Ronke Phillips: Journalist Advises

PHOTO from TVNewsroom

Ronke Phillips is a correspondent for ITV's 'London Tonight'. For more than 20 years she has worked in print, radio and television journalism, including various roles at the BBC and GMTV. She won an Ochberg Fellowships for 2009: participation in a programme to improve her coverage of violent and traumatic events.

Ronke Phillips talks about her experience interviewing and covering survivors (8.4.2010)


If the survivor declines the interview, what should we do?
If an interviewee turns me down I always respect their decision: pushing someone too much can upset them (remember they’re already in a vulnerable emotional state). It can also make them hostile toward you.
I always agree to go away but before leaving give them my card/contact details and ask them to think about it a little and contact me when they’re feeling stronger or change their mind.

What technique do you prefer or advise to build rapport with survivors to interview?
It’s always good to respect and recognise your interviewee’s emotional state by letting them know you appreciate how difficult it is for them to talk about their experience openly. In my opinion this is not a ‘ploy’ it is the truth! They have often lost a loved one in horrific circumstances re-living it all again is often painful but can also be cathartic.

Journalist and Stress

My interviews with the Russian and foreign journalists testify that the heavy emotional condition of the journalist becomes the result of  negative extreme situations covering.

The level of stress and its consequences depends on the various factors including also psychological readiness to work in the trauma conditions.

Journalists, like policemen and firemen, test the same symptoms, that the people who have endured a trauma do.

National US Reporter Susan Green talks about her 9/11 covering experience  

Covering Columbine

By Meg Moritz

Dart Centre for Journalism & Trauma

The research of the University of Toronto, has revealed that third of the journalists covering wars and conflicts, can suffer even a posttraumatic stress disorder.

Trauma Journalism: what is it?

Journalists react almost to every tragic event.

Reporters are among the first to come to the places of accidents, disasters, violence. They photograph, turn video, interview.

Journalists contact people and come to talk to them weeks, months, years after the tragedy. They cover judicial trials or tragic anniversaries. 

Covering trauma situations – street crime, domestic violence, war – recalls moral and professional questions.

• How to cover?
• How to ask the victims and what them ask about?
• How to show the story sincerely and without hurting the audience?
• How to cope with the stress after covering trauma?
• Should journalists express / not express their emotions?

Covering trauma events and the victims, journalists meet the problem that the psychologists, the specialists of rehabilitation, the researchers, and the professors of journalism all over the world try to resolve.

We’d like to join them.