https://studyhall.xyz/the-reporters-are-not-okay-extremely-not-okay/
http://web.archive.org/web/20210511...he-reporters-are-not-okay-extremely-not-okay/
http://web.archive.org/web/20210511...he-reporters-are-not-okay-extremely-not-okay/
Bruce Shapiro, executive director for the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma and an adjunct professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, compared moral injury — which was first studied in soldiers and journalists who had covered war zones and terror attacks — to pouring gasoline on the fire of trauma.
Shapiro cited a study of the journalists who covered the 2011 Oslo terror attack, which he said found that “reporters who felt they had committed ethical breaches in the course of their work had much higher levels of psychological distress.” Moral injury isn’t a separate diagnosis, but it’s a component that worsens burnout and PTSD, said Shapiro.
“When we feel like our reporting has become part of a problem, that makes us feel complicit,” Shapiro said. “We lose a sense of internal safety in order to keep reporting on distressing material.”
The combination of immersive trauma and moral injury can be profound, especially combined with racist and sexist violence that has occurred throughout the pandemic.
Journalism is already “a very fertile breeding ground for moral injury,” but that’s especially the case “when it can mean the difference between large numbers of people living or dying,” said Shapiro.
For some reporters, the psychological toll of COVID-19 coverage also comes from facing physical harm in the course of their work. While I was safely reporting from my bedroom in Brooklyn, the Seattle-based journalist told me she was sometimes encouraged by editors to risk her safety for the sake of stories.
Near the beginning of the pandemic, she was in the field when a group of people harassed her in public when they recognized her as a reporter.
“I asked them to just stay six feet away and they would not. They got really close up in my face and were yelling, so I sort of charged at one of them to get them to step away. I also took out my alcohol sanitizer, ready to spray them in the eyes if necessary. They eventually backed off,” she said. “I had no idea the infection rate of the town, or if them being in my face and maskless was going to get me sick.”
“Journalists are like therapists without the training,” said Jessi Gold, an assistant professor in the department of psychiatry at Washington University in St. Louis. Therapists often experience burnout and vicarious trauma, which is distinct from burnout and is defined by the American Counseling Association as the “emotional residue” of witnessing “the pain, fear, and terror that trauma survivors have endured.” But Gold, like others in her field, has a toolbox for addressing it: “Somebody at least taught me how to cope.”
“[Journalists] are just thrown into really hard situations,” said Gold. “Not only have you not been trained on how to talk to someone in an active trauma, but the people who you’re talking to might not even know they’re not ready to talk about it.”
With that in mind, here’s my advice: Whether you’re a newsroom leader or a reporter or an intern — even if you feel like you’re admitting defeat — please ask for help when you need it. That’s how I found solidarity and support, and it’s how I was able to write this story, my first byline since quitting.
I’m still recovering, and I’ve got a lot more work to do. But one day, without even thinking about it — amid the exposure therapy sessions and watercolors paintings and conversations with supportive peers and nights spent cooking dinner for my parents — I started smiling again. That has to count for something.
