Universiteit van Amsterdam
Graduate School of Social Sciences (GSSS)
Master Thesis Political Science: International Relations Protracted violence, wellbeing, and a search for peace in IR
Examiners: 1st: Dr. Nel Vandekerckhove; 2nd: Dr. Vivienne Matthies-Boon
Wellbeing of Journalists:
A Qualitative Study on the Experiences of Practicing
Journalism in Conflict Affected and High-Risk Areas
Name: Gregor Bocharewicz
Student number: 12302171
Date: 21 June 2019
Introduction ... 3
Journalism and trauma ... 3
Research ... 6
Journalists and the freelance culture ... 7
Theoretical Framework ... 10
Wellbeing ... 10
Mental and psychological wellbeing ... 11
Emotions and wellbeing ... 12
Psychological symptoms of distress ... 13
Short-term effects of encountering potentially traumatic events ... 15
Hyper-arousal, instincts, intuition ... 15
Coping with psychological stress while reporting on traumatic events ... 16
Fear and anxiety ... 16
Long-term wellbeing ... 17
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and its Symptoms ... 17
Trauma-related guilt ... 19
Eudaimonic perception of wellbeing ... 21
Processing experiences ... 23
Conflict Affected and High-Risk Areas ... 24
Methodology ... 25
Findings ... 28
Short-term experiences related to wellbeing ... 28
Focus ... 28
Instinct ... 30
Fear ... 32
Long-term experiences related to wellbeing ... 35
Returning to the home country ... 35
Paranoid feelings ... 38
Flashbacks ... 42
Freezing ... 43
Alcohol ... 44
Feelings of guilt ... 46
Freelance journalism causing stress ... 48
Euidaimonic perception of wellbeing ... 50
Processing ... 53
Social connections ... 53
Writing as means of processing. ... 55
Conclusion ... 57
Literature ... 60
APPENDICES ... 64
APPENDIX I: Journalists / Date of interviews ... 64
Introduction
Journalism and traumaThe consideration of journalism and trauma as a distinct field of practice, education, and research emerged in the final decade of the 20th Century.1 In 1991, Frank Ochberg, a psychiatrist who is considered to be a pioneer on post-traumatic stress syndrome, collaborated with the Michigan State University to establish a program to assists journalists in reporting on victims of violence.2 In the mid-1990s, a growing number of journalists, academics and clinicians around the USA began exploring the topic of news reporting and violence. This eventually resulted in the establishment of the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma, that has been a leading institute within the topic of trauma and journalism ever since.3 Due to the occurrence of natural disasters, terrorist attacks, uprisings, and other global developments and events, it became apparent that journalists needed to find appropriate methods to report about tragic and dangerous events in the field.
The book Covering Violence: A Guide To Ethical Reporting About Victims & Trauma by William Coté and Roger Simpson was written in that regard.4 This is a ground-breaking textbook,
in which the nexus between the occupation of journalism and possible effects on the wellbeing of journalists is set out: they found that many reporters show signs of emotional injury that are a lot like those of policemen, soldiers, and fire-fighters.5 It was written mainly in order to provide journalists with a better understanding of how to cover violent events; how to cope with people that experienced trauma. It addresses the notion that practicing journalism can affect wellbeing of journalists, albeit implicitly, but it does not necessarily analyse how and why this happens. However, they addressed the issue, and in the research that has been done afterwards it definitely became clear that journalists who have been exposed to dangerous situations, traumatic experiences, violent events and conflict areas have an increased chance to suffer from emotional,
1 Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma, “Mission History”, accessed on 23 March 2019 2 M. Spratt and S.L. John, “Journalism and Trauma”, accessed on 23 March 2019 via
www.OxfordBibliographies.com.
3 Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma, “Mission History”.
