Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma

This weekend, New Zealand's Sunday Star Times carried a thoughtful article by Tim Hume on trauma as an under-discussed occupational hazard in journalism. The story's protagonist is Jim MacMillan, a Philadelphia photojournalist who found himself "virtually disabled" by what he calls his "psychological Waterloo": the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001.

At the time, enmeshed in what the article calls journalists' "culture of bravado," he didn't recognize the connection of his psychological problems to his harrowing on-the-job experiences. Now, as a recovered photographer and educator (and 2007 Ochberg Fellow), he tries to bring the awareness and training he then lacked to students and professional reporters alike.

"The goal is restraint and sensitivity, and the strategy is disruption," he says. "I don't have solutions I just want us to talk about it. We talk about schedules, budgets. Let's talk about trauma."

Here's another excerpt, on what the article reports MacMillan reckons as "his most egregious sin":

[It] was a picture he took on Christmas Eve 24 years ago. It is of a woman, wearing a Santa hat and a numb expression, who has just been pulled aside by a police officer and told that all her children have perished in a fire.

MacMillan recalls taking the photo: the confusion of whether he should be intruding on a private moment of grief, the reflexive decision to shoot after a rival photographer fired off a frame, the praise of his workmates for nailing the "Christmas tragedy" shot. He remembers punching his car dashboard in disgust on the drive home.

Today, he says: "I feel regret because I might have made the most unimaginably horrible moment of somebody's life a little bit worse. I feel angry that I was put in that situation without the proper training and the necessary information to make that decision."

Although it felt wrong at the time, the decision to shoot was a reflection of the pressure he was under as a young journalist in an unforgiving industry. He was trying to satisfy demanding editors who had no real interest in the ethical dilemmas he encountered on the job. "Twenty-four years on, those guys are retired, they're all out of the game. I don't care about them. But I'm left with this moment, with what I did."

Check out the syllabus for MacMillan's undergraduate trauma and journalism course at Temple University.

And read about his activities in New Zealand and elsewhere on his personal blog.