"Wounded Witness" - Dart panel at the International Journalism Festival Perugia

Sam Dubberley, Gavin Rees, Bruce Shapiro and Hannah Storm will speak at the International Journalism Festival (IJF) in Perugia, Italy about vicarious trauma and moral injury.

News cycles drenched with violence, war and civil unrest don’t just challenge reporters on scene: far from the front line, an open pipeline of graphic imagery and toxic content floods the screens of video editors, investigative reporters, fact checkers and content moderators, taking a mental-health toll on a wide range news professionals. This panel will explore this hidden newsroom health crisis and best practices for journalists and newsrooms in combating vicarious trauma, moral injury and burnout.

Panelists:

Sam Dubberley is the managing director of the Digital Investigations Lab in the Technology and Human Rights Division of Human Rights Watch (HRW). Prior to joining HRW, Dubberley was the head of the Evidence Lab at Amnesty International where he conducted and led on a wide range of open-source research for Amnesty International. He has been a fellow of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Colombia University.

Gavin Rees is Senior Advisor for Training and Innovation at the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma. For many years, Gavin was the director of Dart Centre Europe. Responsible for implementing the Centre’s work across Europe, Gavin ran 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, a board member of the UK Psychological Trauma Society, and was a board member of the European Society for Traumatic Stress Studies for more than ten years.

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 Adjunct Professor and Senior Advisor for Academic Affairs at Columbia, where he teaches journalism ethics. Bruce is the author of Shaking the Foundations: 200 Years of Investigative Journalism in America and Legal Lynching: The Death Penalty and America's Future. His next book, Aftershock Journalism: The Revolution in Reporting on Violence, is forthcoming from Columbia University Press. He is a founding board member of the Global Investigative Journalism Network and recipient of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Public Advocacy Award for "outstanding and fundamental contributions to the social understanding of trauma."

Hannah Storm is the founder and Co-Director of Headlines Network, which exists to promote more open conversations about mental health in journalism, through workshops, tips and a podcast. She is also a media consultant, specialising in safety - be that physical, online or psychological - working with news rooms to create spaces where everyone feels safe to share their experiences of mental health and where leaders recognise the value of empathetic management. A sought-after speaker, who shares her own story of recovery from complex trauma, Hannah is the former CEO of the International News Safety Institute and the Ethical Journalism Network, as well as a talented facilitator, trainer and writer. Hannah co-authored the first study into moral injury and the media for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism with Professor Anthony Feinstein and has written extensively at the intersection of gender, mental health, physical and online safety. She is now writing a book for Routledge: a practical guide for journalists on mental health. Outside her media and mental health work, she's an award-winning author of flash fiction and an accomplished marathon runner, and she finds writing and running hugely beneficial for her wellbeing.