Stockholm Trauma & Journalism Workshop

In mid-June, I sat alongside several hundred other delegates in Stockholm's Conference Centre listening with great interest to Professor Ronald Crelinsten from the Centre for Global Studies at the University of Victoria in Canada.

He was outlining the “Politics of Fear and Loathing: Terrorism, Counter-terrorism and Crisis Management”.

Less than three weeks later, I sat alone in front of a TV screen in Inverness on the East coast of Scotland watching precisely the events and scenarios he had talked about happening for real on the streets of London.

I was filming a report for BBC News in Northern Ireland about soldiers of the Royal Irish Regiment preparing to return to Iraq for the first time since the invasion of 2003.

What had been talked about at great length and with great expertise by an international panel of professionals at the Stockholm conference of the European Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ESTSS) suddenly struck home with all the force of a whack round the head with a cricket bat.

I was hundreds of miles away from the scene of the London explosions. I have had personal experience of 30 years of sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland. But what was unfolding in the English capital still resonated with a surprising rawness.

The Dart Centre experience at the ESTSS in Sweden had been as enlightening as it was predictable.

As a Dart invitee, I was able to exchange and compare experiences with a range of fellow journalists from around the world, each with his or her own story to tell about the effects of being involved in or covering traumatic events.

Given the nationalities involved—from Russian and Turkish to Belgian, French and British—language could have been a barrier. However, I realised within a short space of time that we were conversing in a sort of universal tongue. Each of us understood where the other person was coming from.

A similar experience was gained from a get-together in County Kerry in Ireland at the end of 2004. For the first time under the auspices of the Dart Centre, a group of "working journalists" from Northern Ireland met up at the Parknasilla House hotel to look back over their coverage of 30 years of conflict.

It was a unique occasion, not least because many of those who attended were meeting each other in a social setting for the first time.

There was time to talk and reflect on what each one there had done well or not so well over the past three decades. The participants represented a wide range of political opinion and included the broadcast and print media.

There had been a realistic level of journalistic scepticism about the event beforehand. However by the end of the discussions spanning several days there was a real coming-togetherness among those involved.

Not in a luvvy-huggy sort of way, but in a realisation of professionally like-minded people who felt that there was a kind of  support network for them consisting mainly of their own colleagues. Another barrier had been lowered.  

At the Stockholm ESTSS conference in June, I believe that at the very least, most of us journalists came away from the event with a feeling that we are "not alone".

Contacts were made, business cards exchanged and we even managed to host a meeting where "the Shrinks" were enticed into the room to hear the story from the journalist's perspective.

One professional psychologist who I suspect was sitting in a room full of reporters for the first time, likened it to "swimming with sharks".

She was fortunate. These sharks were the Basking variety and they were smiling.

The discussion was all too short, but long enough to bring about a growing realisation that there is a need for a process of trust-building to begin between those who report on traumatic events and those who will be called on professionally at some point to help the victims and survivors cope with the mental and emotional repercussions.

Given what has now happened in London and the threat of further attacks, that trust-building process is more urgent than ever.