In view of American journalist Steven Sotloff’s fate—beheading at the hands of the Islamic State rebels who now control much of Syria—this is a rather dramatic statement. It came from Bruce Shapiro, executive director of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at the Columbia University Journalism School in New York. He was speaking over lunch at a workshop, “Disasters and Extreme Weather,” at the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists, at the Hilton Riverside in New Orleans. His speech lay between my lunch and the panel on which I myself spoke, the first of the afternoon, which was intended to provide a toolkit of ideas for freelance and other writers covering disasters.

The point was, in part, that Steven Sotloff, however dramatic his fate, was not the first, nor would he be the last, journalist to suffer trauma or even death as a result of his work. In fact, he was the second journalist in a matter of weeks to suffer beheading by the Islamic State, following an earlier incident involving James Foley, who had already survived captivity in Libya. In typical, grisly fashion, the Islamic State terrorists had recorded and broadcast on the Internet the murders of both men. They are not seeking admiration; they seek fear.

Reaction to such trauma was the theme of Shapiro’s bold presentation. We have not always understood such reactions; in fact, says Shapiro, what understanding we do now possess is relatively recent, largely an outgrowth of the Vietnam War, after which many thousands of veterans began to suffer the impacts of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. Our understanding of what we used to call “shell shock” was once so poor that only our sense of humanity, and not psychological knowledge, produced the adverse reaction in World War II when Gen. Patton slapped a shaken soldier in the hospital in Italy and called him a coward.

After Vietnam, Shapiro says, “psychologists began to notice something. Clinicians realized they were on to something new.” Patients were suffering not from the awkward childhood memories that were long the focus of Freudian analysis, but from “memories that were too big to contain.” Resulting from severe trauma in wars and disasters and from torture, these memories “intruded on the daily lives” of their victims. The Dart Center, he said, is “working on representative survivors,” who may have survived torture under dictatorial Latin American regimes, as well as combat in Vietnam or wars in the Middle East. In 1980, he noted, the American Psychiatric Association finally decided to recognize PTSD, and the term has become common parlance since then, even if not everyone grasps what it really is or its practical implications. But it goes a long way toward explaining the persistence of homeless veterans, or those who withdraw into solitary life in the woods.

“We need to understand these changes to be innovative, effective journalists,” Shapiro told the crowd. We need meaningful coverage before, during, and after disasters. People store these overlarge memories in different ways, but the bottom line is that effective responses to danger, based on inherited mechanisms of fight or flight, become “maladaptive when we’re safe.” Thus, the Vietnam veteran who is easily rattled by fireworks or loud responses that trigger learned mechanisms for reacting to enemy fire. Once stored in the body’s defenses, these reactions are hard to unlearn.

But Shapiro was not discussing this with reporters simply to make them better observers of the phenomena he described. He told them bluntly that they, too, could become victims of trauma through their work in covering disasters. Hence, the headline quote of this article. Journalists have long learned to “suck it up,” he said, but in fact that may be the wrong approach entirely, however tough or macho it may sound. The myth was that, if you could not handle it, maybe you were in the wrong profession.

Shapiro instead outlined what he considered “three basic mechanisms of significance for our work as reporters”:

1)      Intrusion. This is the unwanted presence of memories that are not going away. Intrusive memory overwhelms the mind’s memory.

2)      Biomechanical. This is hyperarousal, the inability to focus. Those suffering from it have great difficulty establishing trust and become angry. They live permanently on the “fight or flight” threshold.

3)      Numbness. Eventually, some victims avoid interaction with other humans that may arouse problems. They sink into withdrawal from society.

These impacts are not mutually exclusive; in fact, Shapiro noted the possibility of victims being “whipsawed between impacts.” This is of particular importance for journalists because, he said, “We rely on our ability to concentrate and ability to build trusting relationships as journalists. We all know journalists who are casualties.” Trauma and personal injury are of particular significance for environmental journalists because of the subject matter they routinely cover. “Psychological trauma is measurably worse when there is human agency involved,” he noted. “When human technology plays a significant role in disaster, there are more enduring problems for more people. The failures of leadership in Katrina were so profound.” Hurricane Katrina, he noted, was “interwoven with violence and urban poverty.”

Shapiro made one important point about connecting with traumatized victims of disaster, even if one must also, as a reporter seeking to reveal truth, sometimes discount some of what one hears. Instead of “pulling at heartstrings” or asking detailed or pointed questions, why not just ask, “What happened to you?” Then let the story spill out as the victim wishes to tell it.

Journalists, he asserted, need to think about themselves as well as their subjects. They can, among other things, suffer from “vicarious trauma” in covering the disasters that have befallen others. Environmental journalists often find themselves reporting on “abuses of power, the trauma of losing power and status.” People fall victim to the whim of violent actors and corrupt politicians, and “when abuses of power are involved, all those injuries become worse. Nowhere more important than on the ground of environmental issues and climate change amplified by official abuses.”

“Avoiding the subject of trauma for journalists is actively destructive,” he concluded.

The answer: Stay connected with others and believe in what you are doing. “Ethical journalism practice in the face of trauma protects us,” he told the audience. He concluded by quoting Rachel Carson, the renowned author of Silent Spring, who wrote, “Who has made the decision that sets in motion this wave of poison?”

Shapiro did not say this, but I have to wonder: Is it also possible that positive religious belief, that is, faith in a loving God, is also part of the remedy? Clearly, it is possible to have a religion of hatred, or Steven Sotloff might still be alive, but that is not a religion of healing and spirituality. Reporters sometimes like to think they are above that sort of faith, but in the face of trauma, might they be missing an ingredient for survival? I like to think there is a greater purpose in what we do. And I have seen more than a few disasters myself.

Jim Schwab