intelligence, that includes driverless cars, it includes semiconductors and on and on and on. I think they are quite determined to surpass the U.S. in those areas. They have many more scientists than we have. I think the debate is whether they have the quality. They certainly have the quantity, but do they have the quality?

Their protagonist in this artificial intelligence battle, [computer scientist and businessman] Kai-Fu Lee, says that China is already ahead in artificial intelligence because the most important thing is the amount of data that you have to exploit. And because of the nature of the size of China, 1.2 billion people, China has much more data to exploit. There are others in the U.S. who say it’s really not the amount of data, it’s the way you exploit it. So it’ll be very interesting to see who crosses the finish line first.

CM: Given your background covering foreign policy, what were some major foreign policy stories that unfolded while you were in the Beijing bureau?

JP: The South China Sea is probably a total unknown to most people in the U.S., but it’s an important body of water because it’s basically the entrance to the western Pacific [Ocean]. Many of the goods from China out to the rest of the world go through the South China Sea. It’s one of the busiest, most commercially important waterways in the world.

While I was there the Chinese built artificial islands in this sea, and this contravened international law. But the U.S. didn’t really do much about it or didn’t know what to do about it. So now China has more than half a dozen artificial islands in this very, very important waterway, on some of which they have military runways and naval berths. China can have much more of a military presence in this waterway than it had before. That was quite a startling development. They have a capability to put missiles there, they can put marine soldiers there, they can put all kinds of assets there. Some military strategists in the U.S. say these islands don’t matter at all because if it came close to war, then the U.S. could just knock them out, send a couple of missiles and smash the islands to pieces. But that’s not a great way, it seems to me, to look at it.

Maybe there might have been a way to negotiate ways that the Chinese didn’t build these [islands] as fast and as dramatically as they did. But nothing was done by the Obama administration to try and stall this. The Obama administration was very keen to have China on board with the Iran nuclear deal and on the climate deal. And their reigning philosophy seemed to be, “We need China for these two things so we can’t be demanding on other things.” Seems to me you can walk and chew gum at the same time.

The other thing that happened while I was there was the explosion in surveillance. Not so much of foreigners, because you expect that, but on the Chinese people themselves. Facial recognition cameras in many, many places. Fingerprinting necessary everywhere. Social media habits watched everywhere. Very sophisticated, high-tech methods of surveilling the Chinese population. Which I think is scary, not only for the implications at home in China, but also if China decides to export this expertise.

CM: What’s one thing you miss most about your time reporting in China and one thing you’re glad to have left behind?

JP: There’s nothing I’m glad to have left behind, but I do miss my colleagues in the Beijing bureau. In particular I miss the researchers, the Chinese researchers who worked with us and helped us with language and helped us with the politics.

All the researchers are born in China, been to high school there, been to university there, and so they have breathed and lived the Chinese system all their lives. They understand it in a way that an outsider can’t really. We worked very closely with them and I really do miss their energy and their insight and their suggestions.

And, in some respects, their bravery. Because it’s not easy working for a prominent Western outlet. Researchers do get asked by local security people in Beijing what they’re working on what we’re doing. And I always told the researchers, “Look, just be honest, tell them what you’re doing. You’re not doing anything illegal. You’re working for us totally legally. The ministry of foreign affairs knows that you’re employed by us. So just be frank and candid.” But it can be a little unnerving to be interviewed like that. I have great respect for the researchers and we basically couldn’t have functioned without them. So, I’m saying “hello” to them.

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Steubenville High School in Ohio made national headlines shortly after two of its star football players raped a teenage girl in August 2012. Earlier that year, 14-year-old Daisy Coleman was allegedly sexually assaulted by a boy from her high school in a small Missouri town. And later in 2012, 15-year old Saratoga High School student Audrie Pott died from suicide days after three young men sexually assaulted her.

Social media and cell phone video — relatively new technologies in the early 2010s — were central to those cases and played a starring role in the national media coverage.

Bard College visiting lecturer Anna Gjika, a sociologist who studies gender and sexuality, provides new insight about that national media coverage in her paper, “New Media, Old Paradigms: News Representations of Technology in Adolescent Sexual Assault,” published September 2019 in the journal Crime, Media, Culture.

Gjika identified three broad themes:

Technology was a model witness.

“It’s actually the technology that’s testifying, that’s providing the voice for the victims,” Gjika says.

Technology was used as evidence.

