Workshop: Psychological Safety for Investigative Reporting

November 15, 2017
1:00 - 4:30 pm
Wits Science Stadium at the University of the Witwatersrand
1 Jan Smuts Avenue, Braamfontein
Johannesburg, 2000, South Africa
Register Here

This workshop brings together working journalists and health professionals from the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma to look at the issue of psychological self care when immersed in traumatic stories. 

The afternoon will include small-group interactive exercises; Q&A's; teaching on trauma in non-Western and Western cultures; and self-care tips from seasoned investigative reporters and Dart staff:

Moderator

Cait McMahon
Managing Director, Dart Centre Asia Pacific

Cait McMahon has been Managing Director of the Dart Centre Asia Pacific since 2004. McMahon is a psychologist, and began working with the media in 1987. Cait is responsible for creating and facilitating training programmes across the Asia Pacific region to promote ethical and thorough reporting of violence and disaster, as well as psychological safety and resilience for media professionals. McMahon is the only Australian psychologist to be published on this topic and she has a specific interest in posttraumatic growth as it relates to trauma exposed journalists. Cait has presented in close to 20 countries internationally on trauma as it relates to journalism over the past decade.


Speakers

Ismail Einashe
Journalist, Freelance

Ismail Einashe is a freelance journalist based in London. His work has appeared in numerous publications including, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Nation, Prospect Magazine, Index on Censorship and The Atlantic. Einashe has worked for BBC Radio Current Affairs and presented on BBC Radio. He is also a 2017 Dart Center Ochberg Fellow at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and an associate at the Cambridge University Migration Research Network (CAMMIGRES).

Patricia Evangelista
Multimedia Manager, Rappler

Patricia Evangelista is a multimedia journalist who covers disaster, conflict, human rights and development issues. Before joining online news agency Rappler, she co-created and produced the New York Festivals winning television narrative series Storyline and wrote an opinion column for the Philippine Daily Inquirer that ran eight years. Her body of work across various platforms has earned both local and international acclaim. In 2014, she won the Agence France-Presse Kate Webb Prize for exceptional journalism in dangerous conditions for her coverage of the Zamboanga hostage crisis and the aftermath of super typhoon Haiyan. Her work covering the killings during Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war has won both a Human Rights Press Award and a SOPA award for Excellence in Feature Writing. She continues to document the drug war with the Impunity Series published in Rappler.
 

Elana Newman
Research Director, Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma

Elana Newman, McFarlin Professor of Psychology at the University of Tulsa, has conducted research on a variety of topics regarding the psychological and physical response to traumatic life events, assessment of PTSD in children and adults, journalism and trauma, and understanding the impact of participating in trauma-related research from the trauma survivor's perspective.

She is a past president of the International Society of Traumatic Stress Studies, the world’s premier organization dedicated to trauma treatment, education, research, public policy concerns and theoretical formulation.  Her work in journalism and trauma has focused on occupational health of journalists and she and her students have several studies underway examining the effects of journalistic practice upon consumers.  She was the key investigator on the Dart Center's research survey on photojournalists' exposure to trauma. She co-directed the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma’s first satellite office in NYC after 9-11

 

Amantha Perera
Asia Pacific Coordinator, Dart Center Asia Pacific

Amantha Perera is a foreign correspondent based in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and the Asia Pacific Coordinator for the Dart Centre. He covers Sri Lanka and the region with special interest in conflict, post conflict situations, humanitarian disasters and climate change. He has worked as a contributor to TIME, Al-Jazeera, The Guardian, Reuters/Alertnet, the Inter Press News Service and IRIN, among others. He was an Ochberg Fellow at Columbia Journalism School in 2013, a Visiting Scholar at the Graduate School of Journalism, University of California, Berkeley in 2003-4 and a Jefferson Fellow at the East West Center, University of Hawaii in 2001. You can follow Perera on Twitter at @AmanthaP. 
 

Gavin Rees
Director, Dart Center Europe

Gavin Rees is the director of Dart Centre Europe. Responsible for implementing the Centre’s work across Europe, Gavin runs workshops and discussion groups on trauma awareness, resilience and interviewing skills for working journalists and journalism students in a range of countries around the world.  
 
Prior to working at the Dart Centre, Gavin produced business and political news for US, British and Japanese news channels, and has worked on drama and documentary films for the BBC, Channel 4 and independent film companies. He was a leading producer on the BBC film Hiroshima, which won an  International Emmy in 2006. He is a visiting fellow in the Media School at Bournemouth University, and is a board member of both the European Society of Traumatic Stress Studies and the UK Psychological Trauma Society. 
 

Bruce Shapiro
Executive Director, Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma

Bruce Shapiro is Executive Director of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, a project of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism encouraging innovative reporting on violence, conflict and tragedy worldwide. An award-winning reporter on human rights, criminal justice and politics, Shapiro is a contributing editor at The Nation and U.S. correspondent for Late Night Live on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio National. He is also Senior Advisor for Academic Affairs at Columbia Journalism School, where he teaches ethics.  His books include Shaking the Foundations: 200 Years of Investigative Journalism in America and Legal Lynching: The Death Penalty and America's Future. He is recipient of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Public Advocacy Award for "outstanding and fundamental contributions to the social understanding of trauma."