Journalism is a time bomb. The fuse is lit when an editor
sends an untrained journalist to interview a victim of trauma,
but the damage caused by this bomb isn’t loud and immediate.
Forcing a victim to revisit their trauma, or unwittingly making
them feel blame for what has happened to them may have
effects that might not come through for years.
In our increasingly litigious world, the time must when
someone will seek damages for trauma caused or exacerbated
by a journalist. A news editor, in the witness box, under cross-
examination, would be no match for a senior lawyer who asks:
“How do you prepare your journalists to interview a woman
who has just found out her daughter has been raped and
murdered?”
“Interviewing training that says ‘show empathy’? That all?” At
this point you hope you paid your newsroom insurance premium.
That insurance had better cover the journalists themselves too.
Patricia Drew, resident psychotherapist at the New York Times
newspaper says in 1995 the paper was losing journalists to
trauma. The paper had been caring only for physical well-being
of its journalists, not their psychological health.
This is not to say journalists are two kilogram grey-matter
weaklings. They go into and out of war zones repeatedly. Some
have made a career of it, dealing with the worst of the world for
20 years or more. They speak with victims from different cultures;
they file the stories on time in appalling logistical and emotional
conditions; they win the awards. To be able to deal with suffering
so alien to their own, these journalists are remarkable.
For how long? Psycho-therapist and former BBC war
correspondent Mark Brayne says that journalists gorge on
violence. He admits to being taken out of a story by management
because he had grown addicted to the adrenaline rush.
Psychiatrist Anthony Feinstein from the University of Toronto
has done one of the only studies on how trauma has affected
war correspondents. He corresponded with 140 war journalists,
and found that 27% had symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress
Disorder (PTSD). None had been trained in dealing with their
own trauma, or in dealing with traumatised people.
I also spoke with about 50 experienced journalists from 19
countries (many of them places of recent crises: the U.S.,
Israel; Nigeria, Albania, India and Ghana among them) and
none of them had received any training in psychological
trauma. In the media outlets I visited there was no trauma
training being carried out, even as a component of
interviewing. Some do indeed make mention of ‘empathy’ with
the interviewee, but often these courses equate ‘empathy’ to
‘nod your head and look understanding’.
True psychological trauma training for journalists can never
put the journalist in the place of the traumatised interviewee,
but it can give the reporter an understanding of what the
person might be going through. It can tell you when to
approach; when not to approach; how to approach; what not
to say; what you can say (even something as simple as “I’m
sorry for your loss”. Eric Beauchamin, a highly experienced
and awarded war correspondent with Radio Netherlands makes
the point that we should never just go in and out. “Traumatised
people unload onto journalists. They think of you as a caring
person who is interested enough to listen.” So why, he asks,
do journalists tear out of the place the moment they’ve got
the grab? Getting these interviews brings responsibility.. a
responsibility to think about the victims.
Avoiding traumatised people is not the answer. Professor Lori
Dickerson from Michigan State University’s Victims and the
Media Program believes traumatised people want to talk about
their experiences. She believes journalists should approach
and ask for an interview, but the way of making the approach
is very important. For example...be as non-threatening as
possible... no foot-in-door treatment. Leave all your journalistic
equipment in the car. Give them the power...“if you want to
talk to me, please call me”. And always be totally fine with a
‘no comment’.
Trauma training for journalists is a relatively new phenomenon.
Michigan psychiatrist Dr Frank Ochberg says it was a struggle
to get anyone to do it in 1997, and only a handful of
journalists are touching on the issue worldwide right now.
Professor Bill Cote, the former head of the journalism
department at the Michigan State University says that from
his experience, many countries have no journalism schools at
all, let alone specialised psychological trauma training.
Unskilled people are hired and need to learn the skills of
journalism on the job. This, he says, makes it extremely difficult
to pass on trauma training in these countries.
Australia is one of the ground-breakers. Queensland’s QUT has
been doing work with its journalism students for some years.
I came across only three other universities that do this, and
Phil Kafcaloudes
has been a journalist for 20 years working for theAustralian
Broadcasting Corporation in SouthAfrica,Vietnam,Malaysia and the Pacific.Through
a Churchill Fellowship, Phil has been travelling through the US, the UK, Canada,
Germany and the Netherlands to study how journalists are trained to deal with
psychological trauma. Here he reports some of his findings and issues a call to
action for broadcast news managers and journalists worldwide.
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