When I first saw the photos of people who died in the Singleton bus crash, I felt the weight of horror that engulfed the news. In those images, I saw youth, happiness, community and love. They helped me absorb the enormity of the event so much deeper than the fact that “10 people died”.
But when I heard that some of those photographs were downloaded, without permission, from the victims’ social media pages, a new feeling emerged: dejection.
I understand why those photographs were taken from the social media pages. In the intensity of the moment, with all of us wanting to know more about what happened, journalists provided. As a former journalist myself, I recognised the personal (and editorial) pressure to chase down the person, get the picture and secure the interview. I have done such things.
I’ve tried to squeeze myself into a funeral service of a baby killed in a terrorist attack (I failed). I’ve camped outside people’s houses for days waiting for them to emerge. I’ve interviewed trafficked and abused women and children in south-east Asia and used their information to help hunt their perpetrators. Getting these stories took cunning and determination.
We applaud fearless journalism when the target of tenacity is a lying politician, a corrupt businessman or a war criminal. But when these investigative skills turn to trauma, the justification for the tenacity is weaker because the public interest test is more tenuous. Ethical decisions lie between these blurred lines.
Trauma experiences are wounds of powerlessness. No matter what the event – fire, tsunami, violence, war or bus crash – those involved have lost their power of choice, lost their ability to move, to breathe and to determine their destiny.
Two things are vital for trauma recovery. The first is the restoration of autonomy. The second is the ability to own and shape our story, to make meaning of the event.
Taking a dead person’s photos from social media without permission is an intrusion, a transgression of privacy. But, in the trauma context, it is more than that. It inflames the wound of powerlessness. Something happened “to” the family and survivors, something they had no say in. They have lost control of their story, their past happy memories and their power of choice.
In these dynamics, it is so easy to paint the journalists as heartless and cruel. But I argue the reality is more nuanced than that.
For starters, we are all complicit. Trauma news travels fast. These are the events we tell, or yell, to each other over the fence – “Did you hear about … ?” This is evolution at work. We are a species that has out-survived tigers by sharing information about danger. What it is, how big it is, where it is. In this, speed is vital. Journalists are the modern town criers and trauma stories will always be big stories that will be read and shared. It is easier to point to bad journalism than to reflect on our own consumption of other people’s grief.
Newsrooms often don’t create space for these ethical conversations. Until recently, trauma was not commonly taught in journalism schools and most editors have had no direct training in leading trauma-aware newsrooms.
The Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma, where I now work, is the only global body dedicated to transferring trauma science into journalism. We know that it is possible to safely interview people who have experienced trauma. That stories can be told with care, consent and dignity. But this kind of work is much harder to do without trauma literacy.
Another factor is that many journalists experience extreme exposure to trauma, usually from the very beginning of their careers. Graduates are put on the crime or courts rounds, political journalists report on sexual assaults, regional journalists turn up to traffic accidents involving people they know. This trauma comes from directly witnessing events, from editing graphic content and from being the target of trolling and threats.
A more subtle wound is moral injury, which is the hurt that comes when witnessing acts of moral transgression, or that occurs when you take actions that compromise your own moral compass. Such as going to a funeral uninvited – or downloading a photograph without permission. These events ripple through a career and can compound. Trauma is inflamed by stress and deadlines create stress. Post-traumatic stress disorder affects only a minority of journalists, with rates comparable to first responders such as firefighters and yet when it occurs the repercussions can be enormous.
Finally, journalists are mostly working alone, making tough ethical decisions on the fly and under pressure. There are few formal peer support or mentor programs, no time for reflection and very little community sympathy for these occupational hazards.
Traumatic stories are not just career-making events, they can be career-breaking ones too. I’m not a journalist any more. I left after cumulative exposure to trauma brought me undone, emptied me of my ambition and of my joy in the work. I no longer had the drive to chase paedophiles and interview their victims. I didn’t have the knowledge, then, about how to do that in ways that protected me and those I wrote about.
Trauma begets trauma. It will continue to do so until we all learn how to talk to and talk about someone else’s story safely. At the very least, journalists and their audiences – that is, you and me – need to consider the costs of these stories to people’s lives.
Dr Kimina Lyall is the deputy chief executive of the Dart Centre Asia Pacific and a clinical psychologist. She is a former journalist, foreign correspondent and author of Out of the Blue: Facing the Tsunami
