The Art of Trauma Reporting: Pulitzer Prize Winners Reflect

The Art of Trauma Reporting

By Alex Hannaford

It took seven months before “Marie” even agreed to a formal interview with Ken Armstrong. He went back and forth with her attorney, exchanged emails with Marie directly, talking with her by phone multiple times and then, finally, the interview.

Armstrong worked for The Marshall Project, a nonprofit journalism organization focused on criminal justice issues Marie was at the center of a complicated story that highlighted the failures of law enforcement in investigating a rape, and how trauma can affect people differently: that no stereotypical “victim” exists.

Ethical storytelling is vital to victims and their families, and there are numerous lessons to be learned from ethical reporting of tragedy.

The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma spearheaded a project to identify exactly how Pulitzer Prize winners such as Ken Armstrong report on victims of trauma and tragedy with rigor, compassion and integrity. The Center’s research was conducted in advance of a two-day Pulitzer Centennial symposium “The Impact of Trauma Coverage” co-hosted by the University of Central Oklahoma, University of Oklahoma and University of Tulsa.

Shortly after Armstrong started work on Marie's story, he learned that T. Christian Miller, a senior writer at the news organization ProPublica, was working on a similar piece. The two journalists were confronted with a choice: try to scoop each other, or collaborate. They decided to join forces. The result was “An Unbelievable Story of Rape,” a compelling example of impactful long-form trauma journalism that won the pair the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting.

Media Matters for America said the story “not only highlighted the challenges of investigating cases of rape and sexual violence, but also demonstrated how the media can cover these issues with [more] compassion and higher quality reporting.”

This year marks the Pulitzer Centennial. Since the prizes were first awarded in 1917, the winning words and pictures in the journalism categories have tackled a wide array of traumatic subjects, including:

• A bus crash that claimed 27 lives in Louisville, KY., in 1988. The staff of The Courier-Journal examined the causes, implications and aftermath of the tragedy, for which they won the Pulitzer for general news reporting the following year.
• Four years later, George Lardner Jr.'s heart-breaking examination in The Washington Post about his daughter's murder.
• In 2002, the much-publicized Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal, tackled by The Boston Globe’s Spotlight team.

Armstrong was familiar with the basics of Marie’s story before he set out to tell it. But what he hadn’t heard was Marie’s voice – nobody, it seemed, had written about what she had actually gone through.

Marie said she had been raped in her Washington State apartment. But after being confronted with inconsistencies in her account, she told authorities she had made the whole thing up. Charged with a gross misdemeanor, the 18-year-old faced up to a year in jail. Then police in Colorado began investigating a serial rapist and discovered photos of Marie on a camera in the suspect’s apartment. In fact she had been telling the truth.

“I really wanted to reconstruct the police investigation and find out where the doubt started and how that doubt spread,” said Armstrong, who began collaborating with the radio program “This American Life.”

Marie only agreed to talk if some good could come of the story. She wanted to know the journalistic backgrounds of both Armstrong and Miller and the impact of their past work. For seven months, Armstrong said he gathered records and spoke to Marie and her attorney, but he didn’t start interviewing anyone else connected with the events – Marie's family, friends, the police officers – until Marie herself agreed to talk. Everything hinged on that.

Armstrong said that after the story was published, Marie was glad she participated because it had the kind of impact she had hoped for.

“It communicated the key message that it’s a mistake to assume anyone who's been hurt should act in a particular way; that there is no one right way for someone to act when they've been a victim of trauma,” he said.

Initially, the Lynwood Police Department in Washington that investigated the case declined to comment, but eventually the head of the criminal investigation division said it was important to talk openly.

“A ‘no comment’ really doesn't benefit the department in a case like this, and it doesn't benefit the readers, and it doesn't benefit other police departments,” Armstrong said. “The department's approach at the end was that other police could learn from the mistakes they had made.”

Armstrong said it was important that Marie not be surprised when she read the story in print.

“Most people have had limited dealings with the media. They're not accustomed to getting phone calls or emails asking them to talk about something that is painful and so I think that if you can make that process less jarring, that benefits everyone. It's common sense, to a large degree,” he said. “It's really basic empathy. That's why I approached her attorney first because I thought it would be better for her to receive a phone call from someone she knew letting her know, ‘there's a reporter who's interested in this story’ as opposed to me calling her cold.”

He also offered this advice to journalists:

“I don't think that there's anything about being respectful of people who have been hurt that in any way undermines the journalistic mission. You want to know what happened, you want to be accurate, fair – none of those things is in tension with being open and transparent and respectful with people who have been hurt.”

Avoiding compassion fatigue

Empathy. It’s something that Miriam Pawel knew was crucial when in 1996 she assigned her reporters to cover the horrific story of a passenger jet that had crashed off the eastern tip of Long Island. As Newsday’s assistant managing editor for Long Island, she knew that her news organization would not only be responsible for the breaking news story, but for relaying details of the investigation – of vital importance to the families of TWA 800 victims – in the months ahead.

Amidst the anguish, sadness and horror of the tragedy, Pawel said she believes her news team played an important role by becoming, over time, a trusted source of information. This increased reporters’ ability to spend time with families and cover the stories as they unfolded.

“One reporter spent most of the next five months on what we would now call a long-form narrative: a special section that followed six different people, including the widows of some of the victims, a priest, a technician in the morgue who spent days and weeks trying to identify bodies, and a diver who spent months trying to recover the remains,” Pawel said. “The idea behind that story was how people's lives changed and what the impact of this was, not only when it happened, but over a long period of time.”

Pawel said her job as an editor was as orchestrator or conductor, matching her reporters’ different skills with specific assignments. But those assignments, she said, inevitably took their toll.

“It was really hard, and I think it very much changed their lives, too. I think a lot of editing is social work to begin with, so this became an extension of that. Knowing when to give people breaks, for example. Sometimes people just don't want to even take a day off and you can just see that they are exhausted and that they need it.”

Under Pawel’s watch, Newsday won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting. She notes three reasons her team won the Pulitzer: first, the comprehensiveness of the story, staying true to its multiple strains: the victims, the rescuers, the causes. Second, the decision to profile each victim of the tragedy – something Pawel describes as having an “ambitiousness, that there were no limits to what we were trying to do.” And finally, it was in the execution: paying attention to the job of providing information as well as a duty to telling their stories.