4 W. Coté, R. Simpson, and M. Scherer, Covering Violence: A Guide to Ethical Reporting about Victims and Trauma (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2000).
psychological, and sometimes even physical complaints.6
In Covering Violence, trauma is viewed as an assault on the essential human system. It is a specific, devastating, and often long-lasting wound that can be felt both mentally and physically.7 And both physical and emotional complaints may be products of the same experience. Moreover the book distinguishes trauma that was caused by natural disasters, and compares it to human-caused trauma. Both traumas can cause intense physical and mental problems, but a deliberate human act is seen as even more traumatizing. In this thesis, especially the latter will be closely examined.
The research that has been done on the wellbeing of journalists is based on quantitative data.8 Moreover, in the existing literature, the phenomenon of “wellbeing” is associated with “not suffering from symptoms of distress”.9 Klas Backholm and Kaj Björkvist, two leading Finish researchers on the topic of occupational distress, illustrate this in one of their articles by proposing: “The level of well-being is measured as the degree of symptoms of PTSD, depression, compassion fatigue and burnout.”10 All symptoms are defined in a positivist and medicalized way, using DSM-IV and related questionnaires.11 For a phenomenon so versatile, elusive, and
ungraspable as wellbeing, Backholm and Björkvist seem to have worked out a rather simplified definition. Of course, this serves the cause of measuring objectively whether the wellbeing of journalists is negatively affected by his or her experiences. For the sake of making models, reality needs to be simplified. However, taking a constructivist stance that reality is socially constructed, and therefore cannot be objectively measured, this implies that not all aspects can be examined.
Backholm and Björkvist are not the only academics that have utilized models and
6 K. Backholm and K. Björkqvist, "The Effects of Exposure to Crisis on Well-being of
Journalists: A Study of Crisis-related Factors Predicting Psychological Health in a Sample of Finnish Journalists", In Media, War & Conflict 3, no. 2 (2010): 138-51; A. Feinstein, S. Feinstein, M. Behari and B. Pavisian, "The Psychological Wellbeing of Iranian Journalists: A Descriptive Study", in JRSM Open7, no. 12 (2016); A. Feinstein, J. Wanga and J. Owen, "The Psychological Effects of Reporting Extreme Violence: A Study of Kenyan Journalists", in JRSM
Open 6, no. 9 (2015); A. Feinstein, "Mexican Journalists: An Investigation of Their Emotional
Health", in Journal of Traumatic Stress 25, no. 4 (2012): 480-83.
7 W. Coté, R. Simpson, and M. Scherer, Covering Violence, 23. 8 Articles by Feinstein (et al.) and Backholm & Björkvist. 9 Articles by Feinstein (et al.) and Backholm & Björkvist.
10 K. Backholm and K. Björkqvist, "The Effects of Exposure to Crisis on Well-being of
Journalists”, 139.
11 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Journalist Trauma Exposure Scale, et
simplified definitions of wellbeing. Feinstein et al. analyse the psychological wellbeing of Iranian journalists. Even though they do not define wellbeing explicitly, they explore whether Iranian journalists experience “symptoms of distress”.12 In another analysis, Feinstein et al. assess the psychological effects of reporting extreme violence. In order to test the general psychological wellbeing of journalists they use the General Health Questionnaire, which describes the symptoms of somatic complaints, anxiety, social dysfunction and repression.13 Feinstein used questionnaires, surveys, and other quantitative instruments in all his studies on the wellbeing (or other relating phenomenon) of journalists.14
In order to come to conclusions on the wellbeing of journalists, Backholm & Björkvist and Feinstein analysed the level of wellbeing as the degree of certain psychopathological symptoms (PTSD, depression, compassion fatigue, burnout) and related use of medicines or substances.15 However, epidemiological and clinical research shows that the absence of mental and physical disorders does not assure the presence of indicators of positive subjective wellbeing.16 This thesis will explore what more there is to the wellbeing of journalists than that which has been studied so far. With this study, the experiences of journalists will be added to the current status quo of the scientific debate. Backholm & Björkvist and Feinstein (et al.) conclude that journalists who have been exposed to horrific events are more likely to suffer from symptoms of distress, and therefore have a lower level of wellbeing. This may be true, but the human experiences of journalists have not yet been described.
