This is the second in a series of blog posts exploring this topic, culminating later this year with a guide for fact-checkers on mental health and well-being. Learn more about the program here.
By Emma Thomasson, Training Manager of the program Mental Health Leadership for Fact-Checkers.
Our second training session was led by Naseem Miller, senior health editor at The Journalist’s Resource, a project of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. Here’s what we learned.
1. There are a few key terms that are important to understand: vicarious trauma, moral injury and online harassment
We started with key terms to understand this topic, to help get us on the same page.
Vicarious trauma
Journalists can experience vicarious trauma from witnessing and reporting on traumatic events, even if they do not directly experience the traumatic event themselves. It can be a pathway to psychological injury, including social withdrawal, anxiety and PTSD.
Here are some key points about vicarious trauma:
- Images on a screen can take on a prácticamente realistas en el cerebro.
- Las personas que ven estas imágenes sienten vergüenza: ¿Cómo puedo sentir angustia? No estoy informando sobre el terreno”.
- Las imágenes pueden recordar alguna experiencia personal, which risks retraumatization.
- A diferencia del reporterismo sobre el terreno, el trabajo de verificación no incluye acceso a la historia completa. No hay contexto para las imágenes que se ven en línea, ni un comienzo o un final naturales.
- It is a different route to PTSD, not a different condition.
- Journalists of color and LGBTQ+ journalists are at higher risk (particularly if they report on communities they belong to).
Daño moral
Fact-checkers might be exposed to daño moral, defined as perpetrating, failing to prevent, bearing witness to, or learning about acts that deeply transgress our moral/ethical values. This is distinct from vicarious trauma, but might also result from watching traumatic events online.
That can be compounded by the sense of a betrayal of what’s right by someone who holds authority in a high-stakes situation, such as a manager in a news organization.
El daño moral puede provocar feelings of shame, guilt, outrage, sorrow, disgust and despair.
Online harassment
Fact-checkers are also at risk of acoso en línea, which ranges from nasty comments to severe bullying to explicit sexual and death threats via emails, social media and text messages. They might face organized attacks from state-sponsored trolls.
At particular risk of online harassment are: women, people of color, ethnic minorities and people from the LGBTQ+ communities. This is prompting some professionals to leave social media or even quit their jobs.
2. Fact-checkers are at risk, but may be too ashamed to ask for help
Ver contenido angustioso en internet puede conllevar similares riesgos emocionales que informar desde el terreno. Sin embargo, la sensación de vergüenza por no estar enfrentando el mismo peligro físico que los reporteros puede dificultar la búsqueda de ayuda.
Katarina Subasic, editor in AFP’s fact-checking team for Europe, put it this way: “Who are we to feel bad? We are not the ones who are suffering.”
She added: “If they say they are affected, people are worried they won’t get the big assignment.
But Naseem Miller stressed: “We need to break the selfless-activist mindset. It’s OK to care about yourself.”
3. Organizations and managers can help with vicarious trauma by noticing the signs and symptoms, and then taking action
There are warning signs of problems that colleagues can look for. These include the following:
- Colleague is irritable, de mal humor o emocional.
- Parecer abrumado/a por el trabajo, incapaz de concentrarse, sin involucrarse.
- Disminución del desempeño laboral.
- Frecuentes ausencias por enfermedad o fatiga.
- Apariencia descuidada in appearance.
- Pérdida de motivación, changes routine (stops participation in sport, social activities).
- Consumo excesivo de alcohol o drogas.
In response, organizations and managers can take action in the following ways:
- Check-in on staff regularly: la gestión del trauma vicario y el daño moral es una conversación que nunca concluye. Mantenga abierto el diálogo.
- Cree redes de apoyo entre colegas.
- Cree un debrief process for people working on potentially triggering stories.
- Anime a sus colegas a no revisar vídeos en WhatsApp o fuera del trabajo. Mírelos sólo en la computadora: ¡no se lo lleve a la cama!
- Put in a sistema de rotación para revisar contenido que provoque malestar.
- Put videos on vídeos siempre que sea posible.
There may be times to seek access to professional help. However, in some places, seeking therapy is still taboo, or there are few therapists available or their help is very expensive: “In my culture, we don’t go to therapists,” one participant said.
4. Organizations need policies to prevent and respond to online abuse
Online abuse is often seen as an occupational hazard for journalists and fact-checkers, but as trolls have become more organized and vicious, responding has become a matter of media freedom. Here are some steps organizations can take to protect their reporters:
- Use procedimientos de evaluación de seguridad procedures to decide whether a story is worth the risk.
- Know your trolls: are they local, global, campaign-specific, any patterns?
- Are your systems bloqueando tanto abuso como sea posible?
- Clear guidelines on how staff use social media and share personal data.
- Offer tools to delete old/embarrassing tweets and posts.
- Is there a need for training on managing online abuse?
- Comunique la disponibilidad de apoyo para el personal que sufre abuso, what support is available to staff who suffer abuse.
- Si un colega está siendo atacado, ayúdelo a salir de la plataforma y cerrar su cuenta: no se involucre con trolls.
- Provide apoyo legal cuando sea necesario..
However, policies can only go so far, especially as fact-checkers feel a conflict between the pressure to build an online community and brand, and the need to protect online safety: “I do share pictures of food and exercise, but that’s as personal as I get,” one fact-checker said.
Also, there is the danger of the Streisand effect, when an attempt to hide or remove personal information backfires by increasing public awareness of it. It is named after American singer and actress Barbra Streisand, who tried to suppress a photograph showing coastal erosion near her clifftop residence in California but that effort drew far greater attention to the previously obscure photograph. (Source: Wikipedia)
Sometimes fact-checkers and their managers have to accept that online abuse and potential trauma are the unavoidable price they pay for their jobs. What’s crucial is entering with open eyes and preparing a plan of action for supporting yourself and your colleagues before an event occurs.
5. There are many ways to care for oneself
During the workshop, our participants discussed other self-care tips, which included:
- Have a ritual to signal to your body and mind that your working day is over (especially when working remotely): light a candle, read a book (pretend you are commuting on a train), change your clothes.
- Focus on what you can control.
- Hang on to hope (for example, actively seek out solutions/constructive stories).
- Encuentre pasatiempos y actividades que le produzcan alegría.
- Try a mindfulness or spirituality app like Spiri or Calm
Naseem shared a poem during the workshop that we wanted to close with:
“O Me! O Life!” by Walt Whitman:
“The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