Her advice:

“It's easy for people to become immune to tragedy and to not want to read about it anymore, and we had to find ways to tell those stories that were different and compelling.”

It begins with honesty and sensitivity.

Photographer Barry “Bear” Gutierrez was part of the team at the Rocky Mountain News that won a Pulitzer for its coverage of the Colorado wildfires in the summer of 2002. Gutierrez captured his stunning image of a cabin framed by fire and smoke on a remote mountain in Durango.

In order to take that image, Gutierrez said he had to befriend the homeowner who stood watching as his property was on the verge of being swallowed by flames.

“It was his lifelong dream to build this house. He designed it and had it built with his retirement money. And the home was saved,” Gutierrez said.

“That morning I’d thrown my boots on, grabbed my gear as fast as I could to try and beat the road block. I saw a man hosing down his house, pulled on to his property, and I asked if I could stay there and take some pictures,” Gutierrez said.

A year later, Gutierrez returned to see the homeowner and took a picture of him holding a framed copy of the iconic image he had made during the wildfire.

“He told me how grateful he was that he had this picture,” Gutierrez said. “He had a framed print on his wall as it was such a powerful reminder of the fire and how grateful he was that he didn't lose his home. We hugged, we talked, we shared time together, and he was just so thankful that I was there that day.”

Gutierrez said the key to taking photographs like this in times of tragedy is to begin with humility.

“It starts with honesty and sensitivity. And I usually start without my camera if I can. It may seem contradictory to most photojournalists’ training – you know, ‘get the picture at any cost’, and if it's spot news, if things are blowing up, then yeah, there's no time. But when you set your cameras down, put them in the bag, and just talk to people first, it makes a vast difference… I’ve photographed enough funerals from across the street to know I never want to do that again. And so if I ever have the opportunity to get into somebody's life and be part of their circle in the most difficult moments of their life, that's where I’d prefer to be.”

While proud of his effort that summer, Gutierrez said he wished he’d stayed in touch with the people he photographed.

“I think I just jumped right back into work and kind of moved on,” he said.

He also has this advice for photographers following in his footsteps: beware of compassion fatigue.

“When you’re working 12- to 20-hour days, day after day, in 100-degree weather, inhaling smoke, it just wears you out. You wake up some days, and you really don’t want to do it. You’d rather sit at a roadblock and tell your editors nothing is happening. But if you hit a roadblock, you have to keep on going. I had to just look for another way in, to find another dirt road, another evacuee. That was the biggest toll for me. If I face it again I’d do it much the same way, and I’m really proud of how our staff handled themselves that summer.”

Oklahoma City Bombing: The Story of a Photograph

Oklahoma City Bombing: The Story of a Photograph

By Alex Hannaford

In 1995 Charles Porter was working as a lending credit specialist for Liberty Bank in Oklahoma City. He was shooting weddings and took the odd freelance assignment in his spare time to indulge his love of photography. On April 19, he was at work on the ninth floor of his office when he felt the building shake, looked outside and saw nothing but dust and debris. Porter thought a controlled demolition was taking place downtown and decided to grab his camera and shoot a few pictures for his portfolio.

On the street outside, he found glass everywhere and people sitting on benches, covered in blood. Porter ran around the corner to discover what he now describes as the Murrah federal building looking like somebody had taken an ice cream scoop and scooped away the front edge. The Oklahoma City bombing, carried out by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, would kill at least 168 people and injure hundreds more.

Porter began taking pictures of paramedics when he noticed something in his peripheral vision. He turned to see a police officer carrying a child from the wreckage before passing the baby to a firefighter. Porter shot a couple of frames, not realizing that the image would change his life.

The police officer was John Avery, the firefighter Chris Fields, and the baby, who had died in the explosion, was Baylee Almon. Later that day, a friend of Porter’s suggested he take the images he’d shot to the local office of The Associated Press. Porter left his negatives, thinking he might possibly see one of them in The Daily Oklahoman the following morning.

The next day his phone rang.

“It was this lady with a really deep British accent who said she was from the London Times,” Porter said. “And she was trying to help me understand, but she just couldn’t. I was only 25, and the furthest I’d been was Montana, and it just wasn’t registering. She asked how I’d feel if she told me my photograph was going to appear on the front page of every newspaper in the entire world.”

Later, when Porter met Avery, he said his first reaction was to apologize to the police officer.

“I was scared he was going to be mad at me because I put his face out there. But he couldn't have been nicer,” said Porter.

The response to the picture from firefighter Chris Fields and Baylee’s mother Aren Almon-Kok, however, was different, Porter said. “Their reaction is not the same now as it was in the immediate aftermath. I don’t know why it changed, but I know that everything else afterward in the news was, you know, they hated the photo; that they were sick of looking at it. And to be quite honest with you I get sick of looking at it, too. I wish it had never happened; I mean that makes total sense.”

Porter says he has always been ethical when deciding where to license the image. “You never saw it on T-shirts, plaques, coins, stamps. I had all those things offered to me because I owned the picture. I’d get ten offers a day, but I turned them down because it wasn't right.”

But, he said, he hasn’t shied away from licensing the photo to media organizations seeking to use it. “I mean it’s in textbooks, history books. If they wanted to use it for a story, then it was used.” He didn't say how much money he has made from the images.

Despite winning the Pulitzer Prize, Porter never became a professional photographer. He said he was offered a job as a stringer with AP, but it would have meant a considerable pay cut and possible relocation.

“It was a pretty simple decision,” he said. “One of the best pieces of advice I got was never make your hobby your job.”

Bailey Almon's mother, Aren Almon-Kok, said she was mortified when she first saw the image.

“It seemed like nobody stopped to think that that was somebody’s child and that child is dead. I had to see my daughter’s dead body on the front of every magazine. For everybody else it was a symbol of innocence lost in the bombing. But this was my daughter, my child. And Charles Porter was making money off it.”

