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A growing movement recognizes the toll reporting can take on members of the media

 

By Rebecca A. Clay | American Psychological Association

Today Show host Hoda Kotb broke down in tears on live television after interviewing New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees about how COVID-19 was affecting Louisiana. She wasn’t the only reporter to show emotion on air. MSNBC news anchor Rachel Maddow teared up at the close of her show as she remembered a colleague who had died of COVID-19. And CNN host Erin Burnett cried during an interview with the widow of a COVID-19 victim. Those tears are just one sign of the trauma being experienced by journalists covering the COVID-19 pandemic, both in the field and in the newsroom. And that trauma can lead to mental health challenges.

“Journalists are currently bearing witness to individual and collective grief at high levels,” says psychologist Elana Newman, PhD, research director at the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, a project of the Columbia University School of Journalism.

Now there’s growing awareness within newsrooms that journalists who are covering the pandemic and other traumatic events such as terrorism, disasters or shootings can’t—and shouldn’t—just “suck it up and move on,” says Newman. Psychologists have played a key role in that culture shift, promoting journalism that takes into account the potential impact of trauma on both reporters and sources. In addition to treating journalists who have experienced trauma, these psychologists are advising newsrooms on how to prevent reporters from developing mental health problems. Psychologists are also teaching journalists how to avoid inflicting additional trauma on sources through their reporting.

Treating Trauma

Most journalists report having faced on-the-job exposure to traumatic events at some time in their careers, according to research compiled in a fact sheet by the Dart Center. “When we talk about journalism and trauma, we immediately think of the war correspondent or the reporter covering a mass disaster like 9/11,” says Newman. “We forget about the community police reporter or the local journalist who is reporting about a neighbor who was in a car accident or sexual assault coverage—the daily grind of trauma.” As the pandemic spreads, so will reporters’ exposure to trauma.

Fortunately, journalists tend to be resilient, with relatively low rates of PTSD despite high exposure to stressful events, says Newman, citing more than a dozen research studies on stress and trauma among reporters.

Certain factors do increase journalists’ risk for developing PTSD, however. Newman and colleagues have found that an avoidant coping style, a personal history of trauma, high intensity and frequency of exposure and organizational stressors such as inconsistent leadership or conflicts with editors increase reporters’ risk for developing PTSD (Smith, R.J., et al., Stress & Health, Vol. 34, No. 2, 2018). Additional risk factors include coverage of war and the drug trade and exposure to “user-generated content”—the unfiltered social media posts and other material that provide eyewitness views of breaking news.

When journalists do seek help for trauma—whether it’s a war correspondent who has witnessed atrocities or a local reporter who has covered a school shooting—psychologists should be flexible and mindful of their hectic schedules, says Emily Sachs, PhD, a San Francisco private practitioner who works with journalists.

“A lot of therapists might interpret people being in and out of treatment as treatment avoidance,” she points out, explaining that breaking news, travel and other factors can cause missed appointments. “And there’s a difference between ‘I can’t do self-care’ and making excuses and very legitimate deadlines and real pressures from editors.” Sachs begins by educating journalists that what they’re feeling is normal, then teaches practical self-assessment and coping skills to help them respond better to the pressures they face. “The message I want to send to journalists is that learning a bit about trauma and active coping is worth some time investment, even if it feels really hard to put work down,” she says.

Reporters also tend to focus on strained relationships with friends and family in therapy, says private practitioner Jack Saul, PhD, who directs the International Trauma Studies Program in New York City and treats journalists struggling with job-related trauma in his private practice. “Often journalists don’t want to burden their family or friends with what they’ve experienced or reveal the kinds of dangers they put themselves in, so they will often just not speak about it,” says Saul.

Saul helps journalists find ways to explain to loved ones that they don’t want to discuss the events they have witnessed or experienced until they’ve come to terms with them themselves. “That helps them restore some connection in relationships that can be damaged by silence and secrets,” he says. Sometimes it’s the very person a journalist would ordinarily talk things through with—a fellow journalist—who has been killed.
Saul urges these patients to keep the dialogue going by writing letters to the lost colleague or meeting with his or her family.

Journalists may also experience severe guilt or even “moral injury”—a term once limited to soldiers—after witnessing a terrible event without being able to intervene, says Saul. Just as journalists who feel they’re risking their lives without anything ever changing can experience moral injuries, so can journalists on less risky assignments, such as those covering climate change who devote their careers to a message that often falls on deaf ears.

Providing Support

Newsrooms are increasingly beginning to provide more psychological support for journalists. Psychologist Cait McMahon, PhD, founding managing director of a Dart Center satellite office called the Dart Centre Asia Pacific in Melbourne, Australia, goes into newsrooms to train journalists, news managers and editors about trauma. “If you just train journalists, it puts the whole onus on the individual,” says McMahon. “Managers and editors need to also be trained in their duty of care.”

McMahon has developed a version of psychological first aid for journalists, offering guidance to editors and administrators on how to recognize signs of trouble, how to manage staff exposed to trauma and when to refer a journalist to counseling. For reporters, the emphasis is on clarifying what trauma is and offering self-management strategies and ways to check in with themselves after traumatic events.

Psychologists are also helping to ensure that journalists aren’t aggravating trauma in the people they interview. While journalists want as much detail as possible, asking survivors to relive a traumatic incident may reignite terrifying memories, says Katherine Porterfield, PhD, a consulting psychologist at the Bellevue/New York University Program for Survivors of Torture, who teaches trauma-informed reporting to Dart Center fellows and other journalists. That involves teaching journalists the difference between a source who may be experiencing a normal dissociation from a traumatic event and a source who isn’t credible.

She also advises reporters to check in with sources throughout the interview, give them breaks and tell them they can end the interview if they need to. “It’s never worth hurting them,” she says, “even for the story.”