Caring for yourself when covering a traumatic event. Dean Yates

Dean Yates visiting a makeshift school along the coastline of Indonesia’s Aceh province in the months after a devastating tsunami struck on Dec. 26, 2004. REUTERS/Beawiharta

I covered the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami in Indonesia’s Aceh province with passion and urgency. I wanted the world to read about the unimaginable death, destruction and suffering. Unlike the Bali nightclub bombings in 2002, when I was confused and couldn’t bring myself to interview horribly burned tourists in a local hospital, in Aceh I understood my role – report the hell out of the story.

Reporting on traumatic events, whether you do it once or for decades, can be confronting and enriching. You see the best and the worst of the world. You witness kindness and evil. You marvel at the resilience of survivors.

We need to try to minimise the impact on ourselves from covering traumatic stories. The most important thing is to understand that our primary role as reporters, photographers, camera operators and producers is to bear witness.

We should also be aware of the potential emotional consequences of our work and practice self-care.

A ground-breaking report released in July 2017 found many journalists who covered the 2015 refugee crisis in Europe experienced moral injury, a little-known condition that a small number of experts say haunts some U.S. soldiers who fought in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Moral injury is the damage done to a person’s conscience from something they did, witnessed or failed to prevent that transgresses personal moral and ethical values. Moral injury dents one’s moral compass, one’s soul. It can lead to pervasive guilt and shame as well as social withdrawal and intrusive thoughts such as flashbacks and nightmares. It can be as debilitating as PTSD. I wrote about my own moral injury in this special report for Reuters.

The report on the journalists who covered the refugee crisis was the first research showing moral injury could affect members of the media. It said preliminary evidence showed moral injury might be less likely to occur in journalists if they understood their professional role and did not blur the boundaries.

“Journalists are contemporary historians, not humanitarian workers,” wrote the report’s authors, Anthony Feinstein, professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto and Hannah Storm, director of the International News Safety Institute (INSI).

“If, in extremis, they are called on to provide help, their first impulse, quite correctly, is to do so. This cannot be questioned. However, when these actions are repeated unnecessarily (for example, when aid workers who are better trained and equipped are present) then the door to moral injury opens wider.”

The most common reactions among the journalists who covered the refugee crisis were feelings of guilt at not having done enough personally to help refugees and shame at that behaviour of others, such as local authorities.

A Syrian refugee kisses his daughter as he walks through a rainstorm towards Greece's border with Macedonia, September 10, 2015. REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis

Feinstein and Storm made a series of recommendations, including establishing personal parameters and rules of ethical involvement ahead of time to ensure journalists recognise their roles and the value of their work. They also stressed the importance of education with respect to moral injury and other potential emotional challenges.

“Journalists are often told that they have to be emotionally separate to do their job, so it may be difficult for individuals to recognise if they themselves are off-key. Hence any discussion about managing moral injury needs to be as much about educating journalists as their managers. Senior journalists and managers need to lead by example, have conversations with their staff about their experiences and what the expectations are. Educational material should also be made available to help individuals increase awareness of the emotional consequences of their work,” they wrote.

Dean Yates interviewing people queuing for food following the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami in Indonesia’s city of Banda Aceh.

One of the biggest challenges for journalists covering trauma is returning home. It can be alienating. Ordinary people don’t want to hear about the dead and displaced. It can leave you feeling like you don’t belong. This is a normal reaction.

And what if you live in a country where trauma is never-ending? I encourage all our managers to acknowledge the emotional impact on our journalists and their families who live and work in such places.

Indeed, Feinstein and Storm note that the emotional impact can be magnified when a traumatic story unfolds in your own country. That’s what happened to veteran Reuters photographer Yannis Behrakis when boatloads of Syrian refugees started arriving on the shores of his homeland, Greece. Yannis worried that the global community would criticise the Greek response. Plus, Yannis had been covering his country’s own political and economic crisis for five years, on top of three decades photographing war and conflict across the world.

One final point to remember when covering traumatic stories: We’re all human. It’s ok to feel empathy for the people you meet. I still think about some of the survivors from the Boxing Day tsunami I interviewed. I occasionally read stories I wrote, both in the aftermath and six months later when Reuters photographer Beawiharta and I travelled along the Aceh coastline to assess recovery efforts. On the fifth anniversary I wrote a reflective piece. I read that story again recently.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the then managing editor of American Journalism Review, Rachel Smolkin, wrote that journalists covering the disaster showed compassion by offering water, rides and rescue to victims. But Smolkin, now CNN Digital’s executive editor of politics, added that their most enduring service was to “expose the suffering of citizens trapped in hellish shelters and on sweltering interstates, and to document the inexcusable government response”.

Report the hell out of the story.

Dean Yates was a journalist, bureau chief and editor for Reuters for more than 26 years. He has reported extensively on war, conflict and natural disasters in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Dean was diagnosed with PTSD in March 2016. He has been admitted three times to the Ward 17 psychiatric unit in Melbourne. He also served as head of journalist mental health and wellbeing strategy at Reuters.

This blog first circulated internally on May 10, 2018.

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