Seminar: Victims and the Media
Readings, assignments and a detailed schedule for Mass Communication 4433/15199, Victims and the Media Seminar at the University of Central Oklahoma.
Readings, assignments and a detailed schedule for Mass Communication 4433/15199, Victims and the Media Seminar at the University of Central Oklahoma.
This thirty-one-page booklet gives guidance to journalists, editors, managers and other media professionals on working with traumatic material. It offers tips on interviewing, highlights common mistakes made in trauma reporting and suggests what individuals and media teams can do to look after themselves while working in challenging situations.
The first 24 hours after a traumatic news event may present a journalist with considerable challenges and opportunities, both professionally and personally. The usual physical and psychological demands of trying to gather facts and write a story under deadline are greatly magnified when trauma is involved, especially when a large number of victims are dead or seriously injured (although even a single victim can be difficult to cover).
Photojournalists are part of the team of first responders whenever a tragedy occurs. They are there to document the news event in pictures and their work can have a strong and lasting impact on the public consciousness and themselves.
Early live reports of terrorist attacks are sometimes confusing and misleading. Yet there are also extraordinary examples of media excellence, with journalists risking their lives to inform the nation about an unfolding crisis.
Whether clinicians like it or not, children and families affected by trauma are routinely covered by the media. When that happens, clinicians often face difficult choices.
Note: Available as PDF download only.
The skills needed to interact with people under such stressful and unpredictable conditions do not usually come naturally. The goal of this module is to explain what traumatic stress is and why it is useful for journalists to know about its effects.
An experienced journalism educator shares her teaching points for accurate, emotionally conscious stories and images.
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.