“Technology becomes a corroborator for the victims’ accusations,” Gjika says. “It also gives police and the press and the public a look into the minds of these alleged offenders.”

Technology was portrayed as a threat.

“The press tend to focus on risk in their coverage, and on the perils of technology,” Gjika says. “These good things — like the idea that you’re gathering evidence, witnessing — become harmful.”

What Gjika found lacking in much of the news coverage were discussions about why and how the sexual violence had occurred or allegedly occurred in the first place.

“Even when there’s coverage of unusual aspects of a crime, it needs to come back to the actual story and explain why that violence happened to begin with,” Gjika says. “We have to always come back to the original act.”

We called Gjika to talk in depth about her new paper. The conversation that follows has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Journalist’s Resource: Talk about the three cases you analyzed. What were the similarities among them and why did you pick them?

Gjika: I started out paying attention to the Steubenville rape case, and it just exploded. It was everywhere in the news. What happened was a young woman, a girl, was sexually assaulted multiple times by at least two of her known male friends while she was heavily intoxicated at a party. This is in many ways what we consider a typical sexual assault. There are people who know each other, there’s alcohol involved. So I was surprised at how much media coverage it was attracting. Typically, what the press focuses on when it comes to sexual violence is what is unusual, what is extremely violent, what involves strangers. Various racial identities are always going to attract more media. As a larger project covering cases, I also interviewed journalists. What I heard from them constantly was that if it wasn’t for social media, a case like Steubenville would just be he-said-she-said. And those [scenarios] really do not get a lot of attention because there are too many. That reasoning heightened my interest in the case.

In the same year as Steubenville, the Daisy Coleman and Audrie Pott incidents also occurred. These involved very similar settings. It’s a group of young men, there’s alcohol involved. The alleged victims are heavily intoxicated and allegations of sexual assault by multiple men occur. I’m not the only one who notices this pattern. What happens is the media also notices the similarity. They start in their coverage reporting the three stories together, more or less. So every story after Steubenville that involves Daisy Coleman or Audrie Pott actually references either Steubenville and-or one of the other cases. They’re presented as instances of the same theme.

JR: What was it about the similarities among these cases that led journalists to frame them that way, to lump them together?

Gjika: I think they saw it as cases that captured things that parents worry about for their kids. Things like underage drinking and partying. But then also, social media — what does it mean to have a cell phone in every pocket? It was this very timely, topical issue that was being exposed. There have been a number of cases that have centered around sexting or cyber bullying, so those issues are also looped in and part of these incidents. That made them that much more newsworthy. There’s public concern.

JR: Let’s go over the data itself a little bit. What news outlets did you look at and how many stories?

Gjika: I followed these stories from the moment they hit national headlines to the time when they became local stories again and went out of the national spotlight. That’s about a 13-month period. So what does the national press say about these stories, and what enters our national consciousness? I wanted to look at the most widely read online and print sources. Those being Yahoo! News, Huffington Post and CNN, and then in terms of more traditional print newspapers, The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. I ended up with a sample of 146 articles. Two-thirds of those are about Steubenville because Steubenville received so much attention and was the first one of its kind. They’re all either direct news stories or opinion pieces.

JR: You identified three themes in the coverage. The first theme you call “technology as a model witness.” What does that mean?

Gjika: The idea was: how is technology presented in the coverage? What was new or novel about it was this role that social media was playing. From the beginning, The New York Times was the first source to do this. They described it as sort of “the case that unfolded on the internet.” Via Twitter and via text messages. Technology witnessed the crime, it documents evidence of the crime. And it’s through these technologies that both the victim and the community and the police find out about the incident. In all three cases, the young victims did not remember what had happened. A little bit later, when the cases go to trial or people are talking to the press or talking to the police, it’s actually the technology that’s testifying, that’s providing the voice for the victims. Jane Doe, for example, in Steubenville didn’t know what had happened. But she had Twitter messages and text messages and images from her friend’s phone that she turned over to the police and said essentially, “Here is a digital trail. This is what’s going to speak for me.” In some ways, the technology has this authority because it’s right there in black and white. There are images. There are videos. It gets to the truth of the matter in a way that a victim’s word would not.

JR: The next theme you found was technology as evidence.

