Tips on covering the swine-flu outbreak from a reporter with two decades' experience with health issues ranging from the AIDS epidemic to oyster-related food poisoning.
Most journalists face an inevitability in their careers: They must cover a tragedy and interview people who are pinned against a wall of grief. The wall blocks the victims from seeing that their lives may improve tomorrow. They only see who's in front of them and feel the pain of that moment.
Young journalists will often encounter violence among their first reporting experiences. The effects of catastrophe and cruelty are newsworthy, particularly when victims are numerous, are famous or are symbolic of something that we all relate to and hold dear: a child killed in a schoolroom; a nurse held hostage in a hospital.
An overview of how news stories, traumatic and otherwise, are "framed," finding a general absence of context and recommending avenues for future research.
An overview of current scholarship regarding how different, contextual approaches to reporting news influence consumers’ knowledge, perceptions and opinions, and the implications for researchers and for journalists.
Suggestions for journalists interviewing service members returning from Iraq, the Middle East, or Afghanistan.
An overview of current research on the short- and long-term impacts of media coverage of tragedy on children, as well as aggravating risk factors and suggestions for future research.
An overview of current research on how news coverage of traumatic event effects the public and the risk factors that exascerbate reactions of distress.
A national panel of experts in suicide, behavioral science and the media cautions and advises journalists on how to report this sensitive subject.