12 A. Feinstein, J. Wanga and J. Owen, "The Psychological Effects of Reporting Extreme
Violence”, 2.
13 A. Feinstein, J. Wanga and J. Owen, "The Psychological Effects of Reporting Extreme
Violence”, 2.
14 A. Feinstein, S. Feinstein, M. Behari and B. Pavisian, "The Psychological Wellbeing of Iranian
Journalists”, 2; A. Feinstein, J. Wanga and J. Owen, "The Psychological Effects of Reporting Extreme Violence”, 2; A. Feinstein, "Mexican Journalists", 480.
15 Feinstein recorded the amount of alcohol used by journalists, as well as the usage of
barbiturates in his 2016 research on Iranian journalists.
16 C.R. Cloninger, “The dynamic origins of positive health and wellbeing” in International Journal of Person Centered Medicine 2, no. 2 (2012) 180.
Research
Therefore, the question posed in this research will be: “How does practicing freelance journalism in Conflict Affected and High-Risk Areas affect the wellbeing of journalists?” Questions on the wellbeing of journalists have been posed before, but they will be answered in a different way. The research that has been done so far is positivist. In the current academic debate the goal of research has been to measure objectively whether journalists are more likely to suffer from certain psychological symptoms. The focus of the present research is subjective, analysing how journalists felt during and after their experiences, physically, but especially mentally. The goal of this thesis differs from previous analyses, and is all about describing and analysing the experiences and feelings of journalists.
First, I will closely examine the short-term effects on the wellbeing of journalists. What happened when journalists encountered potentially traumatic events? How did these events make them feel? And how did they manage to continue with their work, even though they encountered horrific events? Second, I will analyse how their experiences affected their long-term wellbeing. How are their day-to-day lives affected? How does encountering trauma make them feel in the long run? Do they suffer from it? Are their any positive aspects? Third, I will describe how respondents coped with their experiences. How do they process what they see? And what do they do in order to keep on going with their work?
Even though all respondents were exposed to traumatic events, they all found specific ways of handling their experiences. They all had their own methods of processing, which helped them not getting affected by what they felt, saw, heard, and did. I composed a topic guide in order to structure the interviews and to provide answers for these three aspects.
I have conducted interviews with 10 freelance journalists who have been reporting in Conflict Affected and High-Risk Areas, and experienced potentially traumatic situations where they encountered fear, danger, and uncertainty about their own safety. I will describe how these situations made them feel, how it affected their lives, and how they coped with them, in the end answering questions about how their wellbeing was affected, both in the short and long-term. All participants have been working in Conflict Affected and High-Risk Areas for at least once, and they all work or have worked on freelance-based contracts.
The focus lies on freelance journalists, because freelance journalists work for themselves, and they therefore do not have an institutional safety net at their disposal, provided by their
employers, which they can rely upon when they are mentally or physically affected by their work. Typically they do not work in an editorial office, and they thus cannot share their experiences with colleagues during their day-to-day jobs. It could be that because of that, they are more likely to suffer from their experiences.
Journalists and the freelance culture
It is important to know when someone is defined as a journalist. For the purpose of this research individuals will be defined as journalists when they have been writing, reporting, photographing, or in any other sense have been covering events while they were professionally engaged. Journalists who work on a freelance basis might be more likely to suffer from their experiences, because they do not have an institutional safety net on which they can rely when they are psychologically, mentally or physically affected by their work. Moreover, typically they do not find themselves working in an editorial office, where they would otherwise be able to share their experiences with their colleagues. Research shows that both aspects could be enhancing wellbeing of journalists who encountered potentially traumatic events.
