Salute those who bring disaster news to our TV

A recent Reuters Institute study (April 2024) in 46 countries showed that “more than a third (36 percent) of people say they sometimes or often avoid the news, because they find it depressing, irrelevant, or hard to understand. Many complain about being overloaded by the ‘amount of news these days’ or helpless in the face of global problems they can’t do anything about.”

That is a big number of people simply switching off from what is happening around them! It is not that they do not care about the tragedies happening to other people. It is just that they are traumatised by it. 

Now if the people viewing the news on television screens from the comfort of their living rooms are traumatised, just how affected are the field journalists that keep the cameras rolling to record these moments, to document history and bring the plight of the suffering to the whole world so that hopefully, something can be done?

Indeed many have paid with their lives for covering wars and conflict. Just from the Gaza mayhem alone, at least 113 journalists and media workers have up to this point lost their lives, and at least 18 journalists have been killed in the Russia-Ukraine war, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

Thankfully, many journalists – against all odds – do live to tell the stories, which is why the newsreels continue to run and atrocities are documented for posterity. War, of course, is extreme trauma, but so is covering natural (and man-made) disasters like the Kiteezi landfill tragedy, earthquakes, accidents, murders, etc. Journalists who brace themselves to document these macabre scenes and bring them to our living rooms may not pay with their lives, but their lives never remain the same. 

A study by the USA Centre for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder  on journalists who had covered traumatic events had interesting, but not unexpected revelations. 
“The results of the study indicated that some journalists experienced distress, such as intrusive recollections of the events, avoidance of reminders of the events, and symptoms of depression, following their coverage of trauma, tragedy, and disaster. In addition, some of these journalists noted sustained distress that had persisted for several years.”

So while the news consumers have the luxury of simply switching off the gory images, journalists do not. They must go through the difficult and dangerous motions of documenting these tragedies because without doing so, the perpetrators would almost certainly get away with it and the victims would have little – or no chance – to get justice.

To try and mitigate the psychological impact of this, many newsrooms have put in place different support systems to help their journalists navigate through the trauma of covering trauma. These include post-trauma exposure counselling and treatment, extended leave to support recuperation, continuous training, sensitisation and personalised support, etc. 

Still, this often is never enough as some images remain etched in the minds of trauma journalists for life. Yes, it is a dirty job, so to speak, but a noble one that journalists, police officers, health workers, volunteers, etc have to do for humanity at great personal cost and sacrifice.

As you pick that remote to change stations and avoid the bad news, at least do salute the journalists who hold the cameras, witnessing and documenting it all.
 

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