Resources for covering sexual assault, Blog Posts

Earlier this month, the Dart Center co-sponsored a screening of the Academy Award-winning film “Spotlight,” followed by a conversation with two Boston Globe team members portrayed in the film, editor Walter "Robby" Robinson and reporter Sacha Pfeiffer. The latest "On Assignment Podcast," produced by The Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Awards, features the conversation between Robinson, Pfeiffer and Columbia Journalism School professor Betsy West. 

Two scholars at the UNC School of Journalism & Mass Communication's Irina Project monitor media representations of sex trafficking, and advocate for responsible and accurate reporting on what has become the world's most common form of slavery, and its fastest-growing criminal enterprise.

In a recent article, Ochberg Fellow Jina Moore reports on the planning for physical and psychological trauma support outreach for the kidnapped Nigerian students and their families.

We're please to share a terrific new resource from our colleagues at WITNESS on interviewing survivors of sexual and gender-based violence, created in consultation with Dart Center Research Director, Elana Newman.

During my career, I have interviewed dozens of people whose lives have been shattered by trauma. Each time, I agonized over the effect my reporting had on their suffering.

Did my journalistic mission justify probing into their private pain? Did I push too hard for details? Was I properly respectful and empathetic? Did anything positive come of it for them?

Last week, the Dart Center hosted a reception, awards presentation and winners’ roundtable to honor the 2017 Dart Award winners.

There are many forces that suppress stories of trauma, from the active denial of perpetrators to the passive denial of those who prefer to look away.  But when human tragedy is embedded in complex institutions — high school, higher ed, the military — the challenges of reporting and storytelling multiply.

A year-long investigation by the Philadelphia Inquirer reveals how the ineffectual response to spiraling violence in the city's schools has traumatized students and stifled learning.

On April 28, 1996, a gunman with two semi-automatic assault rifles killed 35 people in a cafe in Port Arthur, Tasmania. On the twentieth anniversary of the shootings, Gary Tippet, former senior writer for The Age, spoke with ABC Radio Victoria's Nicole Chvastek about the effects of covering the attack and its aftermath.

The 82nd annual Academy Awards are coming up on March 7, and one of the films in the running, nominated for six Oscars, is "Precious."  It's the story of a 16-year-old African-American girl living in Harlem who suffers physical, sexual and emotional abuse and is pregnant by her own father. It's the first film directed by an African-American to ever be nominated for best picture. It's also the first film in a long time to bring the issue of child sexual abuse to the forefront of the Academy Awards ceremony and the American imagination.