In May, Dart centre U.S. and Dart Centre Europe joined forces to present the workshops "Helping journalists with coverage of trauma," and "Trauma, emotions and good journalism," in Berlin. The following article about these issues and the workshops originally ran in the UK Press Gazette on May 29, 2003.

Of the hundreds of UK journalists who returned from the war in Iraq, those employed by the BBC were offered a chance to take part in a risk-assessment programme to determine whether they needed help coming to terms with any traumatic experiences

Those working for Reuters and ITN were given the opportunity to phone a confidential helpline to talk about their experiences as embedded journalists, independent “unilaterals” or even as one of those many miles away from the front line whose job it was to sift through the endless images depicting the atrocities of war.

Over at CNN, procedures were set up to help journalists cope with their wartime experiences.

Determined to set the standard in the industry, the BBC is set to become the first news organisation to have in place a permanent programme that prepares journalists for reporting war and other traumatic events and trains managers and desk staff to help prevent normal reactions to horrific experiences developing into long-term problems.

However, some journalists, including many working on newspapers, may not have been offered the same level of support. Is this important?

This was one of the questions addressed by news executives, journalists and experts in the field at a seminar last week in Berlin, organised by Dart Europe, an arm of the Dart centre for Journalism and Trauma in the US.

Fourteen journalists were killed during the war and two are still missing.

In one incident, BBC world affairs editor John Simpson and cameraman Fred Scott, were with their 25-year-old translator Kamaran Abdurazaq Muhamed when he died as a result of a U.S. air attack on the Kurdish convoy they were travelling with.

One BBC executive, Panorama deputy editor Andy Bell, says it was widely accepted that journalists would see terrible things. “But we didn’t expect that awful things would be happening to journalists. Now we have a situation where one of our camerman has had a translator die in his arms.”

Since the deaths in recent years of BBC correspondent John Schofield, APTN’s Miguel Gil Moreno de Mora and Reuters reporter Kurt Schork, all three organisations acknowledge that safety has become a higher priority.

Foreign correspondents who worked with these organisations acknowledge that during the war there was a marked change in attitude from newsdesks, with concern for safety dominating decision making, rather than pressure to compete to get stories — Pressure that could sometimes push them to take unnecessary risks.

The recent establishment of the International News Safety Institute, based at the International Press Centre in Brussels, is an indication that broadcasters are committed to the safety of their journalists.

But when it comes to addressing the psychological impact of war on journalists, there is some resistance from the “old hands,” similar to their reaction to suggestions that they should wear safety equipment such as flak jackets.

“Some of the journalists we approached said we were feminising the news industry and turning people into a load of cry babies,” says Elana Newman from the Dart centre, which was set up to encourage responsible reporting on trauma among journalists. However, she says there has been growing interest in the subject, particularly since September 11.

“We are finding that more doors are opening to us all the time,” says her Dart centre colleague Bruce Shapiro, who is also contributing editor to U.S. magazine The Nation. He says a “growing cohort” of U.S. journalists, including Chris Cramer, president of CNN International Networks, known to be “rough and tough,” are helping to break down some of the barriers by talking about post-traumatic stress disorder.

But Newman concedes there is still some currency in the notion that all a “tough guy” needs to get over a traumatic experience is a drink in the bar with colleagues.

“Getting together in the bar gives people an opportunity to talk things through,” she says, adding that problems arise if journalists don’t have a support network to help them get through.

Recent studies among war correspondents show that over a quarter suffered depression or symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, which include hyper-awareness, memory problems, anxiety, emotional numbness and nightmares.
Valentin Areh, a Slovenian journalist who has covered wars in Kosovo, Chechnya, Afghanistan and Iraq, says he would try to dissuade anyone from becoming a foreign correspondent. “I would tell them the price is too high,” he says.

Other journalists have described how for many years they were not affected by the sight of mutilated and burnt bodies, of witnessing death and violence, but the death of a colleague in a car crash had hit them badly.

Sometimes the apparent insensitivity of the newsdesk towards a story which journalists on the scene regard as being significant, can set off a reaction, claims BBC journalist Mark Brayne, who is also a trained transpersonal psychotherapist and runs Dart Europe.

“A journalist on the front line may cope with death, seeing body after body on their way back to cut a story and when they cut the piece and it’s half an hour late someone says, ‘Couldn’t you have got that one on time?’ Those individuals can come back burning with rage,” he says.

“The trauma has probably caused their defences to drop and they are incredibly vulnerable. They need respectful and supportive treatment and if they don’t get it they can feel incredibly betrayed. If they get a sharp response, that will be the one they remember.”

The response of managers and desk staff and the existence of a reliable support network are considered to be among the most crucial factors that may help prevent someone from developing long-term psychological problems after a traumatic experience.

In line with this thinking, Brayne will be developing a permanent programme for the BBC which will train managers, producers and other news staff to assess whether someone involved in a traumatic event may have difficulty dealing with the experience in a healthy way. On the basis of this assessment, a journalist may be offered support in the form of counselling.

“No one is going to be forced to go to a counsellor because that won’t achieve anything,” says Brayne.

Many journalists may never be persuaded that they need anything more than a few drinks and a chat with their mates to deal with the pressures of their job, but for those that reach a different conclusion, Brayne is determined that they won’t be left with nowhere to turn.