Reporting about conflict, combat, natural and man-made disasters, and other traumatic events are all in a day’s work for journalists. But are they always immune to the issues they are covering?
A pioneering seminar about trauma and journalism conducted by the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) to PPI members revealed that reporters’ exposure to stress and trauma must be addressed to keep them professionally fit.
“Journalists are not stress-proof. Journalists face so many traumas because they are into dangerous work sometimes. They see the problems and they see the people in distress and somehow it gets into them,” social scientist Dr. Charitel Ramos told 16 participants during NCR/Manila leg of the seminar series on January 14 at the Orchid Garden Suites, Manila.
“Community journalists are more at risk because they are part of the community they report about, and what they write has a direct effect on them,” NUJP secretary-general Rowena Paraan noted.
Paraan challenged publishers and editors to create healthy and trauma-aware newsrooms to be able to mould psychologically, emotionally, mentally and physically fit journalists. “Trauma has impact in the newsroom.”
“Journalists who cover traumatic events are themselves in trauma. Traumatic events are internalized,” PPI Luzon trustee Elnora Cueto added.
The seminar was the first step in introducing the idea of a “trauma-aware” newsroom and journalist.
The discussions served as an eye-opener for community reporters and editors to bring to the fore the unspoken reality of journalists doing their job in highly stressful and oftentimes traumatizing events.
Dr. Ramos also stressed that trauma has a cumulative effect on the social, mental, physical, psychological and spiritual make-up of a person and if unaddressed, can last a lifetime.
The freewheeling sessions drew largely on personal experiences from the session participants who covered emotionally devastating events such as disasters or crimes, or were themselves subject to personal threat or assault and how they dealt and coped with the situations.
“Stress is a normal part of life,” Dr. Ramos said. “However it is important to arrest it at that level before it worsens to traumatic stress or the worst kind, post-traumatic stress disorder.”
The seminar series is the first of its kind in the Philippines, according to Paraan. A brainchild of the NUJP and the New York-based DART Center for Journalism and Trauma, it was borne out of the 2009 Ampatuan massacre investigation where relatives and colleagues of the murdered journalists needed a coping mechanism and peer support programs to address and process its impact on the media and the community.
