Traumatized Journalists

At least a decade after police, firefighters, paramedics, and soldiers recognized the prevalence of job-related stress injury, journalists began to acknowledge that they face considerable mental health risks. Reporters and news photographers are resilient, and most are employed far from the exigencies of military combat, the mean streets of inner cities, and the impact zones of catastrophic disaster. Nevertheless, few will escape exposure to traumatic stress during a long career, whether covering traffic accidents, home fires, or violent crime. Nearly all will have at least one experience interviewing grieving families soon after a loved one dies a sudden and unnatural death. Recent studies document that a majority of journalists report some on-the-job exposure to traumatic events. This includes interviewing survivors or photographing scenes involving profound grief and loss. Many journalists report verbal harassment for their work. A few have been hunted and killed for the courageous assignments they have undertaken, exposing government corruption and organized crime.

Systematic attention to the emotional consequences of reporting hard news began in the 1990s because of a confluence of individual and organizational initiatives. Michigan State University launched a “victims and the media” program to teach journalism undergraduates how to interview survivors of crime and tragedy with sensitivity and with awareness of trauma-related symptoms. The University of Washington began similar undergraduate courses. Professors from these universities, Roger Simpson and William Cote, wrote the first text on the topic, currently in its second edition. In 1999, the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma was established to advance informed, effective, and ethical news reporting on violence, conflict, and tragedy. Its mission includes introducing media organizations to evidence of the impact of trauma coverage on both news professionals and news consumers. After major traumatic events such as the Murrah Building bombing in Oklahoma, the school shootings at Columbine, and the attacks of 9/11, the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma has provided a setting for media practitioners to interact while journalism schools and newsrooms began discussing the emotional impact of covering the news with traumatic stress experts. Within the following decade, several major media corporations created programs of peer and professional support for journalists.

Research examining the extent of trauma exposure and its impact among news professionals is accumulating slowly but steadily. Most of this research examines the frequency of stressful exposure within a particular time frame, ensuing [Page 769]work-related emotional problems, and potential risk and resiliency factors. The evidence suggests that news professionals are a high-risk occupational group because of the frequency with which they are exposed to danger and bear witness to death, injury, and destruction. As with other first-on-the-scene responders, only a minority of journalists suffer from diagnosed trauma-related problems, despite this relatively high exposure to distressing experiences. The strongest risk factors for PTSD among journalists appear to be the intensity of the worst trauma-related assignment, the extent of personal exposure to traumatic life events, and the degree to which organizational stressors are present. These findings have been found to hold true for journalists practicing in many nations, contexts, and mediums (e.g., print, broadcast, images). Further, among the small group of career war correspondents who repeatedly visit dangerous conflict zones, the rates of PTSD and depression are nearly as high as those serving in combat, with alcoholism also a substantial problem. Other risk factors identified in recent survey research include working with images instead of text and preexisting personality problems, including hostility, neuroticism, and anger. The largest resiliency factor protecting journalists from diagnosable disorder appears to be social support. These research findings need to be interpreted cautiously because survey respondents may not be representative of all journalists.

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