Dataharvest EIJC 2023 Panel: How to Work with Traumatized Sources
Raghenoplein
Mechelen, Belgium
Dataharvest: The European Investigative Journalism Conference
How do you work with vulnerable sources - people traumatised by war, by having to flee, or by sexual violence? Few journalistic tasks are as important and as ethically challenging as the coverage of migration, modern slavery, and (sexual) exploitation. Too often, survivors are seen only as victims, when they are actually the key witnesses to major events that are not properly documented in the paper trails that journalists are accustomed to working with. In this joint session with the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma and the investigative platform Lost in Europe, Gavin Rees, Ismail Einashe & Sanne Terlingen will talk about creating a safe environment, building trust and minimizing re-traumatization. They will also look at how to verify the stories you hear, and how to remain sane yourself.
Sanne Terlingen: Head of Investigations, Lost in Europe
Sanne Terlingen is an award winning investigative journalist from The Netherlands, specialized in organized sexual violence, (early childhood) trauma, migration, people smuggling and trafficking. She currently works as head of investigations at Lost in Europe, a cross border investigative network that tries to find out how it is possible that thousands of children disappear after arrival in Europe. She previously worked for Argos (VPRO), the main investigative radio program in The Netherlands. She set up investigations into the disappearances from Vietnamese minors from the most protected shelter in the Netherlands. She worked with more than hundred survivors of organized child abuse to verify and tell (some of) their stories. Terlingen is a 2019 Ochberg Fellow at the Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma.
Ismali Einashe: Investigative Journalist
Ismail Einashe is an award-winning investigative journalist and writer who has written for The Guardian, BBC News, Foreign Policy, The Sunday Times, El Mundo, Internazionale and The Nation, among many others. He is a member of Lost in Europe, a cross-border journalism project investigating the disappearance of child migrants in Europe. In 2021, he won the inaugural Investigative Journalism for the EU (IJ4EU) Impact Award as part of the Lost in Europe team. In 2019, he won a Migration Media Award, and in 2020 he was shortlisted for the European Press Prize. He has co-edited the book Lost in Media: Migrant Perspectives and the Public Sphere, a collection of essays on the representations of migrants and refugees in the European media. In 2019, he was an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellow, where he reported on China’s role in Africa, focusing on Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zambia. He is also an Ochberg Fellow at the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University and a member of the editorial board of Tate Etc., the magazine of the Tate Galleries.