The Psychology of War and Trauma Reporting

An essay by Elizabeth Mavor

Whether covering conflict and war zones around the world, or murders and court cases in their own backyards, bearing witness to traumatic events is often part of a journalists’ work. For some, the thrill of reporting from war zones is enough to sustain them, for others, trauma is a reality that prevents them from leading a “normal” life. One journalist upon his return home from Bosnia said, “I was not feeling well. I wasn’t sure of what was wrong with me. I knew it was work related and I knew it was specifically conflict related.”

While only a handful of studies have been carried out to understand the effects of trauma on journalists, the findings are similar in all of them – trauma does affect journalists. One study found the lifetime prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in war journalists was almost three times that of police officers and other trauma responders. A high rate of exposure to violence and its stressful results were also supported in a study of American newspaper journalists covering the local crime beat. However, trauma and psychological issues among journalists remains a taboo subject.

“An unwritten code among journalists holds that no assignment, no matter how brutal, can defy one’s capacity to take a photograph, gather facts, and produce a story. Moreover it is part of the code that the journalist then proceeds to the next assignment without acknowledging or treating the emotional toll of the tragic event.” What is posttraumatic stress disorder? Why do some journalists choose to cover conflict? Why do some journalists “make it” in war reporting, while others do not? What does exposure to traumatic events do to foreign and local reporters? Through examining these questions this paper will identify the role of psychology in the lives of reporters around the world.

Posttraumatic stress disorder first appeared in the American Psychiatric Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1980. In order to be diagnosed with PTSD “an individual must have experienced or witnessed an event that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury. Responses to this must involve fear, helplessness or horror. ” As well, a specified number of symptoms from the PTSD triad must be present. The triad is made up of three categories: intrusion, avoidance and arousal.

“‘There are a lot of situations that stay with you. Nightmares. I find myself abusing alcohol and drugs in order not to remember my dreams.’” Recurring dreams, nightmares and flashbacks are all symptoms of intrusion. Flashbacks and memories can strike at any time, often giving the person the feeling of “actually experiencing the trauma again or seeing it unfold before their eyes and in nightmares.” A study, by Dr. Anthony Feinstein, of the University of Toronto, released in 2003 showed that 77 per cent of war journalists experienced flashbacks and involuntary recollections. The study also showed that even journalists who did not have PTSD showed abnormally high symptoms of intrusion.

The second group of symptoms in the triad are those of avoidance. “The person feels numb, has diminished emotions, and can complete only routine, mechanical activities.” Many journalists returning from covering traumatic events report difficulties in returning to normal life and in carrying on personal relationships. Less than 45 per cent of war journalists are married compared with over 80 per cent in the aged matched general population.

Arousal – the last symptoms of the triad – includes “difficulties with sleep, irritability or temper outbursts and poor concentration.” According to Feinstein, hypervigilance and an exaggerated startle response are the most common of the arousal symptoms. After returning to London from Grozny, a cameraman describes how he is different from the other local journalists covering an arrest. “I was just standing there and this lorry drove over a plastic bottle and it sort of exploded, and you have never seen anyone hit the deck so quickly. And everyone just looked at me and said, ‘God, what’s wrong with you?’”

The symptoms that make up the PTSD triad tell us that journalists who are exposed to traumatic events don’t just go on to the next assignment, as the unwritten code would have us think. Journalists carry around stories of close calls and near death with them for the rest of their lives. Although some journalists deal better – Feinsteins study showed that 70 per cent of war journalists do not suffer from PTSD. This does not, however, mean that these journalists do not experience higher than average mental disorders – they do. Even journalists without PTSD scored higher across the board in the triad symptoms.

“Journalists race around in search of civil war, secretly happiest when they sign off from some hell hole where the bodies are stacking up and the omens of apocalypse are most vivid.” Journalist Fergal Keane doesn’t have a definitive answer to why some journalists choose to go to war, Feinsteins’ study reveals several possible explanations.
“What I got out of war was a buzz.” Where does the buzz come from? The Sensation-Seeking Scale (SSS) can help in determining reasons why war journalists put their lives on the line for the adrenaline rush. The four chief features of sensation-seeking behavior are “thrill and adventure seeking, experience seeking, disinhibition, and boredom susceptibility.” Results from years of SSS scores have identified certain key demographics that apply to the war journalist. Data take from the general population shows that men tend to have higher SSS scores than women. This can help explain why three quarters of war journalists are men. Also, SSS scores decline with age, which also draws a parallel to war journalists – their mean age being in the mid-30’s.