Gjika: Technology as a model witness bleeds into this theme. There were so many stories that referenced the volume of data that police were able to extract. They looked at say 10 phones or 13 phones and something like 400,000 text messages, 9,000 hours of video, whatever the case was. It’s this volume of information that technology makes available to the police. Technology becomes a corroborator for the victims’ accusations. It also gives police and the press and the public a look into the minds of these alleged offenders. We have their own words now via text messages or YouTube videos or cell phone videos. We get to see how callous they are. They’re laughing at the victim. They don’t care. Some of them know that they’re assaulting so they know they’re committing criminal behavior. Again, this theme of technology as evidence and as witness overlap.

JR: And then there’s the theme of technology as a threat.

Gjika: Yeah. In providing so much evidence, it starts raising questions around, “Wow, how much data can they capture about us? Is there such a thing as privacy?” At the same time, once all of this data becomes available in the press and it goes national, people also get on social media and start sort of attacking these towns and communities. The press tend to focus on risk in their coverage, and on the perils of technology. All these good things — like the idea that you’re gathering evidence, witnessing — become harmful.

There are two major threats from technology in this theme. One is that it threatens small town life because it’s exposing what is happening in these communities, whether amongst their athletes or amongst their kids or in their homes, essentially. And then the larger threat comes from the hackers, the vigilantes, the public advocates. So the reputations of these communities are in danger. The investigations potentially get compromised because so many people are contacting police departments, so many people are making accusations. Vigilantes are uncovering data that could potentially be misleading or incorrect. And then there’s a threat to the offenders — due process is compromised because we know so much about them and what they were up to. I talk about this a little bit in the article. The threat to offenders and due process are very legitimate concerns. But there is so much space devoted to that in every article compared to how little space is given to what the digital trail means for survivors.

JR: What can reporters learn from the focus on technology in the coverage of these cases?

Gjika: I get why technology and new media platforms are what would become the focus. But these incidents don’t happen just because technology evolved or was available to these kids. The underlying issue is that a sex crime has occurred. And because there’s so much focus on technology, in many ways, the national outlets anyway, miss the fact that a sex crime occurred that they need to talk about. When I say they need to talk about it, it’s not just so-and-so raped Jane Doe. It’s more about why would that assault happen? What is going on in our culture? You need to talk about things like rape culture, about masculinity, about unequal gender relations. All of those themes are available in the actual text messages, in the words and the videos. The material is there and it’s worth being discussed.

Because we’re not talking about the sexual violence, we’re not talking about the victims. The focus is on the perpetrators and the risks that technology poses. The victims, really, having this information go public, having the entire nation know about what happened to you, is really traumatizing for a lot of survivors. There were a few articles on CNN that did a very good job discussing sexual assault statistics and the systemic causes that enable sexual violence and what happens to survivors. But outside of those three or four stories, there really wasn’t much. I was shocked. Especially in the op-eds that followed, there wasn’t an engagement with the themes of what really caused this, and how do we address sexual violence before we address the technology.

JR: To put a fine point on it, why is it important for journalists to explain those systemic issues you’re talking about?

Gjika: At a very high level, the media have a responsibility to communicate to the public why certain events happen. The press help us make sense of the world. I would think that perhaps most people know why rape happens. But this is my research and this is what research has shown for the past 30 years — they don’t [know]. There is a lot of victim blaming. Even in these incidents, there was a lot of, “Well, we don’t know. She could have consented before she was drunk. Why did she drink? Why did she pass out? She should have known better.” There’s a lot of focus on the victim, on the young girls, and what they should have done. Well, why aren’t we talking about consent? Why aren’t we talking about positive sexual norms? When you look at the narratives, research repeatedly shows that people are actually quite — even if they know why rape happens, it’s sort of a “shrug, this has happened.” I think our role as public educators, whether as academics or journalists, is to challenge that consistently and say, “Is it OK that this is happening?”

JR: You’re looking at media coverage from six or seven years ago. Anecdotally, do you see the media coverage themes and issues you raise in this paper still happening?

Gjika: This is a national trend I’m pointing to. Local papers do a much better job contextualizing. The Plain Dealer covering the Steubenville case did an excellent job talking about all these issues. And blogs usually do a much better job because they do focus on the larger structural factors at work. But the news cycle demands viewers’ attention and, by nature, it demands that you focus on the most sensational aspects. For stories like these, these types of incidents, they haven’t gone away. But I don’t see as much reporting around it. So it’s hard to say whether the coverage has improved. I would venture that the coverage from blogs and the mainstreaming of blogs has probably exerted some pressure on more traditional coverage. Also, the fact that readers can now tweet back at news sources means there’s a shorter feedback loop.

