How Journalists Experience Vicarious Trauma

Journalists bring good and bad tidings, usually in reverse order. We have all heard that “if it bleeds it leads,” but at what cost to the reporter “leading” the story? For journalists covering gruesome, shocking, or explosive events, the stories not only lead but linger—sometimes resulting in traumatic symptoms.

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Journalistic Trauma

Good journalists are not satisfied with superficial coverage; they dive deeper. Unfortunately, depending on the story, in-depth coverage can involve exposure to explosive, graphic, gruesome facts. Most of us have watched reporters struggle to fight back tears when reporting trauma or tragedy. But how much of that trauma do they internalize and take home with them once the cameras are off?

River J. Smith et al. (2018) examined factors associated with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in journalists covering traumatic news stories.¹ They began by acknowledging that journalists are frequently exposed to incidents involving threats to life and serious injury, which can include repeated exposure to negative details of work‐related traumatic events. They also note that covering these types of stories may require journalists to be present at the actual events that emergency personnel are responding to, which exposes them to “a wide array of human atrocity.” On the other hand, Smith et al. also recognize that journalists may be exposed to traumatic information for a prolonged period of time without ever leaving the newsroom.

Smith et al. found that factors associated with PTSD included both personal and work-related traumatic stressors, as well as organizational stressors. Regarding personality attributes and coping styles associated with risk and resiliency, they found that risk factors for PTSD included higher levels of perceived organizational stressors, avoidant emotional coping, the intensity of exposure to work‐related traumatic stressors, and personal trauma history.

When Trauma Is the Story

In their sample, Smith et al. found that 80 percent of participants reported having responded to the scene of a traumatic event during the course of their careers. Among the types of cases they covered, murder, dead or injured children, auto accidents, and mass casualties were reported as being the most stressful. Nonetheless, they found the prevalence of probable PTSD within the sample was 9.7 percent. Smith et al. note that their results are consistent with ratios among other high‐risk populations, indicating that most people do not develop clinically significant PTSD symptoms even when they are frequently exposed to work‐related trauma. Smith et al. do note, however, that this rate suggests that a subgroup of journalists do not recover naturally when exposed to these stressors and will, in fact, develop clinically significant symptoms of PTSD.

Covering Trauma and Coping Mechanisms

Regarding coping mechanisms, Smith et al. found that journalists who used more avoidant emotional coping such as denial, self-distraction, and behavioral disengagement suffered greater symptoms of PTSD. They explain that while avoidant coping can serve an adaptive function that helps journalists maintain objectivity while actively generating news, postcoverage use of avoidant coping can inhibit the processing of traumatic encounters and may be maladaptive in the long term.

Smith et al. recognize that strategies to reduce PTSD risk involve understanding a journalist’s organizational climate, as well as the manner in which they manage work‐related stressors. Fortunately, newsrooms are increasingly offering psychological support to journalists,² which is important because many reporters are repeatedly exposed to trauma.