By Gerti Schoen
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Also see: An interview with Chris Cramer, president of CNN International and honorary chair of Newscoverage Unlimited at the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma |
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A handful of journalists are sitting in a soulless seminar room at Columbia University in New York and trying to do some roleplaying. Robert Wiener, who has worked as a reporter for over 40 years, is struggling for words. He has reported about serious fires and the uprising of the Intifada in the Middle East. As he tries to describe an execution he had covered in Texas last year he pauses. "I still think about this man," he says. "That was heavy for me."
Wiener originally came to the three-day seminar because he wanted to offer emotional support. The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma (www.dartcenter.org) had put it together in order to help reporters who have been traumatized during events like the World Trade Center attacks. When he found himself in the role of the one being counseled he had to make an effort to get rid of the self-imposed image of "the cowboy who goes out there and faces the evil."
A lot of journalists believe they are not allowed to be touched by what they are reporting about," says David Handschuh. He puts up his leg — it's in a cast. Handschuh, a photographer for the New York Daily News, has been dealing with traumatized reporters and photographers for three years. Since September 11 he is one of them. "When I saw the debris of the falling towers coming at me in slow motion, my first instinct was to bring my camera and shoot. But something in the back of my mind said: Run, run, run!" He was rescued by firemen and got away with a multiple fracture of his leg. Ever since, he has been one of the forces behind the Dart Center Ground Zero in New York, the second office of the institute, which is headquartered in Seattle. As of January there will be more seminars; freelancers and foreign journalists are also invited to take part.
For most people it is important just to talk about it, says Handschuh. But with all the deadline pressure, a lot of New York journalists didn't take the time to think about their own feelings. "People need the permission to feel hurt," says Elana Newman, a psychology professor from the University of Tulsa, who is the director of the new center. And that would also go for all the reporters and editors around the world who — even from a distance — were constantly exposed to the horror of these images. "I know a photo editor in Michigan who looked at thousands of these pictures," says Handschuh. "She is thousands of miles away from Ground Zero and spends an awful lot of time crying."
During the last three years many American media companies have started to offer counseling for staff members who have been exposed to traumatizing images. One of the first to do so was the (Oklahoma City) Daily Oklahoman, which covered the terrorist bombings in its hometown over several years. TV stations in Denver followed after the school shootings in Columbine. Opportunities for group therapy have been implemented in all of the bigger publishing houses in New York, including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.
But it is not so much the editors Handschuh worries about. It is the freelancers, the photographers and foreign correspondents who are not part of the newsroom and who he would like to see get out of their isolation. Journalists, he thinks, can counsel each other. "We know how to listen, how to ask the right questions," he points out. That is why all the participants in the Dart Center seminars are counselors and counselees at the same time.
"Policemen, firemen, volunteers — they all had to go through a debriefing, where they talked about their feelings, when they left Ground Zero," says Elana Newman. "Only journalists believe they don't need that." It is all about the macho attitude most newspeople like to show.
Robert Wiener may need some more convincing. "I don't know if many people can bring themselves to participate in such a training," he says. "It is a bit like falling from the horse and you get back up and ride off. Instead of sitting down, have a drink and just go home."
— Gerti Schoen is a freelance correspondent for German media. This article was written for the weekly Die Zeit.
Also see: An interview with Chris Cramer,
president of CNN International and honorary chair of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma
