PTSD: When the news breaks the journalist

Chris Cramer
PHOTO: Cramer Media

Frederik Joelving for Reuters
NEW YORK

Chris Cramer, 62, was a fledgling war correspondent when one spring day 30 years ago he got much closer to the battle than he'd ever intended.

Just back from Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, his boss at the BBC had asked him to fly to Tehran, where militants were holding dozens of Americans hostage at the U.S. embassy.

But as he went to pick up his visa in London on April 30, 1980, he jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire: Six gunmen stormed the Iranian embassy, taking Cramer and 25 other people hostage.

"I lasted two days before I became sick -- well, I actually feigned a heart attack to get out," said Cramer, now global editor of multimedia at Reuters in New York.

While the experience left his body unscathed, his mental health was in tatters.

"I went through real anguish for a couple of years," he said. "I had flashbacks, I had extraordinary claustrophobia, which I'd never had before. For several years, I did not go to a cinema, I did not go into an elevator. If I ever went into a restaurant, I positioned myself near the door for a fast exit. For many, many months after the incident I checked under my car every morning before driving it. I was a basket case, I was a mess."

It is becoming increasingly clear that there is nothing unique about Cramer's case. In fact, a 2003 survey found, more than a quarter of war correspondents struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

Japan Quake

Guide for Reporting
By Yoichi Shimatsu
Comprehensive advice for Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma from an environmental issues writer and editor for news professionals bound for Japan: how to prepare, what to expect and how to keep yourself safe while reporting on the earthquake, tsunami and damaged nuclear plants.

PHOTO of New America Media

Yoichi Shimatsu is an environmental issues writer and former editor of The Japan Times Weekly, who covered the earthquakes in San Francisco and Kobe, the Tokyo subway gassing, Mount Unzen volcanic eruption, and led a field study (while simultaneously doing rescue work as a volunteer) in the worst-hit Khao Lak region of Thailand right after the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004.

Summary: Japan can be a paradoxical place for reporting, even for its own journalists and longtime expats. The tendency of government agencies and corporations to impose a veil of silence and half-truths doubles the difficulties.
Habitual censorship and blanket public-security rules mean that journalists, if we are going to fulfill our professional responsibility to the public, must "bend" a few rules while minimizing the risks of openly violating the law. Your embassies are unlikely to come to your aid and, often to the contrary, may actually cooperate in curbing the foreign press. Despite these constraints, it is possible to report by stretching the outer limits of the law, which means that you’re still well within the bounds of reason.



PREPARATIONS

Radiation Medicine: Call around to pharmacies in your home country to purchase sufficient potassium iodine capsules for five-to-ten people for a month. The extra capsules are needed for your translators and drivers, as well as a good-will gesture to your local sources. Your thyroid gland absorbs iodine, and these pills help to block radioactive iodine-131. At the pharmacy also pick up some Imodium and nasal inhalant or gel (Vicks type), the latter to help reduce the foul smell of corpses, which wears down your morale.

Is your journalism ethical? Take the test

If the content you produce pushes an agenda, spins a line, favours a sector of society, or has a desired outcome, you are producing public relations copy or propaganda. Real journalism is based on editorial ethics that permeate all we do. So, do you pass the test?

The public interest test
1. Exposing or detecting crime
2. Disclosing significant incompetence or negligence
3. Uncovering information that allows people to make more informed decisions about matters of public importance
4. Protecting the health and safety of the public
5. Preventing the public from being misled
6. Protecting issues of freedom of expression.

Take the test

David Brewer
Media Helping Media

The author of this piece, David Brewer, is a journalist and media strategy consultant who set up and runs the site Media Helping Media. He delivers media strategy training and consultancy services worldwide and his business details are at Media Ideas International Ltd.
He tweets@helpingmedia.

Mark Bezos: A life lesson from a volunteer firefighter

Mark Bezos is the SVP, Development, Communications & Events at Robin Hood, the leading poverty-fighting charity in New York City. Bezos joined Robin Hood following the sale of his advertising agency, excited to have found a way to use his powers of persuasion for good.


TED

Bezos is the Assistant Captain of a volunteer fire company in Westchester County, New York, where he lives with his wife and four children. He is continuously amazed and motivated by the everyday acts of heroism--big and small--that surround him.

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.