Freelance journalists are seen as employers who work on an assignment basis, for a variety of companies, as opposed to employees who work for a single company. Freelancers are considered to be self-employed; they have the freedom to pick and choose their own projects and assignments, and are able to pick organizations (in this case: organizations that are affiliated with journalists such as newspapers, magazines, and news broadcasts) they would like to be associated with. In short, as a freelance journalist, you get to decide who you work for, when you work, how often you work, and what you write about.17 These presumably positive aspects are mirrored with a number of aspects that could be regarded as negative: irregular income, unpaid holidays, unpaid sick leaves, and finally running an own business means an own responsibility for one’s administration.18
Since 2017, the Dutch Association for Journalists (Nederlandse Vereniging voor
Journalisten or NVJ) has been campaigning for more recognition of freelance journalists.
17 The Writers Bureau, “What Makes Freelance Journalism Different From Ordinary
Journalism?”, accessed via www.writersbureau.com on 10 June 2019.
18 The Writers Bureau, “What Makes Freelance Journalism Different From Ordinary
According to the labour union Dutch freelancers (as well as international ones) are underpaid and receive little guidance by their employers and executives. This results in a lack of criticism towards the work freelancers provide and towards employers, because they are afraid of not receiving follow-up assignments.19 The first is particularly problematic, since the raisons d’être of journalism are to separate facts from fiction, to be able to independently verify powers and thus serve citizens (of both democratic and non-democratic states).
In 2015, Villamedia, an independent department of the Dutch Association for Journalists, wrote a report about the Dutch journalist sector.20 According to the report there were about 18.000 individuals working as a journalist, of which around 5600 works as freelancer. Around 16% of those 18.000 journalists were unemployed, more than twice the annual average unemployment of the Netherlands of 6.8%. Freelancers are not taken into consideration for this number; without hidden unemployment it would be even larger.21
In 2018 another report on the state of independent research journalism was commissioned and published by the Dutch Government. It concluded that Dutch journalists encounter three important difficulties within their profession: the amount of time made available for assignments (time pressure), the financing of projects (financial pressure) and the unwillingness of organizations and governments to cooperate in research.22 Freelancers particularly fall behind in
reward and working conditions.23 These are striking findings, and these developments are
reinforced by the contemporary rise of platforms like Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. In summary, one could argue that independent journalism is deteriorating, and especially freelancers are affected.
For the respondents of this research these sociocultural and socioeconomic developments are disturbing. As will be illustrated, the amount of pressure put on journalists who comes on top of their own experiences can be hard to deal with. These developments within a Dutch national context cannot be seen apart from a wider international context. Conditions for freelance journalists are deteriorating.
19 Stimuleringsfonds voor de Journalistiek (SVDJ), “Hoeveel journalisten zijn er eigenlijk?”
accesed via www.svdj.nl on 10 June 2019.
20 SVDJ, “Hoeveel journalisten zijn er eigenlijk?”. 21 SVDJ, “Hoeveel journalisten zijn er eigenlijk?”.
22 DSP-Groep, Onderzoeksjournalistiek in Nederland: Verkenning en analyse (Amsterdam,
2018), 8.
Internationally, the media business is affected by crisis. It suffers from a decrease in circulation or printed media, revenue loss and technological changes.24 Moreover, due to cutbacks and downsizing freelancing and self-employment become more common career paths. Both within the Netherlands and throughout the rest of the world, journalists face difficulties to make ends meet. In order to survive financially, they engage themselves in non-journalistic work such as PR (for the writing journalists) and graphical design (for the photojournalists).
Before reading about the interviews that were conducted, it is important to be aware of the amount of stress that rests on the shoulders of conflict journalists. Their own situation, composed by a diminishment of traditional media and their experiences in Conflict Affected and High Risk Areas, affects their wellbeing. It brings along financial pressure; something not all of them are capable of dealing with. In case of Arnaud Dubus, a well-known French foreign correspondent who had been working from conflict areas all his life, it resulted in him ending his life.25 Of course, these developments cannot fully explain why he chose to commit suicide, but according to his friends his harsh professional circumstances definitely played a role. Therefor this thesis is not only of scientific value, but has a societal importance as well.
24 B.R. Mathisen, “Ethical Boundaries among Freelance Journalists”, in Journalism Practice 13
no. 6, 639.