Almon-Kok also said she had to deal with the unthinkable experience of parents of other children killed in the terrorist attack blaming her for the fact that the media was focusing on her loss, her child.

“I was only 22 at the time, and these other parents were so mad at me. It was a horrible reaction,” she said. “And to this day they still hate me for it.”

Almon-Kok also said when other children were written about in the attack’s aftermath, they were humanized. The media “would say things like 'this child used to like running and playing' but Bailey was always just the baby in the fireman’s arms. And it sucked to deal with all that by myself.”

She remembers going to a Fourth of July carnival and seeing a pop-up shop selling, among other things, a small statue of the image.

“I started crying. They said, ‘It’s really moving, isn’t it? It’s $89.99 if you want one.’ I said, ‘No, it’s my daughter.’ It was devastating for me.

“But I understand the impact the picture had,” she said. “I understand that picture spoke volumes, and when I look at it I think of all the people who lost their lives. Every one of them was someone’s child. But the way they went about [using it] was all wrong. Using it from a journalistic standpoint is one thing; using it to make money is another. And Charles Porter wasn’t a journalist, which played a lot into [how I felt about] it.”

“It’s now been 21 years and it doesn’t bother me anymore. I’ve learned to live with it.”

Pulitzer Prize Winners Share Best Practices for Covering Trauma

Pulitzer Prize Winners Share Best Practices for Covering Trauma

By Elana Newman, Ph.D

In the summer of 2016, Dart Center researchers Elana Newman and Alex Hannaford conducted interviews with 10 Pulitzer Prize winners from 2006-2016 who were honored for their coverage of traumatic events or investigative reporting on trauma-related issues. These interviews are the start of an ongoing project examining best practices in trauma reporting gleaned from Pulitzer honorees.

The Dart Center team - Newman, Hannaford and Joe Hight - created a spreadsheet of all relevant Pulitzer-winning stories and began locating and contacting reporters, editors and photographers from that list, originally planning to include one winner from each year. But in order to be available for a Pulitzer centennial conference on trauma reporting, we limited interviews to the following journalists, who were available to schedule an interview in June, July and early August.

2016     Ken Armstrong, Marshall Project, An Unbelievable Story of Rape

2016     Jessica Rinaldi, Boston Globe, The Life and Times of Strider Wolf

2007     Heidi Evans, New York Daily News, 9/11: The Forgotten Victims

2003     Barry Gutierrez, Rocky Mountain News, Colorado on Fire

2003     Walter “Robby” Robinson, Boston Globe, Coverage of Sexual Abuse by Priests            

2002     Ruth Fremson, New York Times, A Nation Challenged

2000     Janet Reeves, Rocky Mountain News, Coverage of Columbine

1998     Liz Fedor, Grand Forks (ND) Herald, Coverage in the wake of citywide disaster

1997     Miriam Pawel, Newsday, Coverage of the crash of TWA Flight 800

1996     Charles Porter IV, Coverage of Oklahoma City Bombing

Below are common themes and recommendations, as well as illustrative quotes that emerged during the interviews.

I. GETTING THE STORY

First things first, build rapport as a human being. Be honest. Except in breaking news situations, every prize-winning reporter discussed the importance of building trust with those you are covering, and explaining how the process will work. Empathy and compassion were more than a strategy: a fundamental philosophical tenet of establishing a contract with those who are experiencing horrific life changing experiences. Here are four illustrative quotes:

Robinson: After doing the first few interviews we recognized that we were dealing with people who in most cases were very weary of the press, and we needed to gingerly gain their trust. We said to people: we want to tell your story because we think it will prevent this from happening to other kids. If they said no, we said, “We respect your decision, we won't call you again, but if you change your mind, call us.”

Rinaldi: It's almost like dating. You put your best foot forward and you kind of hope they like you, and you do a lot of listening. At a certain point, we said to them, “You know we really feel like you guys have a story that needs to be told and we'd like to make a commitment to telling it the right way. Would you let us go through this journey with you?” By that point they were amenable.

Gutierrez: When things are not urgent, you can set your cameras down, put them in the bag, put them in the trunk and go talk to people first. You can get a sense for what's going on, have a conversation, hug them, figure out what's going on in their lives. Oftentimes you start by just being interested in them. They're alone, you know, someone who's been evacuated from their home who doesn't know if their home has burned down to the ground or not, and they’re in the back, they've been sitting in a parking lot for 15 hours, they just want someone to talk to! They want to know any information you have. They want to just share the moment, and you’ve got to do that sometimes. You’ve got to just accept the situation for what it is, and then you say, after when you feel it's appropriate, you can say, "Hey, do you mind if I just take a few pictures? Can I hang out with you guys for awhile?"

Armstrong: What Marie wanted to know more than anything – and this was communicated to me by her attorney  – was that if she agreed to talk, because this was going to be a difficult ordeal for her, right, to revisit all that had happened and to answer questions about such a painful experience in her life, she wanted to know that good could come from it. She wanted to know about my own background, she wanted to know about the impact that my work had had, she wanted to know about The Marshall Project, she wanted to know about This American Life. I told Marie about the work that I had done at the Chicago Tribune, that had had an impact in the field of criminal justice, and I told her about the Marshall Project: what our mission was, what we were setting out to do, and you know I just wanted her to be as grounded as she could be in who we were, what we were, where we were coming from and what we really wanted to do with the story. Marie was able to just ask questions and get information, before she was ever asked the first question. I waited until Marie agreed.

Think about the community and the victim.  Be respectful.  Maintain trust over time. Everyone interviewed discussed the importance of considering the needs of the individual, and the community and the importance of respecting the needs of sources.

It seems like you made a nice balance of "here's what we know” and “here's what we don't know"?

Armstrong: I don't think there's any tension between the two, I don't think that there's anything about being respectful of people who have been hurt that in any way undermines the journalistic mission. You want to be accurate, you want to be fair – none of those things are in tension with being open and transparent and respectful with people who have been hurt. 

