Factors that diminish or exacerbate traumatic stress in practicing journalists

Abstract

Journalists are on the frontline for reporting on their communities, serving as both first responders and eyewitnesses to violent news events. These events can have a lasting effect on the reporter long after their stories are filed, and they have returned to their newsrooms. Reporting on traumatic events can have a wide range of mental health effects on reporters that newsrooms have not been able to adequately address due to a multitude of reasons. This qualitative study used a series of in-depth interviews with fourteen journalists across the country (n = 14) to increase the narrative around journalists’ relationship with trauma and identify what resources they feel would help address the problem of traumatic stress.