25 MediaPart – L. Siegel, “Arnaud Dubus – Death of a foreign correspondent”, accessed on 12
Theoretical Framework
Within this research question, there are several aspects that need to be explained carefully and thoroughly. First of all, wellbeing will be viewed as a subjective, ever-changing, versatile and elusive state of mind and body. A state one is only capable of defining him or herself. Next to this mental aspect of wellbeing there is a closely related, connected physical aspect of wellbeing. To become familiar with the concept of wellbeing, literature on wellbeing by leading academics within the field was analysed. For the sake of the qualitative analysis, wellbeing will not be defined precisely. The reason behind this is twofold. First, the notion of wellbeing is rather new. Research has been done, but there is still a lot of discussion about what wellbeing is, and how it can be described and analysed. Second, due to its subjective, ever-changing, versatile and elusive character, it is difficult, if not impossible, to come up with one universal definition.
Wellbeing
Sarah C. White, a political scientist at the University of Bath, considers wellbeing to be a social process with material, relational, and subjective dimensions, which may be assessed at individual and collective levels, but which is at base something that takes place in a relationship, between individual and collective; between local and global, between people and state.26 White
distinguishes two lines of wellbeing: ‘doing well – feeling good’ and ‘doing good – feeling well’. For this analysis the subjective parts, thus the ‘feeling’, are most relevant. That is, the subjective dimension of personal perceptions and levels of satisfaction, and the importance of (mental) health to wellbeing. This subjective state of wellbeing interacts with material and relational wellbeing and therefore is ever-changing.27
This ever-changing aspect is addressed in another study by Smith & Reid. They argue that wellbeing is dominated by economic and psychological approaches and explore the way in which place, space and context have remained largely neglected in these approaches (as illustrated in the studies by Backholm & Björkvist and Feinstein et al.).28 Moreover, Smith & Reid conclude that predominantly quantified conceptions of wellbeing are being implemented, and that this is
26 S.C. White, “Analysing Wellbeing: A Framework for Development Practice”, in Development in Practice 20, no. 2 (2010), 158.
27 S.C. White, “Analysing Wellbeing”, 158.
28 T.S.J. Smith and L. Reid, “Which ‘being’ in Wellbeing? Ontology, Wellness and the
understandable, but also that wellbeing is not necessarily something that can be objectively measured.29 A closer look at instruments of measuring wellbeing of journalists in the current scientific debate underlines this notion. For example, Anthony Feinstein, who is considered to be the most influential international expert on wellbeing of journalists, has used DSM-related surveys for his research. DSM has been revised five times since it was first published. This went along with the modification of definitions. This illustrates aptly how interpretations of psychological disorders related to wellbeing are changing over time.
Des Gasper, who is professor of Human Development, Development Ethics and Public Policy at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam, tried to set out the nature of wellbeing. He acknowledged the diversity in both the phenomenon of wellbeing as well as approaches of wellbeing, and tried to answer the question on what should actually be measured when analysing wellbeing.30 In economics, he argues, the treatment of wellbeing has been too much an offshoot of market calculations, whereas in psychology, sociology, and socio-economics has generated concepts more adequately grounded in experience.31 There is a distinction made between subjective and objective determinants of wellbeing, while both subjective and objective methodologies use the same aspects of wellbeing (such as health, family life, employment, recreation, quality of death). What is most important of this specific research is that he acknowledges the fact that conventional methods of psychology and economics are not sufficient to capture and communicate everything that is needed to understand wellbeing. These methods could be addressed by rich qualitative description as well. This is the exact topic of this paper.32 Mental and psychological wellbeing
It is well known that an individual’s mental or psychological wellbeing is closely connected to one’s physical health.33 Physical symptoms of illbeing (not sleeping or eating well, or a lack of energy) could be related to both physical and mental problems. Jane Turner and Brian Kelly, two Australian psychiatrists, set out the connections between chronic diseases and its emotional
29 T.S.J. Smith and L. Reid, “Which ‘being’ in Wellbeing?” 823.
30 D. Gesper, Human well-being: Concepts and conceptualizations, Rotterdam: Erasmus
University (2004), 37.