Fedor: I think the journalist's first rule is to listen intently to what people are saying, as evidence of that active listening, you are asking questions where somebody really is able to tell their story. And when you report that story you are giving voice to people, so again I think it's validation psychologically of the story. When your story is in print, it is the time to get your house in order. I also think of journalism as a vehicle to move forward, because when I was reporting on any given citizens you may have been encountering X issues of getting permanent permits or something or the city not reacting quickly enough. If it was in the paper, clearly those officials would try and respond more quickly because they are being held to account for their performance. They are feeling, this reporter cares about the people in the community and is trying to get information on our behalf.  

Rinaldi: Know sometimes when to back away and give people space. And that's a hard thing; I think that's the thing that takes maybe the longest amount of time to learn. As a journalist you want to be there, you want to be present for every moment. I think that sometimes you have to sacrifice a little bit in order to gain, you know? Because just giving them that little bit of space, let them know that we were human, and that we were plugged into how they were feeling and we were trying to be respectful.

Reeves: We really were thinking about community the whole way through. I think one of the first things [Rocky Mountain News Editor] John Temple did was have an assistant manager and an editor go and call I think the Jonesboro, Arkansas, paper because they had had school shooting. What did they learn from that? What about their community? And so in the first couple hours everybody was thinking about community.  Another thing John Temple did right away which I think was quite amazing was he reached out to the community. He certainly reached out to all the victims’ families of Columbine but also anyone within the Columbine area, and gave them all of his contact information. I thought that was important.  actually relationships still to this day grew out of being very open like that at the beginning, until like we're part of this community.

Be Patient

Armstrong: I viewed this as a story where patience would be a virtue. The fact that Marie had been victimized twice over, and the fact that she had filed a law suit against Lynnwood that had been settled, all of that had already been reported. So what I wanted, I could wait for. It took me seven months of talking with Marie's attorney and sending Marie emails, and talking with her on the phone before she agreed to be interviewed, and that didn't cause any problems at all. I wasn't in a rush.

Rinaldi: That's a big part of documentary photography is just wading through all the boring stuff. And there's so much boring stuff.

Pawel: You can't say this enough: the importance of not rushing to judgment. That’s ultimately what I think distinguished our coverage.

During breaking news and crisis, stay present in the moment and trust your skills. More and more journalists are discussing the importance of being present in the moment and relying on your skills, something often referred to as mindfulness or being in the zone or flow.  

Gutierrez: When there's so much pressure coming from so many different places, you have to slow down. So there’re fire trucks zooming, there's police cars, sirens, gunshots, whatever it is: you have to slow down. Don't get caught up in the franticness. Your adrenaline doesn't have to be as high as the policeman shooting back, you just have to calm down, be safe, make the picture. Calm down, do your job, make the picture. Over time, with all the events I've covered and fires I've covered, the number one thing is they get slower. It’s like a professional athlete. To the regular person, an NFL runner is going ninety miles an hour and it's just insane – the speed and watching them catch this flying ball – that's impossible! But to them it's like slow motion. If you've ever heard Jerry Rice talk about catching a ball in the end zone, its slow motion. Because they have been preparing, preparing, preparing, it becomes slow motion. And that's what I mean by preparation. You know, I started by chasing fire trucks with a police scanner in junior college. I would chase them all over Los Angeles, all over Bowling Green, Kentucky, and every experience was an addition to my knowledge about how firefighters work, about how police work, how paramedics work, and over time it slows down.

Fremson: I had been doing a lot of yoga at the time of 9/11, four or five times a week. So I was very conscious of my breath and I remember thinking, “Ok, it's not pleasant” – it felt like you were dragging sandpaper through your mouth, and I tried opening my eyes for a second but it felt like somebody was dragging sandpaper across my eyeballs so I closed them again, but I was very aware of my breathing,  I guess I was just very much in the present moment, enough to recognize, “I'm OK.” I have lapsed in my yoga lately, but every time I do it I'm reminded just how incredibly grounding it is. Well I think I would share the advice of Bob Daugherty, my AP editor, who said that to me you know, at the end of the day the person who can keep their cool when everything else is falling apart around them is the one who will perform, who will win the day. I think that's great advice. I think that however you manage to keep your cool, whether it's because you're able to be in the present, because you do yoga, or you have some other method. I think that is a real key. But I think that goes for any kind of crisis. All I can tell you is that I know that the fact that I could recognize that I was breathing and focusing on my friend helped me realize that I didn’t have to panic in that moment.

II. PREPARING THE STORY

Consider which trauma-related details, facts and images are necessary to present and what information is gratuitous.  Every journalist emphasized this was the key issue that they wrestled with to get the right balance for the story. Here are some examples:

Armstrong: One of the things that we really debated was how to write about Marie being sexually assaulted, about what happened inside of her apartment. It was important that the reader understood what really happened, but it was also important that we weren’t gratuitous. We also debated the use of audio in this story. There's one audio clip from Marie describing what had happened. That was something that we talked about at great length but I also played it to Marie and asked for her thoughts on it. And she said something that was somewhat surprising. She said not only did she think that we could use it but that we should use it. She thought it was important that people hear her voice.

Reeves:  I would tell photo editors to be very strong and to push tough images and have the tough conversations. Not to cower away from this or that but to articulate why you think this picture over that picture, or why the photo has to be included in the story. If we were faced with people with cell phones [in the Columbine High School library] you know, where would we be with that? I tend to think we definitely would have put something out there. There just isn't any way that an organization should decide to sit on these images. I think it's important for people to understand what happened out there; all of the students were shot and [parents] didn't know it was going on and they're laying there and I didn't feel it was, you know – and this is coming from a photo editor –  I didn't feel like [showing images of bodies] crossed a line. A lot of people probably disagree. I didn't think it crossed the line of taste or gore. It wasn't voyeuristic. But it is what it is and it really told the story. One of the things we had talked about right up until midnight is that for the children that were still missing, parents had been gathering. But you know all these bodies were still in this place and they deserved to know. I have to stay sharp and try to be ethical, not sensational.

Stay away from clichés and assumptions, and try to present the complexities as best you can. Repeatedly, award winners discussed following the story without preconceived notions to tell a more nuanced narrative. A few discussed the need to skip the easy story, and wait for another altogether.

