Simple ways newsrooms can protect journalists from trauma exposure

Develop a ‘trauma-meter’ and a protocol for difficult stories

Three solutions - but first a story.

Two years ago, at the height of pandemic lockdown, I was assigned to cover breaking news about an unsolved abduction, sexual assault and murder of a young girl.

My stomach sank.

“Isn’t there anyone else that can cover this?” I asked.

I was already mired in a heavy load of stories about death, people killed on the job, people dying of Covid. I was also working at home under lockdown, with two pre-teen children doing home-schooling, overhearing details of my work.

The answer was ‘no.’

So, I did what we all do: I jumped into gear and ‘sucked it up.’ Within hours I’d filed for that evening’s national radio news cast.

But the next day, I was assigned again to dig into this murder from 1984. I told my bosses I simply couldn’t do it. It was affecting me deeply.

“You can’t refuse an assignment,” I was told. “This isn’t the way it’s supposed to work. If you can’t do the story perhaps you need to consider a change.”

I was floored. I was feeling overwhelmed, for sure. But I was sure I wasn’t permanently ill or disabled and I had no interest in stopping being a journalist.

What’s more, I was a bit wounded because my supervisors are friends and peers. We’ve grown up together in the hurly-burly of the news business.

The news desk found another reporter to cover the story. The sky didn’t fall.

After a weekend of struggle, I returned to my manager and said “This is exactly how it should work! A struggling employee ought to be able to put up their hand and express concern for their health when assigned to trauma stories.”

I’ve done a lot of thinking about that situation, and how our industry covers trauma. I’ve since circled back with my manager/friend. We’ve talked about it from both sides - and we’ve both evolved our thinking.

With permission, I now use this scenario in training to talk about the dynamics of newsrooms - to build understanding of the pressures faced both by reporters and by managers on the tricky (im)balance between a reporter’s health and fitness to cover trauma - and the demands of the news beast.

It’s important to reckon with the fact that when news breaks, news bosses face many pressures with shows to fill, limited numbers of reporters, and deadlines. They want to be able to rely on their reporters when it counts.

This scenario is a conundrum for news organizations - especially in a culture where we seldom talk about our own well-being and health. But here are three ideas to help us improve.

Solution 1: Newsroom “Trauma-Meter”

Check-in with colleagues before tackling a potentially disturbing or traumatic story. Everybody’s different. We all have different stressors, capacities, lived experiences, vulnerabilities, levels of resilience to deal with trauma.

One simple method: ask yourself and your team “Where does this story rank on the trauma-meter - on a scale of zero to ten?”

I first heard of this idea of a ‘trauma scale” from Almudena Toral, executive producer of video/documentary at ProPublica, and a Senior Fellow at the Dart Center.

“We were coming out of some really tough reporting and a colleague said almost jokingly that in terms of trauma load for their next story they’d really be looking for a ‘3’ out of ten as a break,” Toral told me. “And it kind of stuck.”

“It’s very useful at every stage - before, during and after - to have an explicit conversation about the content and to ask ‘are you up for that kind of coverage?”

This simple exercise does a whole series of important things - without requiring a deep probing.

First, it acknowledges the story content may be challenging, in a short, easy discussion.

Second, it’s a simple tool to let team members express with a simple number how they feel about the assignment - depending on where they’re at, their level of resilience, their own comfort with the content.

Third, it allows teams to gauge/plan/adjust accordingly, especially if someone expresses a “10” or “11.”

Solution 2: Safe Word “Oklahoma”

A new leader at the CBC station in Thunder Bay, Ontario has begun using the word “Oklahoma” as a way for employees to discreetly confide they are having a tough day. (Very Ted Lasso!)

“I've offered it to several employees in a pretty informal way, just saying ‘hey if you're having a bad day, just say Oklahoma, and I'll know you need a break,’” explains executive producer Alex Bockman.

“It's been well-received, even if they don't use it. I've had people say knowing it's there gives them comfort,” said Brockman.

“Others have actually used that, just come up to my desk and said ‘I'm having an Oklahoma kind of day’ and now I know to keep an eye out for them -- it's simple, yet effective.”

Solution # 3 Protocol when someone needs off a story

What is your newsroom protocol if you - or a colleague - is struggling, or needs off a story?

Do you even have an official protocol?

Most newsrooms don’t. It’s time for that to change, and for news leaders to begin talking about it explicitly and openly.

In mid 2020, during coverage of widespread protests in the U.S. in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, NPR leaders began telling frontline reporters that if they needed a break - or needed to be pulled off the story - just say so- no questions, no repercussions.

Taking a page out of the unwritten rules for war correspondents in conflict zones, NPR is applying the same principle domestically. If staff need out because they’re struggling - all they have to do is raise a hand. It’s a clear, unambiguous protocol to empower staff if they feel trapped on a story - overwhelmed, burnout or injured from exposure to trauma.

There is a new, evolving understanding about the impact of trauma. In 2013, the American Psychiatric Association redefined risk factors for PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) to acknowledge for the first time “secondary” or vicarious trauma. The DSM-V (the bible of psychiatric disorders) now explicitly warns that frontline professionals (like police, paramedics …and here I argue journalists) who routinely witness or are exposed indirectly to aversive details or graphic images of other people’s trauma - are themselves at higher risk of psychological injury.

It’s time the journalism industry begins to reckon with this - to better protect our people.