Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma

Children and Media Coverage of Trauma

By Christina Cantrell and Elana Newman

An overview of current research on the short- and long-term impacts of media coverage of tragedy on children, as well as aggravating risk factors and suggestions for future research.

Covering Trauma: Impact on Journalists

By River Smith and Elana Newman

An overview of current research on the occupational hazards for journalists covering traumatic events, the risk factors that aggravate those effects and some suggestions for mitigating those factors.

Political Communication

A list of academic publications with emphasis on political communication and psychology.

Breaking Bad News

III. Important Considerations

DON'T telephone the family/bereaved in advance to say you are coming. Try to find out discreetly where they might be found in person. If you need to break the news in the workplace, ask the person's manager beforehand for a quiet space to meet.

Self-Study Unit 1: Journalism & Trauma

The skills needed to interact with people under such stressful and unpredictable conditions do not usually come naturally. The goal of this module is to explain what traumatic stress is and why it is useful for journalists to know about its effects.

Tragedies & Journalists

VI. Management

By Joe Hight and Frank Smyth

Remember: Everyone in your newsroom may be affected differently. Some may be affected immediately while others will take days, weeks, months or even years to see the effect. The journalists who either claim or seem to be the most unfazed by the event may, in fact, be affected the most. Others may have developed mechanisms to help them deal with tragedy, and they may have minimal effects.

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PTSD 101

Other Responses

By Frank Ochberg

There are psychiatric disorders other than PTSD and ASD that follow traumatic events. Most commonly, the diagnosis is an Adjustment Disorder.

Self-Study Unit 3: Photography & Trauma

IV. Traumatic Stress and the News Audience

The field of mass communication study is largely build upon “effects research,” the study of how media content (e.g., movies, newspaper articles, propaganda, television programs, etc.) affects some segment of the population. This research goes back about three-quarters of a century and has yielded a wide range of useful findings.

Tragedies & Journalists

IV. The Journalist

By Joe Hight and Frank Smyth

Know your limits. If you've been given a troublesome assignment that you feel you cannot perform, politely express your concerns to your supervisor. Tell the supervisor that you may not be the best person for the assignment. Explain why.

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Self-Study Unit 2: Covering Terrorism

V. Telling Stories

By Elana Newman and Chris Bull

The stories journalists tell, visually and verbally, help the public make sense of confusing, threatening times. In fact there is evidence that putting language to traumatic experiences helps individuals cope. Although it is not a stated mission of the press to heal, articulating the event for others may have a therapeutic effect on the larger community.