Armstrong: That's something that's important to me as a reporter, to embrace nuance, and to recognize that everyone makes mistakes, and that when people make mistakes we can learn from them. The greatest service here was just to explain as best we could what happened and to show what the personal consequences were. And as I've gotten older and as I become more experienced as a reporter I think I’ve become more understanding of how fallible we all are.

Evans: On stories of human suffering and trauma,  the craft of what you write and how you approach the writing is pretty straight forward I think. You don't need to embellish pain with flowery words.  A person's simple recounting of what haunts them, what has changed or crushed their world, is most often powerful enough. The stories write themselves if you as a journalist are listening properly and have done your homework about the news event that triggered their trauma.  When New York's ailing 9-11 responders began to come up against absurd and exhausting bureaucratic walls in their efforts to get medical and mental health coverage for their illnesses, or workers comp coverage, or help for their children, you do what you always do in public interest journalism, and that is, you shine the light on those in power who need to be called into account, find where your sense of outrage is. You tell  people’s stories through their words and you frame the story in a way that you believe reflects the truth.

Rinaldi: I wanted to be respectful and keep Strider’s best interests at heart, right, so, there were moments when I could've shot stuff that I didn't shoot because it just didn't feel right to me. For instance, there's no photo of him crying in that story, because it didn't feel fair to me to single out a kid, to take this photo. I really didn't want to like be another adult in his life that was doing the wrong thing, you know? And that's how it would've felt in that moment. I ended up being able to get a photo of him where he was trying to reconcile with Lanette. That to me in some ways was so much more powerful, it spoke so much more about who he was, not just a child that had been injured again, but you know a child that was resilient and sort of working and wanting to, to get love from these people. 

Reeves: Photo editors should trust their instincts during crisis, and guide their staff to really go after the story instead of looking for cliché images or searching for something they think should be happening. Follow the news and follow the emotion and follow the real people that matter.

Think about the craft issues first and foremost. The writing and imagery matters.

Pawel: The last piece of it would just be the execution, the storytelling aspect of it. It’s easy for people to sort of become immune to tragedy and to not want to read about it anymore. And so just find ways to tell the stories that are different and compelling and that really stem from the richness of the reporting, but also the quality of the writing. 

Evans: Anna Quindlen once put that very well: You have to fall in love with your subjects and listen with great empathy.  Then when you're back at your desk, you must fall out of love and write objectively. You are there in the moment listening with two sets of ears: you're documenting their story as they tell it and you're also listening with your other set of ears asking, “Does this have the ring of truth? What else needs to be checked out?”

Porter: You can’t be afraid to shoot the hard stuff. You have to be willing to shoot the things that are difficult to look at, that make you turn away and say, "I don't know if I can look at that again."

Prepare your source for publication. With the exception of breaking news reporters and photographers, many journalists explained that they went over the story in advance with their sources. Armstrong describes his reasoning below

Armstrong: We didn't want Marie to go online and read the story and see something there that surprised her that she wasn't ready for, that she had not had the opportunity to talk to us about. That was critical. We wanted to make sure that we were as transparent as possible and that if she had any concerns we heard them before we published. It was also important for us, that we were not only accurate and fair, but that we weren't being insensitive in some way that we simply hadn't anticipated. There are all kinds of benefits that come from letting someone know what's in a story beforehand. And the benefits go in both directions., I firmly believe that the news organization benefits from that as much as the person being written about.   

III:  SELF-CARE BEFORE, DURING & AFTER

Although journalists were reticent to talk about themselves, each one discussed the emotional toll of a story, the need to rest and recover, and the importance of implementing strategies to keep emotionally and technically engaged and alert.

Before: Preparation is key.  Preparation comes in all forms, whether it’s having your equipment ready, wearing the right shoes, taking a firefighting course or having a strong team ready to work.  Much harder to distill is the knowledge gathered over a career, the credibility earned in a region,  or the advantages of covering a specific beat when a crisis or change occurred. 

Gutierrez: First and foremost, begin preparing now. So whether it's a tornado, a fire, a flood, a terrorism event, a sniper in a clock tower, whether it's a hurricane or a tsunami or a meteor from outer space, whatever it is, you start preparing now. And that means things like getting proper footwear. During an earthquake in California, I ran out the door with my cameras and I forgot my belt. And I spent the entire day shooting around Los Angeles, pulling up my pants. Being prepared is really important, and you never know when that earthquake is going to come.

During: Set boundaries and take breaks. Reporters discussed the need for setting boundaries and taking occasional breaks. Editors also emphasized the need to force team members to take breaks from emotional scenes and to respect a colleague’s need to do the same.

Gutierrez: As a journalist, I think there's a light there in me that I'm exuding toward someone else, I'm being humble, I'm accepting whatever they give me. And after a while you just run out of light. You start to run out of the compassion and you get a little bit jaded. And I think when you're working 12-20 hours a day, day after day, in 100-degree weather, inhaling smoke and fighting the elements and trying to be compassionate you do think, "Hey, I haven't lost my home it could always be worse" but it also just really wears you out and you wake up some days and you really don’t want to face the day.

Rinaldi: You can't just do this kind of work and internalize what you're seeing. You have to find someone who's willing to be a sounding board so you can vent and get it out a little bit, because you're human and you have opinions about what's going on, and you certainly can't put that into your work. I also had a friend who gave me really funny but good advice, which was, "Find one healthy outlet and one unhealthy outlet and alternate." Because this type of work it takes a little something from you every time, you know?

[My colleague] Sarah [Schweitzer] and I, we held a little “therapy session” after every visit. We would leave and we'd go have dinner, and we would just talk about it. It was so great to be able to unload and have someone going through it too because on stories like this, you're really kind of living it. And even though it's not your life it becomes your life in a weird way. I mean my parents would ask me, "How's the little boy in Maine?" So these kinds of projects, they just take over.

Reeves: It wasn't very pretty sometimes for the staff or for anybody really, but I just kept saying, "This is our story. Let's stay on this, let's own it.” For at least two to three weeks it was nonstop, it was morning till night. And a photographer would come in and say, "I'll do anything you want me to do, but if I could just not have to maybe go down to the memorial site today." They needed a little space.

And they felt comfortable being able to say to you, this is my boundary?

