Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma

New Australasian DVD

For the past four months, senior GTV9 reporter Brett McLeod has spent a good deal of his spare time producing a cross-industry trauma and journalism awareness DVD for the Dart Centre Australasia.

The project grew out of an idea fleshed out by 16 senior journalists and newsroom managers from a cross-section of Australian and New Zealand news outlets at the Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma’s inaugural Beginning to Make a Real Difference retreat held in Coffs Harbour in April.

There was consensus at the end of that retreat about a growing need to begin discussions in newsrooms about issues around covering traumatic news. One way of doing this effectively, all agreed, was to show the stories of news personnel at all different levels and from a variety of organisations.

This would replicate the successful approach the Australian Broadcasting Corporation took with its excellent in-house training DVD produced and launched earlier in 2007 (see Lisa Millar’s story).

After recording key interviews in Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide, Brett’s cross-industry News Media and Trauma DVD is nearing its launch and, he says, he’s more convinced than ever that such a tool is needed in Australasian newsrooms.

“Across the industry there’s some common understanding of what needs to be done in terms of preparing people to do this sort of work,” Brett said, “but it’s not often enunciated by experienced staff nor by newer journalists, probably for fear of being seen by their peers as ‘too soft’.”

That’s not what it’s about at all, Brett says.

“It’s about doing the job professionally and turning out a better product without harming ourselves or others.”

When Brett started to ask cross-industry colleagues to participate in this new project, well-known journalists from metropolitan and regional media promptly agreed. Eight appear in the finished News Media and Trauma DVD:

• Nine Network senior reporter Peter Harvey # News Limited photographer Renee Nowytarger (The Australian)
• Former reporter and now 2UE program director Greg Byrne
• Senior Sunday Age reporter Gary Tippet
• WIN TV regional Victoria reporter Erin Cassar
• Seven News reporter Jess Adamson and cameraman Rob Brown, both from South Australia
• Senior ABC reporter and former foreign correspondent Philip Williams.

Each interviewee spoke openly about issues arising from covering traumatic news stories as well as the ways newsrooms can better prepare people to do this sort of work and to support their staff while they are doing difficult assignments.

On the road ... with Brett McLeod

If the adage that doctors make the worst patients holds true for other professions, then journalists should be the worst interview subjects.

In fact making the News Media and Trauma DVD has shown me that journalists, and photographers, and camera operators are in fact good interviewees ­ they’re just a bit shy. Everyone I approached agreed to be interviewed, much to my relief. I sent Peter Harvey a long screed about Dart, the purpose of the DVD, how important his contribution would be, etc. I must have spent an hour on the email.

He shot one back within a few minutes saying “Great, let me know when you want to do it.”

That was to be the typical response. There was no scientific method involved in selecting subjects.

I just picked people I’d worked with over the years who I felt represented different parts of the industry, with experience ranging from 40 years in the industry to just a few months. And most were very anxious about appearing on camera!

Is it because we work in a competitive industry where we fear ridicule from our colleagues? Possibly.

I think it’s more to do with the fact these interviews were about an area that’s very personal in a very public profession.

We deal with some of the worst events in modern life. We throw ourselves at the stories and exhaust every angle we can find. But what happens when we go home?

A common response from those I approached to be interviewed was: “I don’t really know much about trauma, I’ve never covered a war or a disaster or anything”.

Which is exactly the point: The events that traumatise us need not be large-scale tragedy. They can be the story you cover tomorrow.

Jess Adamson went through the physical and personal rigours of reporting the tsunami in Aceh, only to find the story that was most deeply upsetting had happened metres from her desk.

Peter Harvey has covered wars from Vietnam to Lebanon, but an image from the Sydney morgue in the 1960s is still with him.

And there need not be one event that gets to us.

Gary Tippet speaks of the “drip, drip, drip” effect on our psyche when we cover trauma after trauma.

What pleased me about the interviews was a thread of what is “the right thing to do” when it comes to victims of trauma.

We put ourselves in their shoes – or try to – before approaching them. And it makes us better journalists.

And I found we are searching for “the right thing to do” when it comes to dealing with our own trauma.

Discussions with colleagues, alcohol, therapy, quiet contemplation – the different methods we’ve tried are on display.

The News Media and Trauma DVD isn’t a self-help tool – no answers are given. The aim is simply to get a dialogue going.

I hope those who watch it get as much out of it as I have in helping put it together.

A Vote of Thanks

The Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma would like to thank the Nine Network – especially Brett McLeod, Paul Webber, Michael Venus and Tony Shepherd and those journalists willing to tell their stories – for willingly and generously supporting the creation of this important teaching tool for newsrooms.

The News Media and Trauma DVD will be instrumental in engaging journalists in conversations about dealing with potential trauma exposure as well as ethical and sensitive reporting techniques for new journalists.

Along with many working journalists, the Dart Centre believes that raising these issues and developing skills in how to better deal with the consequences of trauma exposure results in better journalism and, ultimately, better stories for journalist, their employing organisations and the people they cover.

None of this could have happened without the support of Nine in Melbourne.