Journalist PTSD ruled a workplace ‘injury’ from covering murders, violence
NEWSROOMS FACE CALLS TO PROTECT JOURNALISTS FROM CUMULATIVE TRAUMA
Reporter Colin Butler’s PTSD is now formally recognized as an injury caused by his job. From 2021, live on TV, next to a refrigerated mobile morgue during the pandemic. (submitted)
After 20 years reporting on child murders, deadly accidents, suicides, sex crimes and all manner of gruesome stories, Canadian broadcast journalist Colin Butler finally broke.
“I just couldn't handle it anymore. And I lost it,” he recalls of the day in 2019 when it came to a head.
The father of two children grew furious when his boss assigned him to remain “on-call” on a day off – without pay – to await the verdict in a youth murder trial that had been causing him panic attacks and nightmares.
“It was while being admonished by a supervisor that I lost it. And it was sort of the turning point, the straw that broke the camel's back.”
Butler booked off sick – and melted down. The CBC reporter, based in London, Ont., was soon after diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Since then, he’s been intermittently off on disability leave, has undergone treatment, and is now slowly returning to the job he loves.
In November, Ontario’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board ruled that Butler’s PTSD was caused by his work.
The worker’s compensation decision is significant for its acknowledgement – not only of the impact of covering that murder – but also of the psychological scars Butler suffered from two decades of visiting tragic scenes and interviewing victims.
“I am satisfied that the worker’s reaction to the encounter with the supervisor was likely a symptom of the emerging PTSD, and not the cause of the mental stress injury,” wrote WSIB adjudicator Helen Shaw in her November 10, 2022 decision.
“The evidence and medical opinions support that the worker was experiencing a cumulative effect of exposure to multiple traumatic events over a period of years.”
While frustrated with the WSIB process, Butler is pleased with the decision. He’ll be compensated for wages lost while he was on sick leave. But more important, he says, is that his PTSD is now formally acknowledged as an occupational injury resulting from his job — and he hopes newsrooms take note.
“I don't want somebody else to go through the same thing I have.”
Journalists sharing their experiences
We need to tell you that we both know Colin and consider him a friend.
Dave got to know Colin at CBC because he too suffered PTSD on the job as a frontline news reporter (recounted here) but it was more than a decade ago and was poorly understood at the time. Dave wrote an affidavit in support of Colin’s WSIB claim, given his own experience, and now his research and expertise as a Fellow of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma.
We’ve co-authored a national study that reveals disproportionately high rates of anxiety, depression and burnout among news workers. Our study’s advisor, psychiatrist Anthony Feinstein, has done numerous studies and concluded that while the vast majority won’t wind up with PTSD, roughly one in five journalists covering traumatic stories over time are likely to be affected psychologically.
Dave Seglins (left) and Matthew Pearson surveyed +1200 media workers in their study (Photo: Tracy Lindeman)
We are all working to share journalists’ experiences in hopes of uniting and helping colleagues — and changing industry practices around psychological health and safety.
Newsroom ‘duty of care’
Colin’s case is one of just a few known rulings by an adjudicative body that officially concludes that a news professional’s job has caused serious psychological injury.
It’s important because it helps highlight the risks that come with being a journalist.
But the rulings also raise the legal stakes for news companies which have a responsibility to protect employees from foreseeable harm.
News reporters aren’t going to stop covering horrible stories – nor should they.
But newsrooms can be more proactive and have a “duty of care” to their employees, says Bruce Shapiro, executive director of the Dart Center based at the Columbia School of Journalism.
“Most media companies invest little in training, and for years many newsrooms actively resisted acting on the mounting evidence of trauma's impact on our profession,” he said.
“That is gradually changing, but too many news executives still think of trauma as a problem limited to war reporters, or perhaps to those who cover mass shootings.”
Last October, Shapiro told a summit of Canadian news leaders that newsrooms can do much more to manage “trauma load" among staff and ensure teams are better educated and prepared to deal with horrible stories.
Courts, crime scenes and Facebook
Another Canadian journalist won a worker’s compensation ruling in 2020 when her PTSD was also deemed the result of “cumulative exposure to workplace trauma” after years reporting from the scene of fatalities, seeing dead bodies and interviewing victims.
The journalist (who asked not to be identified) says one day, mid-shift, reporting from the scene of a killing that struck close to home, she froze and was unable to continue.
When she called the newsroom in distress, the editor told her to take the rest of the day off – but only after she filed one more report from the scene.
In Australia, in a world first, a court in 2019 found a newspaper negligent for failing to protect a journalist from psychological injury.
Judges ruled against The Age newspaper for assigning a crime reporter back onto the courts beat, even after she’d shown serious symptoms of injury and had asked her bosses to be taken off “death and destruction.”
And from the realm of social media, in 2021, Facebook agreed to pay $85 million to settle a lawsuit involving 10,000 content moderators. The class action claimed the workers suffered psychological injury and were ill prepared or supported as they reviewed millions of user videos that included many showing “child abuse, rape, torture, beheadings, suicide and murder.” The settlement provides compensation and money for employee counselling but involves no admissions of wrongdoing by Facebook.
What other rulings are out there?
We know of more than a dozen journalists who’ve suffered PTSD from their work. Some were so broken they left the industry, or were so haunted they drank themselves to death.
An excellent new book Breaking: Trauma in the Newsroom edited by Leona O’Neill and Chris Lindsay recounts the experiences of some of Ireland and Britain’s top journos and camerapeople.
But traditionally, our industry has resisted talking openly about trauma. Who’s got time? And who really wants to? Trauma is upsetting!
Journalists also fear (with good reason) that admitting they are affected by the ugliness of the work can be a career killer – branding them as “weak” or not up to the job.
This discussion is not only overdue, but it can – and will – actually make us stronger and healthier.
It’s time journalists around the globe collectively talk more openly about mental health on the job and share ‘best practices’ to help make our jobs safer.
In some ways trauma in journalism is like the discovery of the dangers of asbestos.
At first industrial workers didn’t understand what was making them sick. Only when they started sharing their stories did they piece together the source and seriousness of the problem.
Employers initially denied their claims. But eventually corporations were forced to change their ways, provide protection from asbestos, and even pay compensation to workers made sick or killed.
News industry reform
In Australia, court decisions — and the risk for news companies of getting sued — are slowly leading to change, according to Dean Yates. A journalist with Reuters for 23 years until he was diagnosed with PTSD, Yates now works as an industry mental health advocate.
“For too long, (news companies) have failed to properly prepare and train staff for the trauma they encounter on the job, the burnout, the moral injury,” Yates said. “Then they have abandoned staff who get sick. I know for a fact that some news organisations are trying to do the right thing. I suspect others are just paying lip service.”
Shapiro, head of the Dart Center, says with mounting research evidence, recent rulings and a growing threat of lawsuits, news industry leaders may now finally be forced to treat trauma exposure as a serious hazard.
“The idea that content moderators, video editors, picture desks and investigative reporters who rarely leave their desks are also at risk takes some getting used to. But the evidence is there. And as Facebook's huge settlement with content moderators shows, the cost of not confronting the challenge head-on can be high.”