Reeves: Yes. Photographers would come back and tell me what it was like that day and the emotions they were feeling. A lot of it is also self-reflection: when you're an editor, you're going to have people who not only report to you, but who you can ask to go do things. You have to stop and think a moment about what that is going to be like. You’ve got to make a decision. That's what you do.

Pawel: A lot of editing is social work to begin with, so this sort of became an extension of that. Knowing when to give people breaks – that is a big thing. Sometimes people just don't even want to take a day off and you can just see that they are exhausted and that they need it.

After: When the story is over, give yourself some time. And reflect on what you’ve accomplished.

Reeves: A few months after Columbine, one thing I told everyone is not to quit their jobs, not to make any drastic changes in their lives over the next 6 months. They needed that time.

Looking back, we had a sense of pride that this group was able to accomplish this – to be able to say that the work is so strong, so iconic – it's a place marker in history now and they did it. After you win a Pulitzer you start hearing from everybody: Senators, governors...  They hear it from their friends all across the country too. It begins to resonate with the reporters, that [the story] was the right thing to do. And if we are actually sincere about why we went into journalism in the first place, well this is when you have the chance to stand up and say yes, we did the right thing.

Conference Report: Pulitzer Prize Centennial & the Impact of Trauma Coverage

Conference Report: Pulitzer Prize Centennial

By Matthew Ricketson

Among many powerful moments at the Pulitzer Prize and trauma conference held in Oklahoma on September 28 and 29, two in particular resonated.

The first came courtesy of Walter “Robby” Robinson, of Spotlight fame, when he recounted the response after his investigative reporting team published revelations about systemic cover-up of abuse by Catholic priests: Instead of angry calls from Catholic readers, The Boston Globe was flooded with calls from abuse victims willing, eager even, to speak publicly for the first time.

Robinson, a grizzled newspaper veteran, remembered taking a call from an 87-year-old man who said he had been abused by a Catholic priest. Then a great-grandfather, the man had never spoken to anyone about what happened to him as a 12-year-old, 75 years before.

“I had a lot of trouble talking about this case at the time,” said Robinson of the now 14-year-old story. His quietly spoken words settled on the silent auditorium, like snow chilling skin to the bone.

He and his team’s relentless digging had been fueled by outrage at what they had uncovered, but their work began to take a toll. One week after the flood of calls from victims began, he contacted a mental health professional. “We could handle the journalism side of it but not the mental health side.” As a result, the Globe included a list of mental health resources for victims alongside subsequent requests to speak with them.

Robinson’s reflection came near the end of his remarks to an audience of 300 at the University of Tulsa’s Lorton Performing Arts Center on the conference’s opening night.

After Robinson spoke about the burden often carried by abuse victims for decades, Kenna Griffin, a former reporter for The Oklahoman, recounted a story about a female journalist she interviewed for a research project who seemed unaware of the impact her work might have had on her.

The journalist had reported on several executions and, Griffin said, her biggest concern at the time was that she might not be able to hear the condemned prisoner’s final statement over the hum of an air conditioning system.

She did not think that she had suffered from trauma, Griffin recounted. At the end of the interview, she told Griffin that she had not turned on the air conditioning in her car or at home since the last execution, which occurred several months before. “And it was in the South, and it was hot,” Griffin added.

Her words hung over a silent auditorium at the University of Central Oklahoma, where students gathered for a session about recent research on covering trauma.

The two day conference, co-chaired by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist turned academic, Joe Hight, and Tulsa University Professor of Psychology Elana Newman, was aimed at both celebrating this year’s centenary of the Pulitzer Prizes’ founding and exploring how prize-winning journalists have reported on traumatic events.

Events were held at three Oklahoma universities and panel sessions included distinguished journalists, editors, educators and researchers.

One speaker, Charles Porter, who was an amateur photographer when he won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize in in Spot News Photography, spoke for many panelists when he highlighted the profound impact they can have on both individuals and communities, and the importance of covering them.

Panelists also discussed reporting lessons learned, their approaches to covering a wide range of sensitive stories, how the Internet has impacted trauma coverage, and the effects their work has had on themselves and on those they reported on.

If Robinson’s anecdote showed his awareness of his team’s limits in handling the impact of their reporting on themselves, Griffin’s showed how easy it is for journalists to miss these signs.

This is at least partly because of the deadline-driven newsroom culture of pursuing stories above all else. Robinson says he is much more aware of the impact of trauma coverage now but acknowledges he and his team – which swelled from four to eight after the initial disclosures in 2002 – “never had any real discussions about how this was affecting us.”

He also recalled that the newspaper for which he worked for more than three decades sent between 25 and 30 reporters and photographers to Afghanistan and Iraq but “I don’t think the subject of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) ever came up. Shame on us.”

Professor Newman, who is research director for the Dart Center, said in her conference presentation that awareness of the impact of trauma reporting was steadily growing but that more needed to be done to inculcate that awareness among reporters, editors and managers. She also said that significant gaps in the field’s research still need to be addressed.

This is being done, not least in her own research work, but also in that of others like Desiree Hill, Raymond McCaffrey and Griffin, who all presented results at the Pegasus Theater.

Griffin, who is now an assistant professor at Oklahoma City University, said she surveyed 829 journalists and found that nearly nine in ten were exposed to trauma through their work, either directly or indirectly. Of those surveyed, though, only five percent were exposed to trauma at extreme levels.

Symptoms of trauma were present in a minority of journalists, and those journalists were likely to be 25-years-old or younger and more likely to have already experienced personal trauma in their lives. She noted that her results are consistent with others that find older and younger reporters are at greater risk, but also that many studies have not found age to be a significant factor.

Turning from the impact on journalists to how they went about their work, insights were gained by discussing what Ed Kelley, Dean of Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication, called the last major analogue news event – the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

He recalled how The Oklahoman had a website at that time but “we didn’t know what to do with it”. Incessant rumors  blaming Middle Eastern terrorists for the bombing were referred to in the next day’s newspaper but only briefly. “If that event happened now the coverage would have been completely different. The rumor would have been reported immediately.”