31 D. Gesper, Human well-being: Concepts and conceptualizations, 36. 32 D. Gesper, Human well-being: Concepts and conceptualizations, 13.
33 P.V. Sminkey, “The Whole-Person” Approach: Understanding the Connection Between
dimensions in an article that was published in 2000.34 More recent studies by Nabi et al. and Surtees et al. illustrate that there’s indeed a strong connection between physical and mental health.35 This connection is fundamental. Both mental health and chronic physical conditions can affect one another, thereby affecting the quality of one’s life and one’s wellbeing. According to the World Health Organization “health is a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”, underlining their statement that “there is no health without mental health.”36 Just as positive effect is not necessarily the exact opposite of negative effect, wellbeing is not merely the absence of mental illness. It encompasses more than just that.
Emotions and wellbeing
In the literature, a relationship is found between emotions and wellbeing. Since this research focuses on how experienced events made journalists feel, it is important to know about this nexus. A sound knowledge of it helps to analyse the emotions of journalists, and how they relate to their wellbeing.
Positive emotions can contribute to a certain degree of wellbeing, whereas negative emotions are able to contribute to illbeing. As philosophers Julien A. Deonna and Fabrice Teroni describe: “A life without emotional engagement is not worth living and having plenty of positive emotions makes for a better life.” They explain the first statement by arguing that an important condition for the sensation of wellbeing is the capacity to feel emotions.37 With emotions, one is provided a first-person perspective of understanding of values that is required in order to pursue them.38 By conceiving of positive emotions as attitudinal pleasures that manifest the satisfaction
34 J. Turner and B. Kelly, “Emotional dimensions of chronic disease”, in Western Journal of Medicine 172 no. 2 (2000), 124.
35 P. Surtees, N.W. Wainwright, R.N. Luben, N.J. Wareham, S.A. Bingham, and K.T. Khaw,
“Pyschological distress, major depressive disorder, and risk of stroke”, in Neurology 70 no. 10 (2008), 791.
36 World Health Organization, Promoting mental health: concepts, emerging evidence, practice
(Melbourne: Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse in collaboration with the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation and The University of Melbourne, 2004), 10.
37 J.A. Deoni and F. Teroni, “What role for emotions in well-being?” in Philosophical Topics 41
no. 1 (2013). Accessed on 15 June 2019 via Literature Resource Center (www.go.galegroup.com).
of desires, aspirations and life-projects, the latter statement is clarified.39
Christine Tappolet and Mauro Rossi, who are philosophers connected to the University of Montreal, also analysed the relation between emotions and wellbeing. Just like Deonna and Terone, they ask whether emotions are essential to the wellbeing of individuals who experience those emotions, which they refer to as Emotional Egoism. They consider three characterisations in their paper: (1) the relation between one’s emotions and his or her wellbeing is constitutive; (2) the relation between one’s emotion and his or her wellbeing is causal, and; (3) the relation between one’s emotion and one’s wellbeing is epistemic. In light of the theories Tappolet and Rossi presented they conclude that the first one is true: there is a constitutive relationship between emotions and wellbeing.
Psychological symptoms of distress
In the existing literature, four symptoms of distress are measured in order to analyse the wellbeing of journalists, notably Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), depression, compassion fatigue, and burnout. These are al psychological problems that are associated with acute traumatic events.40 The journalists who were interviewed were all exposed to such events. They experienced armed robberies, raping, murder, and sometimes even bombings and shootings. All subjects experienced events in which they felt insecure about their own lives.
