An overview of current research on the use of trigger warnings in broadcast news, the effectiveness of these warnings and suggestions for future research.
The Dart Center is offering a four-day reporting institute for international journalists on early childhood experience and the developing brain, March 9-12, 2017 at Columbia Journalism School in New York City. The application deadline has passed.
A new series in the Lancet, Advancing Early Childhood Development: from Science to Scale, makes some troubling predictions. In middle and low-income countries, almost 250 million children – 43 percent of children under five – will fail to meet their developmental potential because of extreme poverty and deprivation. Karen Brown reports on these new findings in advance of the Dart Center's four-day reporting institute on early childhood experience and the developing brain.
This searing, intimate feature tells the story of Cheyeanne Fitzgerald, the youngest survivor of the Umpqua Community College shooting in Roseburg Oregon, as she struggles against myriad challenges in the massacre’s aftermath. Judges described “A Survivor’s Story” as an “eye-opening,” “brutally honest" portrait of the intense difficulties and complexities of trauma and recovery. Originally published in the Washington Post in December, 2015.
Clemantine Wamariya, who at age six fled the Rwandan genocide with her sister, spent seven years wandering central Africa as a refugee, eventually coming to the United States and succeeding by every conventional marker. Judges called the piece “clear-eyed,” “tremendously insightful,” and “gracefully and honestly told.” Originally published by Matter in June, 2015.
An overview of current research on the occupational hazards for journalists covering traumatic events, the risk factors that aggravate those effects, and some suggestions for mitigating those factors. Originally published by River Smith and Elana Newman in January, 2009; Updated by Susan Drevo in May, 2016, and by Autumn Slaughter in March, 2019.
This provocative three-part series examines the concept of moral injury, a phenomenon where combat or operational experiences transgress deeply held moral and ethical beliefs that undergird a service member’s humanity; often seen as damage to the soul. Judges praised the series for “gracefully and confidently marrying the humanity and understanding of its survivors with a gritty, powerful investigation that breaks new ground.” Originally published in the Huffington Post in March 2014.
Psychologist Anthony Feinstein examines a confluence of factors that can undermine the emotional well-being of journalists, including the emergence of new threats in Syria, the relentless nature of the conflict and those predominantly tasked with covering it. This piece was originally published in The Globe and Mail.
ABC Australia's News 24 Presenter/Reporter Kumi Taguchi took a break from the quick turnaround of TV news to spend two weeks at a Melbourne repatriation hospital to work on a feature story about PTSD experienced by returned soldiers, The Battle After The War. In this piece, Taguchi writes about becoming comfortable, gaining trust, and her decision to write exclusively for online.
When Patrick Howse returned to London after a seven year tour of duty in and out of Baghdad as the BBC's bureau chief, a seemingly ordinary incident on the Central Line tube took him back to the war, and triggered the onset of PTSD. It also changed his life.
(The painting image below, "PTSD Patrick," by Inge Schlaile.)