Caitlin Constantine: Journalism and emotional trauma

Caitlin Constantine
PHOTO from Facebook

My average workday involves writing several news stories, and as anyone who watches the news can attest, most of them will not be happy stories. There are the occasional feel-good spots about people who make the most of tough circumstances or break world records, but for the most part, I spend my time writing about the worst days in people's lives.

Caitlin Constantine, journalist and writer owns her troubles in her blog.

If you end up in the news, it's more likely you are there because of some unimaginable horror than because of something amazing you did.

It's difficult not to be affected by the work we do as journalists, although most of us have developed ways to cope. We make inappropriate jokes, we keep a bit of distance, we harden our shells, we don't linger too long on the details. Some of us drink a lot or smoke.

If we allowed the full impact of the stories we cover to penetrate our hearts, we'd never get anything done. So we find ways to protect ourselves.

But some stories still manage to penetrate the carefully constructed defenses. Obviously, reporters and photographers who are actually out there are most vulnerable. Poynter Institute recently ran a column about a New York Daily News reporter who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder after one of the WTC towers collapsed practically right on top of him.

Filtering The News

MK'ULTRA
Photo from RUVR

Ever wonder why the news is so often packed with horrible tales of human misadventure? Can’t they report news that is more clinical than localized horrors? The answer is yes, but the reason why traumatic stories are embedded or weaved into normal news is to accomplish a very important objective; to allow fiction to become fact elsewhere.

ONE PAGE NEWS a Journal of Reality insists on it definitely with its Trauma Journalism post

A Bit Of History

Right after World War II a very serious and covert operation was carried out to smuggle war criminal Nazi’s into the United States in a sanitized manner in which these same individuals would be able to live full wonderful and free lives in America, a country they had up until recently been fighting. The operation was known as Operation Paperclip where approximately 1,200 German Nazi scientists in the fields of rocketry and psychological experimentation. The PR spin was to “deny Russia the scientific mind trust of these same Nazis,” but in later retrospect it was primarily to augment US military technology to build a world army capable of executing European rule.

In the area of rocketry we got NASA led by Wernher Von Braun who mistakenly misled the United States into a mission to the Moon which was not possible given the next 50 years of technology, but that’s for another article.

The second tear of Operation Paperclips outcome with the heavily infused exploration of the human psyche. Project MKULTRA was hatched by the same scientists eager to continue their immoral and illegal experimentations on humans. It is not completely known the entire list of horrific tests conducted on humans, but one of the more prominent areas of research was in the mind’s ability to deal with trauma.

Covering Violence & Trauma

The Canadian Journalism Project

The Canadian Journalism Project: March 2011
Find MORE here

Ivory Coast journalists caught in the crossfire
March 28, 2011 - Posted by Heather McCall
Journalists working in the Ivory Coast capital Adidjan are finding themselves trapped between two sides of a looming civil war. ProjetJ reporter Anne Caroline Desplanques spoke with Stéphane Goué, a freelance journalist and president of the country's Committee to Protect Journalists, about the threats he and his fellow journalists are experiencing.

"None of us thought we were going to live": kidnapped NYT journos
March 23, 2011 - Posted by Dana Lacey
Four recently-kidnapped New York Times journalists tell their harrowing tale.

Reporting evacuation: rule evasion or evolution?
March 30, 2011 - Posted by Dana Lacey
In these days of SEO-friendly headlines, long-standing language rules are often ignored -- like the one that says you can evacuate places, but not people. Judy Maddren, former CBC grammar guru, sets the record straight.

Libya releases detained New York Times journos
March 21, 2011 - Posted by Dana Lacey
Six days ago, four New York Times journalists were reported missing. It was later learned that the four were detained by the Libyan government. They were released today under the expectation that they leave the country within hours, VOA News reports. Other journalists, including two reporters and a photographer from French news agency AFP, remain missing.

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.