But look at the #MeToo coverage, for example. Think about which stories were highlighted. It’s really high-profile people. It’s stories that are quite lurid in their details. It’s not the mundane stories that get attention. So I think that propensity is quite deeply embedded in journalism to go for the novel, to go for the dramatic. Because that’s what’s going to attract viewers. My research comes on the heels of 30 years of research on this topic and this theme is seen consistently.

Reporting on sexual violence needs to bring out realistic accounts of rape. Even when there’s coverage of unusual aspects of a crime, it needs to come back to the actual story and explain why that violence happened to begin with. We have to always come back to the original act.

There are numerous legal and other support services for victims and survivors of sexual violence, including SurvJustice, the National Sexual Violence Resource Center and the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network.

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Last month, leadership at The Vindicator in Youngstown, Ohio told employees that the 150-year-old newspaper of record for this once-booming steel town would be shuttering. Family owned since the late-1800s, The Vindicator couldn’t find a buyer. A few weeks from now, there will be no daily newspaper to cover this city of 65,000.

Vindicator reporters last year followed the paper trail to detail indictments related to an alleged bribery scheme involving a former mayor, a property developer and a city finance director. Youngstown, a place where journalism is apparently still very much needed, is on the verge of becoming a news desert — a place starving for journalism.

The Vindicator is just one of hundreds of local newspapers to go out of business since the internet became a part of daily life for many Americans. But there are emerging models of local journalism that may at least partially counter the information drought that follows when newspapers go under.

Heidi Legg, director of special projects at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy (also home to Journalist’s Resource) surveys the outlook for local news in a new discussion paper. Legg is a journalist who founded The Editorial in 2012 and whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Globe and Mail, The Boston Globe, GlobalPost and CNN.com, among other outlets. She identifies five news models that she says could save local journalism — and even democracy itself.

“The irony is not lost that free markets are possible because of democracy — a democracy protected and fostered by a free press,” she writes.

Legg interviewed a range of experts working in media startups and legacy news organizations to identify these five trends shaping the business of journalism:

• The Billionaire Local Newspaper Club: This category includes local and mid-sized newspapers that get an infusion of cash from billionaire owners to ramp up their digital presence and editorial coverage.
• Emerging Nonprofit Models: Eliminating the profit motive, nonprofit news organizations that get funding from private donors, tech companies and foundations are becoming more common. The Lenfest Institute for Journalism and the American Journalism Project are two large players that each have $40 million to fund local news innovation.
• For-Profit Models: There aren’t many new commercial startups in the local news space, but a few are trying to produce news while turning a profit by wading into digital consulting or hosting events.
• Mobilizers: Projects like Report for America and ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network aim to bolster local news coverage and investigations with a national approach at a local level.
• Accelerators: This last category focuses on organizations that train local news startups on how to improve their digital savvy. Examples include The Information Accelerator, the Lenfest Institute, Facebook Accelerator, Google News Initiative, and the Membership Puzzle Project at New York University.

We recently sat down with Legg to talk about the state of local journalism and her paper, “A Landscape Study of Local News Models Across America.” The conversation that follows has been edited for length and clarity.

Journalist’s Resource: You write in your paper that local journalism is in crisis and that the promise of the digital press has crumbled. What’s the reality that local news organizations face today and why does it matter?

Legg: I was born in 1971, and since 1970 we’ve lost 500 dailies, at least. That was the count up to 2016. So in my lifetime, we’ve lost 500 dailies and counting. If you add in weeklies, some of the statistics we see are up to almost 2,000 dailies and weeklies combined. One of the most startling facts that I found is that 45% — and we’re getting closer to 50% — of all the staff inside newsrooms is gone, is just disappeared.

I think if we completely lose journalism and what has been a honed craft and turn it over to the belief that information should be free and there should be absolutely no gatekeepers, I really think democracy crumbles.

That’s what I wanted this paper to try and lay out: here are some hints of promise, and if you care about journalism or you care about democracy or you care about your local city or town, I’m hoping this paper is a guide to brainstorm around. There is no solution yet, I would argue.

JR: You identify five emerging trends for local news in the U.S. Can you walk through those in more detail?

Legg: I could see that there was this deep-pocketed category [of investors] that tended to be more commercial — but not necessarily. For example, [craigslist.org founder] Craig Newmark doesn’t actually own a newspaper but he’s giving tons of money to the industry, from universities to experimenting with products and ideas. And then you have someone like Jeff Bezos [founder of Amazon.com, who bought The Washington Post in 2013] and here in Boston, Linda and John Henry [John Henry co-owns the Boston Red Sox baseball team; he and Linda Henry bought The Boston Globe in 2013] taking their personal net worth and transforming a legacy paper.

I remember I asked [Post editor] Marty Baron, who I don’t know well, but he was here at the [Shorenstein] Center and I said to him, “What did you learn first and foremost from Jeff Bezos coming in?” And he said, basically, you have a brand that now can transport worldwide and you have no boundary of delivery, so just think about that, think about how ubiquitous this can be.

So the billionaires — that was one category. The second category was to look really closely at non-profits, many of which are small. The poster child is the Texas Tribune. It’s a great story. It also has 4,300 — maybe close to 5,000 — paid [subscribers]. Look at that compared to The Boston Globe, which has 120,000 paid subscribers. Now, The Boston Globe has legacy. They have brand. They’ve been around a long time. They’ve converted old readers. But it’s hard to really compare these emerging, successful nonprofits to the commercial, digital plays. So I really wanted to home in on these nonprofits and look at them in their own category and market size.

Then I looked at for-profits. They have a larger span because you have these legacy players who have a bigger digital hold already. But you also have some really interesting, innovative startups, many in the newsletter-only space, where they push a newsletter every morning. They’re not worried about all the other legacy pieces that existed in a newsroom because they’re starting from scratch. So whether it’s 6AM, or WhereBy.Us or the Charlotte Agenda or the Pittsburgh Incline — which is now folded into public radio — they’re just a newsletter.

JR: Are those on a paid subscription basis?

Legg: They’re giving their newsletter for free, some of them. But what they’re doing, which is where it gets a little interesting to watch, is some of them are charging people in the community for digital expertise, which can get a little funky because where’s the [separation of] church and state? So here you have WhereBy.Us, who is going to give you your morning newsletter but they’re also offering services to do web design and digital consulting to companies in the town. One could argue that perhaps they might be compromised if their biggest client needs to have a story told about them. I think that’s worth watching. Where it gets even funkier is some of these — WhereBy.Us being an example — are then calling their news arm of their enterprise a public benefit corporation. So they’re able to take grant money to do their news stories and then their for-profit business is around web services, events, product placement in the email. You’re seeing this really new hybrid happening in the news space.

The next category is called mobilizers. They’re basically a bunch of new efforts to bolster local newsrooms. I would argue that Journalist’s Resource could be a mobilizer, although you don’t charge for it. But, Report for America, the ProPublica Local News Network and the American Journalism Project all say that they have a mission to help bolster local newsrooms. So if you’re The Burlington Free Press or The Seattle Times or The Dallas Morning News, you can now have a Report for America, young, American college student come for a year and help on your desk. You can have a ProPublica Local News Network affiliation where ProPublica uses one of their investigative journalists at their head office working with your local journalist to help crack a case. And then the American Journalism Project claims they are going to be doing some venture investing into local news. We’re all looking forward to seeing what that looks like. So [mobilizers] are not standalones, they’re there to bolster.

And then the last category is accelerators. The reason I put that one in is because it would be unfair not to recognize that Google and Facebook are making some strides in the market. Certainly there’s a lot of controversy around that. When people look at their annual revenue and profit and say [these efforts are] a blip on their books. But look, something is something.

The Information is a very interesting B2B [business-to-business] for-profit, new digital magazine out in Silicon Valley. I would argue that they have the best of the digital tools because they’re in Silicon Valley, built by Silicon Valley kids and they will bring a number of people out every year from different markets — including international markets — to come and learn how to transform your digital idea for news into a digital juggernaut.

BoiseDev is another really interesting one to me. They’re in Boise, Idaho, started by this guy named Don Day. He writes about development and business in the Boise area. Maybe it becomes a B2B product. He’s charging $10 a month and he has 260 paid users in only five months. Even though he started it in 2013, he wasn’t charging anybody. His will be interesting to watch.

[Update: BoiseDev rolled out its paid subscriber model in November 2018. As of August 1, 2019 it has more than 350 subscribers, according to Day.]

The Santa Rosa Press-Democrat is another great one to watch. They charge $10.50 a month. This is one where a bunch of local residents with some cash bought the local paper back from the Halifax Media Group. They do 15 newsletters, a regional magazine and they seem to be having some pretty good traction. Ten dollars feels, in some of the smaller markets, [to be] the number that consumers say, “OK, for 10 bucks I can make sure my local paper exists and I can get some quality news.”