Certainly, incorrect rumors have been reported since 1995, and this has damaged the credibility of news reporting and weakened trust among audiences.

Others on the panel with Kelley at the University of Oklahoma showed, however, that current reporting practices are adapting to the slew of rumours that accompany any major news event today.

Hannah Allam, a national security correspondent for McClatchy in Washington D.C, says journalists are building in safety buffers in their reporting of breaking news, and that audiences still want – and need – accuracy.

“Whenever a major news event in my area breaks I always tweet straight away what Spencer Ackerman of The Guardian says: ‘Just remember that one fact uncovered is better than 1000 hot tips,’ and that ‘first reports are almost always wrong.’”

Hailey Branson-Potts, who was part of The Los Angeles Times’ Pulitzer prize-winning team for coverage of the San Bernardino shootings, affirmed Allam’s point.

She said her newspaper first heard about the December 2015 shooting on Twitter but confirmed it with official sources before posting on their website. “We were very aware of not publishing rumors.”

This did not mean the newspaper waited until evening before filing for the next day’s newspaper, as used to happen in the analogue days; instead, as The Los Angeles Times Pulitzer prize entry cover letter said:

“By 11 p.m. that night, our main story had been updated 22 times, with details that revealed the full scope of the tragedy: 14 slain, 21 wounded, by a pair of black-clad assailants who opened fire on a holiday potluck for county health workers. Over the course of that day, Times journalists pushed out 149 news reports on Twitter and 16 detailed posts on Facebook, including video.”

And to finish with two reflections: one that reminds us that ripples on the pond of trauma reporting spread wide, and the second a thought for the future.

Hannah Allam made a telling observation about the impact of trauma reporting: “Whenever we are covering a big disaster story at least we have the excitement and the glory and knowledge that the story is important, but it is the folks at home who always have the fear and concern and worry,” she said, acknowledging her mother and her kindergarten-aged son in the audience.

During Walter Robinson’s presentation, a clip was played of Spotlight’s final scene and end credits that starkly show how far beyond Boston what Robinson calls the “institutional betrayal” of children has been uncovered, not only in other parts of the United States but in 31 other countries.

Since Robinson’s team published their initial reports, journalists around the world have come to embrace the multiplier effect of collaboration, most notably in the Panama Papers in 2015 about the proliferation of global tax havens. Imagine what might happen if 400 journalists from 80 countries overseen by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists combined, as they did for the Panama Papers, to tackle the scourge of child sexual assault.

Event Video: Pulitzer Prize Centennial

Event Video

From Watchdog to Spotlight: Journalists Exposing Systemic Abuse​, featuring Walter “Robby” Robinson, Susan Ellerbach, Ziva Branstetter, Joe Hight and Elana Newman.

The Culture of Trauma Coverage Before and After the Internet​, featuring Hailey Branson Potts, Ed Kelley, Hannah Allam and John Schmeltzer. 

Research on Journalists and Coverage of Trauma​​, featuring Elana Newman, Raymond McCaffrey, Kenna Griffin, Desiree Hill, Mike Boettcher and Hailey Branson Potts.

Teaching Notes: The Impact of Trauma Coverage

Teaching Notes: The Impact of Trauma Coverage

By Autumn Slaughter, Elana Newman, Ph.D. & Matthew Ricketson, Ph.D.

These teaching notes are designed to accompany videos from the Pulitzer Prize Centennial conference convened by the University of Tulsa, the University of Central Oklahoma, the University of Oklahoma, the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum and the Dart Center:

• From Watchdog to Spotlight: Journalists Exposing Systemic Abuse (1:47:21)
• The Culture of Trauma Coverage Before and After the Internet (1:17:36)
• Research on Journalists and Coverage of Trauma (2:09:30)

Introduction

It is recommended that this resource be used in tandem with the Pulitzer Prize Centennial conference videos.

The first video, From Watchdog to Spotlight: Journalists Exposing Systemic Abuse, features an interview with Walter “Robby” Robinson, the Boston Globe Editor-at-Large who led the “Spotlight” investigative team that won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for its coverage of the widespread and systemic child sex abuse in the Boston area by numerous Roman Catholic priests. This interview is followed by a panel discussion featuring Robinson and several other award-winning journalists including Pulitzer Prize winners and finalists.

The second video, The Culture of Trauma Coverage Before and After the Internet, captures a panel discussion focused on the changes in reporting techniques and the shifting role of the journalist in the digital age.

The third video, Research on Journalists and Coverage of Trauma, features several small works of scholarship and a wide range of projects on journalism and the coverage of trauma. A follow-up interview also explores some of the ethical and emotional challenges that present themselves in the coverage of terrorism and disasters.

Panelists and Interviewees:

Participants are listed in alphabetical order.

From Watchdog to Spotlight

• Ziva Branstetter, Editor in Chief, The Frontier in Tulsa
• Susan Ellerbach, Executive Editor, The Tulsa World
  
  Branstetter and Ellerbach were part of the Tulsa World team that was a Pulitzer finalist in 2015 for their stories on the botched executions at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary.
• Joe Hight, Endowed Chair of Journalism Ethics, University of Central Oklahoma
  Hight was editor when The Gazette in Colorado Springs won the Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting in 2014 for a story about dishonorable discharges.
• Elana Newman, McFarlin Professor of Psychology, Affiliate Faculty of Communication at Tulsa; Research Director, Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma
• Boston Globe Editor-at-Large Walter “Robby” Robinson, who led the “Spotlight” investigative team that won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for its coverage about the widespread and systemic child sex abuse in the Boston area by numerous Roman Catholic priests, and an ongoing cover-up of pedophilia by the Boston Archdiocese. 

The Culture of Trauma Coverage Before and After the Internet

• Hannah Allam: Foreign correspondent; McClatchy, Washington Bureau
• Hailey Branson Potts: Reporter, Los Angeles Times
  Part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News Reporting for its coverage of the San Bernardino terrorist attack.
• Ed Kelley: Dean, Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication; Former Editor and Publisher of the Year, The Washington Times
• John Schmeltzer: Professor, University of Oklahoma
  2001 Pulitzer Prize winner, The Chicago Tribune.

