Journalists need to acknowledge our trauma

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In a way, the exchange sounded like a traditional can-you-top-this exchange of war stories among a bunch of reporters in a bar.

This one was the first journalist on the scene of an airliner crash. That one had been held hostage. Another covered a mass shooting. Another was the first person at the scene of a horrible crash and rendered aid to injured children. Another was stabbed by a psychotic person in a bar. Columbine. Hurricanes. Covering AIDS. On and on the stories came, but not a word of boasting.

We were talking about the stress of journalism and how we need to do a better job of helping our colleagues address the trauma of covering trauma.

Bruce Shapiro, field director of the Dart Center for Journalism &Trauma, was leading a session at the annual conference of newsroom trainers, hosted by the Poynter Institute. Shapiro was a late addition to the schedule, inspired by all the stories we’ve been hearing and reading about colleagues covering Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath in incredibly stressful situations.

Poynter’s Howard Finberg and Evelyn Hsu of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, organizers of the conference, figured the trainers might be interested in a session on “Training in Times of Stress.”

Shapiro's answer to that was pretty simple: “Training in times of crisis is mostly not going to happen.” Even if the title wasn’t on target, the idea of bringing Shapiro to talk to the trainers was right on target. Before and after the crisis, we can do far more than we traditionally have.

For starters, we can recognize the trauma of covering trauma. Those stories – perhaps the same ones we have boasted about over a beer in different settings – can affect us profoundly. For starters, we need to admit that. We did.

Linda Caricaburu, assistant managing editor of the Great Falls Tribune, fought back tears as she told about that wreck where she arrived before police or the ambulance and turned from reporter to first responder. As a young reporter fresh out of school, she was unsure whether she should set aside her notebook and cross the line from observer to participant. As a fellow human looking at children tossed from the back of a pickup truck, she knew she couldn’t just stand by and take notes as she waited for the ambulance. Her voice trembled as she described the emotional support she received from her editor: He told her she should go home and change her blood-stained shirt before resuming work. She hadn’t told that story in years.

Caricaburu’s story prompted Shapiro’s account of why he began studying and teaching about journalism and trauma: After years of reporting on criminal justice, Shapiro was one of seven people stabbed in a café near his home by a man with mental problems in 1994. A reporter who beat emergency crews to the scene gave up his front-row access to the carnage to run out and direct rescuers to the victims. Shapiro credits the reporter with saving his life.

“Some people are changed profoundly by experiences of horror,” Shapiro said. “We are all affected by the stories we cover.”

Shapiro educated us about post-traumatic stress disorder. It doesn’t affect everyone who experiences trauma, only about 10 to 15 percent. For half of those the symptoms – nightmares, flashbacks, jitters, avoidance, numbness – end in a few months without help. Others have chronic PTSD and need therapy.

We have to stop pretending journalists are these thick-skinned creatures who tell off-color jokes in the face of trauma. We feel the fear. We think of our own children when we write about dead or abused children.

We do our jobs in those difficult situations, as Kristi Bowden, now assistant managing editor at the Detroit News, did when she was a young reporter in Louisville, pressed into duty as a young AP reporter after a mass murder by a gunman right outside her office. She did what she had to do at the time, she told her colleagues. But a couple weeks later, she needed to go home for some comfort from her mother.

Sometimes Mom isn’t available or isn’t enough. We need to ask reporters after traumatic experiences to reflect on what they experienced, so they can acknowledge the emotional cost of a story (and we can refer them to the appropriate help if they need more than a debriefing). Gail Bulfin, training and reader editor at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, told of bringing in a therapist to provide chair massages for staff members after a particularly difficult stretch of stories.

In a later e-mail exchange, Shapiro stressed, “This is also about making better journalists and better journalism. If reporters are given baseline information about traumatic stress, they'll report on victims with more authority and depth, and make more intelligent news judgments. If news organizations provide more effective training and support, they ensure that talented journalists can keep doing their jobs, instead of having their news judgment compromised or careers derailed by unrecognized PTSD, depression or other issues.”

In addition to addressing the aftermath of trauma, we need to prepare reporters and photographers better for trauma in such programs as interviewing workshops and seminars on crime coverage or disaster reporting, Shapiro said.

He recalled an Investigative Reporters and Editors conference where the Dart Center assembled a panel of distinguished veterans of major prize-winning stories who said “they wished they had known ahead of time the impact of absorbing other people’s stories.”

We are learning the impact of absorbing these stories. This is not a bunch of touchy-feely nonsense. Understanding the impact of covering trauma will help us cover these compelling stories better. And it will help us retain the journalists who have gained this valuable experience.

No amount of training (or denial) can (or should) turn off a journalist’s humanity. When we witness tragedy and trauma, we need to acknowledge our tears and our fears.

sbuttry@americanpressinstitute.org

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