Although sensation seeking is one potential explanation for war journalists to continue to put their lives in danger, Feinstein posits that a person neurophysiological makeup may also be part of the answer. “It is at this level that a few key neurotransmitters and hormones modulate novelty-driven behavior. Neurotransmitters are chemical messengers that carry information from one nerve in the brain to another. Neurotransmission underlies every aspect of human behavior.” When journalists like Keane talk about the “buzz” or the high they get from war zones, it is a physical reaction that their bodies are creating. Adrenaline speeds up the heart rate, increases breathing and induces sweating. But it is not adrenaline that controls sensation-seeking behaviour it is dopamine.

There are two ways that dopamine can be broken down in the brain, through the enzyme monoamine oxidase (MAO) or by conversion to noradrenaline (a pre-cursor of adrenaline). Studies have shown that low levels of MAO are correlated to high SSS scores. “The inference is that low levels of MAO lead to high levels of dopamine, and that in turn manifests as pronounced sensation-seeking behavior.” No study has ever been done to find out the MAO levels of journalists, but it is impossible to attribute the why of war journalism to physiology alone. While it may, in fact, be impossible to determine why journalists do what they do, we can assume from the Feinsteins’ findings that physiology can play a role.

Thus far we have been looking at war reporters who usually live in the west and are able to go home at the end of a period of time, but what about journalists who cover conflict and violence locally? “As the years of street-reporting experience increase, reporters and photographers are morel likely to suffer behavior symptoms akin to those experienced by victims of trauma in public-safety work.” These “local” findings are similar to Feinsteins’ international study. Symptoms of both intrusion and avoidance were high in local journalists covering traumatic events. Though no study has been done to test for PTSD specifically in local journalists, there has been enough evidence to support a correlation between witnessing traumatic events and journalists who “burn out” or have breakdowns. In their book, Covering Violence, Coté and Williams show that journalists are affected by violence from the first assignment they cover. Mark Pinsky, a veteran crime reporter in the USA stopped working the crime beat because he felt couldn’t do it anymore. Twelve years later he had the choice to go back to crime reporting, or lose his job. He chose the crime beat. “I found the pace un-relenting, the beat more grueling than ever. It wasn’t that the murder beat had changed over the years. I had.” Pinsky says that there are two major pitfalls for journalists covering crime. “If you protect yourself too much by screening out the unpleasantness, you cheat the reader by failing to convey the horror, which is, after all, your job. On the other hand, if you allow yourself to absorb the reality of what you see and hear, you run the risk of destroying yourself emotionally.” He came to this conclusion more than a decade after leaving the crime beat, this is telling of the lasting effects of violence on journalists.

We have seen that journalists who work abroad covering war and conflict are at a much higher lifetime prevalence rate of PTSD We have also seen a correlation between covering traumatic events and local journalists developing emotional problems as a result of their job. What is being done in the industry to help professionals deal with the stresses that are inherent in their jobs? Coté and Simpson offer suggestion for coping with covering crime.

First the responsibility of the employer needs to be addressed. Because of the “macho” culture among journalists, there needs to be a system in place for journalists to get help anonymously. After a crime reporter witnessed the shooting of a suspect by police the journalist was showing signs of depression. A police officer at the station suggested that the reporter see a police psychologist. “The newspaper’s management had not suggested that the reporter talk to a counselor.” Feinstein found similar results in his study, “journalists who over the course of their careers developed a disorder like PTSD or became seriously depressed seldom received treatment.” Feinstein doesn’t put all of the blame on news organizations, or journalists, but rather a combination of both. “This neglect, at times approaching disdain, was part of a wider macho culture of silence that historically has enveloped the profession when it came to psychological health and other emotionally freighted issues.” The macho culture continues, but slowly the industry is taking psychological health more seriously. Many news organizations now offer professional counseling to their staff, as well as training sessions for journalists who will be going to war zones.

“Every effort should be made to ensure that the facts are not distorted by a journalist’s depression, anxiety, substance abuse or post-traumatic stress disorder, for all these conditions may act as a biased filter through which a particular event, emotional in itself, is viewed.” Journalists need to understand that they are not invincible as “the code” would have them believe, and news organizations need to create safety nets and training programs for their employees. Only when the industry as a whole can recognize that there is a problem, can it begin to be solved. The first step is for journalists to recognize that they are vulnerable.

Bibliography

APA - American Psychiatric Association 1999 “APA Let’s Talk Facts About…Posttraumatic Stress Disorder” retrieved from http://www.psych.org/disasterpsych/fs/ptsd.cfm. April 2, 2006.

Coté, William & Roger Simpson. 2000. Covering Violence. New York: Columbia University Press.

Feinstein, Anthony. 2003. Dangerous Lives: War and the Men and Women Who Report It. Toronto: Thomas Allen Publishers.

Pinsky, Mark I. 1993, “Covering the Crimes.” Columbia Journalism Review, January-February 1993, p.29

Simpson, Roger A.; Boggs, James G.. “An Exploratory Study of Traumatic Stress Among Newspaper Journalists.” Journalism & Communication Monographs, Spring 1999, Vol. 1 Issue 1.