JR: You said there’s no solution, but is there a model that’s better poised to sustain local journalism? Put another way, a local news organization looking at your research, what can they get out of it?

Legg: If you want to be a non-profit and you’re OK with the rules that come with a non-profit, that is a way to get some injection of capital. I’m hard pressed to say which model is better because you could also do a digital play where you see — for example, WhereBy.Us and Richland Source — doing some digital consulting in their local communities. I worry about the [separation of] church and state issue, so that one’s not perfect either.

The one that I feel most hopeful about are these large legacies turning around, which is really surprising to me because I wanted it to be the digital kids that come and disrupt and create on their own. I just don’t think you can do it unless you have really deep pockets.

So I’m really banking on some of these legacy papers, places like The Dallas Morning News and The Oregonian and The Seattle Times and The Boston Globe and The Philly [Philadelphia] Inquirer and The Miami Herald. Or, go find some local weeklies that need an injection of capital. I think trying to get a digital subscriber at a very low price point is probably the way out, but I don’t think we know that yet.

JR: You said that “democracy crumbles” without local journalism. Isn’t the counter that we get enough news from other sources? Don’t we have enough coming at us?

Legg: We have a deluge for sure. But if we’re all watching the [former special counsel Robert] Mueller testimony and we’re all watching the Democratic debates and we’re all watching President Trump’s Twitter, who’s looking after what’s happening at city hall? Who’s looking after the real people? And that’s what journalism’s job was. It wasn’t to be the only gatekeeper in town. It was to keep a town honest.

People still have to go to their local hospital, their local school, ride their local bus, and if somebody isn’t giving that context, I don’t know how that works. It feels a little unruly to me. We have this disconnection going on in our society, we see depression and suicide rates up. I think it’s all linked to this lack of local tapestry that holds us together. You and I can jump on a plane and be in Japan in a few hours, but our kids also have to go to school down the street. You have to be able to function where you live. I sound sort of romantic about that but the proof is showing us that people aren’t happy. They don’t trust institutions, we have a rise in mental health issues, people are apathetic, they’re not voting, they’re disengaged.

One of the roundups that JR did, which was so great, showed that when there was no local paper, the bond yield — the cost to borrow money — is much higher. It also showed that less people run for city politics. You just don’t have an engaged environment. I would say there’s a price in that and local news is a really big piece.

JR: There have been reports of editorial interference since billionaire Sheldon Adelson bought the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2015. With Jeff Bezos and The Washington Post, the general perception is that he is not interfering in the Post’s editorial decisions. Still, having a billionaire owner can complicate coverage for a media outlet. What are your thoughts on the boundaries or lack of them between billionaire owners and newsrooms?

Legg: As I note in the paper, there is also the Sinclair Broadcasting problem where the Sinclair family has gone and bought all these local networks and they literally said on record that we’re here, President Trump, to be your mouthpiece.

It’s our job to ensure that we, as journalists, give that context. We need to explain that the Marty Baron-Jeff Bezos model, to date, is working. That the Brian McGrory-John-and-Linda-Henry model, to date, is working. And that the Adelson model is not working, that the Sinclair model is not working. It’s up to us to demand in the industry that we are a profession, like architects and lawyers and doctors, and that our editors in our newsrooms are independent, and that our editors demand that and stand up to power. And when we see [editors] who are doing that, that we celebrate those, we remind the public that’s what gives you a healthy democracy. I don’t think we can say, “No billionaire owners.”

JR: But from one perspective the Sheldon Adelson/Sinclair model is working, in the sense that they have a message and they’re effectively publicizing that message.

Legg: [New Yorker staff writer] Jill Lepore talks in her article about how in the early dawn of America, it was more that situation — you had left-leaning and right-leaning newspapers. That is a model we can return to. We can just say, “These are left, these are right.” But that feels disappointing to me. I don’t have a quantitative measure to put behind that. I just know that we are hyper-polarized in this country and I feel like a newsroom is a place that can start to bridge and act as a voice of reason.

I don’t think it means we shouldn’t have The Atlantic, which says, “We’re left leaning,” or Reason Magazine, who clearly declared they’re libertarian, or The National Review, which clearly says, “We’re right leaning.” I think that’s fine. But I’d like to know that in my town or city, there are a couple of truth-tellers. I hope this paper gives a shout out to those newspapers that have decent, fair, equitable newsrooms.

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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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