Resources for Blog Posts

Ten years after the death of Martin O’Hagan, the only journalist killed in Northern Ireland's three-decade civil conflict, the National Union of Journalists held a conference in Belfast on September 30 exploring the safety issues and pressures that arise when covering sectarian violence. As the NUJ's Freelance reports, the theme was trauma and the effects of trauma that go beyond the front line.

Over the next week the Dart Center is sponsoring a series of programs marking the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

Ten years after the attacks of September 11, reporting on combat veterans remains a special challenge. Earlier this year the Dart Center, with support from the Thomas Scattergood Foundation for Behavioral Health,  sponsored a two-day workshop on covering veterans' issues for local journalists and regional news organizations in the greater Philadelphia area. Now available online: tipsheets and audio of experts and journalists on veterans' issues, navigating the VA and innovative approaches to covering vets at the local and regional level.

Three veteran news professionals from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation are missing and presumed dead in a helicopter crash in the South Australia desert. Videographer and photographer John Bean, reporter Paul Lockyer and pilot Gary Ticehurst were on assignment in a region some 800 kilometers north of Adelaide on the evening of August 18 when their copter went down.

Our friends at the Dart Society have posted a special report collecting journalists’ memories of and reflections on the upcoming September 11 anniversary. The centerpiece is an evocative and unsettling collage of essays and video by New York journalist Jacques Menasche on the impact of the attacks on his young son and other children who were attending school nearby. 

On June 5, while Dart Centre Asia Pacific was running its first  workshop on covering trauma, war crimes and sexual violence in Bangladesh,  a terrible incident of intimate partner violence elsewhere in the country captured the attention of reporters: Hasan Sayeed brutally assaulted his wife Rumana Munzur, shoving his fingers into her eyes and blinding her.

Norway is mourning the shooting deaths of at least 68 people at a youth camp on the small island of Uoteya. The massacre came hours after a powerful explosion rocked central Oslo, killing at least eight people and blowing out most of the windows on the block where Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg works. For journalists and news managers covering the aftermath of these attacks, the Dart Center has assembled resources and tipsheets gleaned from past mass shootings, terrorist attacks and disasters.

In a special report just published by the Committee to Protect Journalists, news professionals disclose sexual assaults they have experienced in the course of their work. Plus, CPJ's Security Guide has been updated to include new information on coping with the threat of sexual abuse.  

Fellows from the Dart Centre Asia Pacific programme add their voices to the protest over contempt charges filed by the Philippine Court of Appeals against a journalist and the widow of one of the victims of the 2009 Maguindinao massacre.

As I am sure you know, the death toll continues to rise in Joplin, Missouri, devastated by the worst tornado to hit the U.S. in 60 years. At this writing, 132 people are dead, and many others are still missing.