Research on Journalists and Coverage of Trauma

• Mike Boettcher: War correspondent, documentarian & visiting professor at Oklahoma University
• Hailey Branson Potts: Reporter, Los Angeles Times
  Part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News Reporting for its coverage of the San Bernardino terrorist attack.
• Kenna Griffin:Assistant Professor, Oklahoma City University; Former reporter, The Oklahoman
• Desiree Hill: Professor, University of Central Oklahoma; Former TV News Executive
• Raymond McCaffrey: Director, Center for Ethics in Journalism, University of Arkansas; Former reporter and editor, Washington Post
• Elana Newman, McFarlin Professor of Psychology, Affiliate Faculty of Communication at Tulsa; Research Director, Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma
• Charles Porter IV: Citizen journalist, Won a Pulitzer Prize for his photograph of firefighter Chris Fields carrying Baylee Almon in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing

Questions for Discussion

The interviews and panel discussions that took place during the conference raise numerous issues for students and aspiring journalists to consider. Below are some. You or your students may have others.

From Watchdog to Spotlight

• Alongside requests to speak with victims of child sex abuse, The Globe included a list of mental health resources for victims. Is it the responsibility of journalists to ensure victims of trauma know how to access appropriate mental health resources? Why or why not? How should journalists vet such resources?
• What are some of the potential harms and benefits to sources when journalists ask them to come forward for an investigative report? What are the potential costs and benefits to the journalist?
• Kenna Griffin tells the story of a colleague whose biggest concern while covering an execution was that she would not be able to hear the prisoner’s final statement over the sound of the air conditioning. Afterward, the reporter did not turn on the air conditioning in her home for months, despite it being summertime in the South. Why did this journalist believe that her work had not impacted her? How can reporters tell when their work is beginning to affect them? What are some specific steps journalists can take to stay resilient in the face of persistent pressures?

The Culture of Trauma Coverage Before and After the Internet

• Do journalists have an obligation to “set the record straight” when rumors are shared by citizens during a breaking story? What about when they are reported by other news outlets?
• Hannah Allam, a foreign correspondent for McClatchy, said that journalists “live and die by the click”. What does this mean? Is this true? If so, what does this mean for journalists and how they do their jobs?
• How might tweeting your location keep you safe? What dangers does it pose?

Research on Journalists and Coverage of Trauma

• What effects might working as a journalist have on a person’s mental health? What might you be able to do to combat those effects? 
• What specific aspects of traumatic effects do you want to keep in mind during your career?
• Studies have consistently shown that social support can protect individuals who have been through a traumatic experience from experiencing symptoms of trauma. Why do you think this is?
• What are some cost-effective ways for journalists to harness natural support in newsrooms?

Classroom Activities

• The Pulitzer Prize represents the best in newspaper, magazine and online journalism. Select a past Pulitzer Prize winner and compare and contrast that work to a piece of work that was presented in one of the videos.
  * See a sample here by Manuelle Arias, a student studying with Joe Hight at the University of Central Oklahoma.

From Watchdog to Spotlight

• Split into groups of two. You will take turns playing the role of a reporter and a recently rescued hostage victim who has witnessed the murder of three other hostages. Practice remaining sensitive to the source’s experience while still trying to obtain important information.

The Culture of Trauma Coverage Before and After the Internet

• Because of the speed of social media, news outlets often feel pressured to publish before thoroughly fact checking material. Find three examples of breaking news coverage in which the original reports were erroneous. What mistakes were made? How were they made? How was the original story corrected? How did the public respond?
• Break into groups of three and assign the following roles: editor, reporter and photojournalist. You are all employees at a national newspaper with a significant online presence. A hurricane sweeps into your city and water overwhelms the city’s barriers before all areas can be evacuated. You need to provide coverage of the story immediately. Assuming the hurricane reaches the city at 9:00 am and the print edition of your newspaper has to go to press at 11:00 pm, design a media package and timeline for hurricane coverage that includes the use of social media and other digital resources.

Preparing Journalists for Coverage of Trauma: A Research Lens

• There are still large gaps in our knowledge about how journalists can best prepare for and cover traumatic events. Design a study on the occupational health of journalists who cover trauma and how that trauma might affect them. Remember, the problem with much of the research on this topic is that many journalists do not participate in the studies.
• Hailey Branson Potts said that there is “no level of preparing you can do for an event like [San Bernardino].”
  
  Potts is likely right: nothing can fully prepare someone for a chaotic, traumatic situation before it happens. However, there are things you can do ahead of time to help you cope.
  
  A safety plan, or list of actions, can provide someone with strategies for responding to dangerous and potentially overwhelming events. Many things a person can do – such as taking deep breaths, closing their eyes, refocusing their thoughts – may be obvious before an event happens, but these are easy to forget once a crisis emerges.
  
  Design your own safety plan. Include four things you can do as a journalist to help calm yourself in an overwhelming and potentially traumatic situation. Consider the options available to you as a journalist: It may not be possible to go for a walk, but it may be possible to plug in your headphones and listen to a favorite song on your phone. Make sure that your safety plan contains actions you already know help calm you down.
• Some news organizations, such as the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), have implemented peer support programs designed to help journalists handle the emotional stress of their jobs. The BBC’s program borrows from the British Army program known as Trauma Risk Management (TRiM). This program trains staff to manage people following traumatic incidents. Other groups have focused on ways to teach staff to be good colleagues and friends.  .
  
  Is the TRiM model useful for journalists?
  
  Break up into groups of three. Design a peer support system for a large city newspaper and affiliated television network. Pitch your program to management (the rest of the class). Why would your system be effective?

Resources and Additional Reading

“Covering Trauma: Impact on Journalists,” by River Smith, Elana Newman, and Susan Drevo

“Inside Storyful: Vicarious Trauma and Ensuring the Well-being of the Newsroom,” by Derek Bowler

“Making Secondary Trauma a Primary Issue: #IFJ16 Panelists on Impacts of Graphic Imagery,” by Alastair Reid

 “Reporters Exposed to Traumatic Events: Tips for Editors & Managers”

Poynter’s News University, 1 hour Journalism and Trauma Course, Units 1, 3 and 4