If a journalist or newsroom manager shares about her or his trauma experience, there is a chance people will say, maybe this person just doesn’t belong in the industry. Confession: I sometimes cringe when I read social media posts of colleagues opening up about their trauma in detail. I know it says more about me than about them. You may recognize the thoughts because there still is a stigma around the topic in the journalism industry and this is how we often think of it. The journalistic machoness and arrogance create an image of challenging assignments being cool. The ‘tough guys’- idea, as Laurie Few called it in the webinar J-Schools or Newsrooms: Who Should Teach Trauma Awareness? organized by the Canadian Journalism Forum on Violence and Trauma, the Canadian Association of Journalists and the Carleton University School of Journalism.
Few is Vice Chair at the Canadian Association of Journalists and Executive Producer Digital at TVO and has worked in the news business for 34 years. She had never heard about trauma in her journalism school period. According to Few, the most important thing is to get the conversation going, with more articles, more training, and more dialogue about the topic. She says:
“It sounds simplistic but it has to start”.
The fear of a change in the status quo
It makes me think about the ‘cringy’ social media posts, and the importance of sharing our vulnerabilities. A Dutch lifestyle coach who lives remotely on a tropical island and makes good money comes to my mind. Besides the bullshit of the six-figure business promise and superficial motivational talk, he said one important thing:
“People fear coaches because they challenge the status quo and ask deep questions where others stay at the surface”.
I never thought about it like this before but I do see how journalists ridicule the well-being and coaching industry on social media. Could it be because they fear the impact? Laurie Few mentions the journalism status quo in the webinar and the need to change it. Changing the management and changing the way we cover stories and who reports. Panellist Sally Haney agrees but also emphasizes the importance of implementing trauma awareness and well-being in day-to-day practice. As the Broadcasting and Journalism Program Chair of Mount Royal University, Haney invites psychologists to her classroom and talks explicitly about counselling and the meaning of healthy boundaries. She adds:
“A lot of the trauma I hear isn’t about the journalism work. It’s life. It’s a lack of a loan, a terrible breakup, the feeling of being alienated in university because you came from a different place, not feeling like you belong. The stigma around counselling needs to go and we need to say, look here are three terrific coaches, go there.”
Traumatic or challenging?
The initial question to answer in the webinar is whose responsibility it is for journalists to take care of their trauma. Should journalism schools address the topic properly or has the newsroom a task to deal with it? And what about the personal responsibility of the journalist?
The pandemic helped us talk about the topic more openly, says third panellist Ravindra Mohabeer. The Chair and Associate Professor of the School of Journalism at Toronto Metropolitan University, points out the difficulty of who gets to define what a traumatic experience is versus what challenging experiences are. After the isolation of the pandemic, talking to strangers, the very basis of what journalism is, was challenging for some students.
The exercise of mapping trauma can bring a solution to this. Sally Haney mentions the method used by academia to get an understanding of the risks of reporting. Haney:
“Trauma is a collective responsibility. We need to provide structure and resources and ways to talk about it. We want people to have the strength to go into communities to do the difficult work of journalism and stay safe and healthy. That can be difficult. If journalists say they’re nervous, we often push them. We need to check that nervousness first, what is it about? Mapping out potential harm and thinking about what will happen is helpful.”
The latter is important to the sources journalists work with as well, to protect them from re-traumatization.
Humility is key
Laurie Few underscores the importance for journalists to join organizations that can help them. Especially freelancers who are more likely to take on high-risk assignments because they need the cash. Mohabeer adds that trauma training doesn’t occur in a clear package. It exists in lots of different ways. He says:
“It is about grounding in humility and looking at journalism in a relational field. Journalism as a relationship. Who am I speaking to and how can I speak with them in a particular way? I find it interesting and important to have the conversation in complex ways. The newness of trauma conversations makes many people come in and share their experiences. It’s valuable to hear all the different possibilities.”
Sally Haney is optimistic too, she sees good things happening with community-centered journalism. Collaborative journalism models create spaces for trauma-informed practice because we learn most from in-person conversations with people, Haney explains. Laurie Few is more sceptical about the progress. She describes how the roots of the industry lie in a situation where the community doesn’t talk about this topic. The word ‘humble’ is most important to her because the industry wasn’t humble at all when she started and we shouldn’t count our blessings too soon. The book Decolonizing Journalism by Duncan McCue is mentioned briefly, it has a chapter about trauma. May be a good one to add to the reading list and continue the topic since the webinar is over.
Conclusion
After watching the webinar I conclude that a reluctance to change the status quo not only creates a lack of mental well-being support in journalism, it also causes stagnation in representation. We need to implement trauma awareness and well-being in day-to-day practice, just like inclusion and representation. Laurie Few mentioned the example of yearly reviews in investigative journalism about the libel and slander cases and all the other stuff happening around the investigation. In the same way, well-being and representation should be reviewed. Make it a commitment and encourage others to do the same. Embracing the complexity of the topic and looking for solutions in the community, sounds like a decolonial approach to well-being. It will lead to more representation and eventually a healthier profession.
(The webinar was moderated by Matthew Pears, Assistant Professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University and is part of a series of mental wellbeing conversations.)
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