According to the Center for Anxiety Disorders, trauma is seen as a psychological, emotional response to an event or experience that is deeply distressing or disturbing. Trauma refers to events as being involved in an accident, having an illness or injury, losing a loved one, or going through a divorce. More extreme events like rape, torture, and murder also are seen as being (potentially) traumatic.41
Broadly, three types of trauma have been distinguished. Complex trauma happens repetitively and results in direct harm to the individual experiencing them. PTSD can develop after an individual has been exposed to a certain event in which intense physical harm was occurred or was threatened. Those who suffer from PTSD often have persistent and frightening
39 J.A. Deoni and F. Teroni, “What role for emotions in well-being”.
40 M.F. Ziegler, “Mental Health Consequences of Trauma: The Unseen Scars”, in Clinical
Pediatric Emergency Medicin 11 no. 1 (2011), 57.
41 The Center for Treatment of Anxiety and Mood Disorders, “What is Trauma?”, accessed on 23
thoughts. Third, we have developmental trauma disorder. This phenomenon forms during the first three years of a child’s life. I will focus on the first two types, because those are most relevant to my study. Symptoms can include anger, feelings of sadness and despair, flashbacks, unpredictable emotions, feelings of guilt, a sense of shame, and feelings of isolation and hopelessness, but also more physical symptoms like nausea and headaches.
Traumas do not always and not exclusively result in PTSD. It depends on the individual how situations are handled. Some individuals are more capable of dealing with traumatic events, and the experience is always subjective. It should be understood that also depression, anxiety, and other psychological problems like compassion fatigue are associated with acute traumatic events. These are all phenomena that diminish quality of life, and therefore the wellbeing of individuals decreases. Depression negatively affects how individuals feel and causes feelings of sadness and loss of interest in activities once enjoyed.42 Symptoms can include changes in appetite, sleeping problems, loss of energy, increase of purposeless physical activity, feelings of worthlessness or guilt, difficulties with thinking, concentrating or making decisions, and sometimes even thoughts of death or suicide.43
Lastly, compassion fatigue, also described as “vicarious traumatization” or “secondary traumatization”, can occur when working with those suffering from the consequences of traumatic events. Compassion fatigue has first been described as a unique form of burnout linked to caregiving professionals, which can be emotionally devastating and causes the loss of ability to cope, anger, apathy, depression, and ineffectiveness.44 It has been diagnosed with nurses, psychotherapists, and social workers; but journalists can suffer from the same condition.
As explained, these four symptoms of distress all can diminish quality of life, and therefore decrease wellbeing of individuals. In the existing literature, these four diagnoses have been described in order to ‘measure’ the wellbeing of journalists. Therefore I found it important to describe briefly what exactly those conditions are. While conducting the interviews, I kept in mind which emotions and feelings are linked to the conditions described above.
42 American Psychiatric Association, “What is Depression?”, accessed on 24 May 2019 via
www.psychiatry.org.
43 American Psychiatric Association, “What is Depression?”
44 J.R. Day and R.A. Anderson, “Compassion Fatigue: An Application of the Concept to Informal
Caregivers of Family Members with Dementia”, in Nursing Research and Practice (2011). Accessed on 20 May 2019 via http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2011/408024.
Short-term effects of encountering potentially traumatic events
Hyper-arousal, instincts, intuition
Within this research, a distinction will be made between short-term and long-term wellbeing. Short-term wellbeing relates to how journalists felt during or directly after (within 24 hours) their experiences. A possible effect of working in dangerous areas is hyper-arousal, which is also labelled as “fight-or-flight response” or the “acute stress response” in the literature.45
Hyper-arousal could affect their long-term wellbeing; it is one of the symptoms of PTSD, and might cause mental and physical complaints, including sleeping difficulties, flashbacks, memory impairment, anger, and aggression.46
Whenever people encounter an evident threat, this could cause hyper-arousal. This is a natural defence mechanism, enabling people to react quickly and adequately to life-threatening situations, without being consciously aware of fear and anxiety.47 While this happens, an individual’s senses are hyperactive, which makes them extremely responsive to stimuli and events in the world around them.48 A short-term effect is that people are better capable of handling stressful situations. However, in the long run it can become a symptom of PTSD, causing individuals to feel heightened anxiety in situations where there is no need to feel this anxiety – during regular day-to-day activities.49 The long-term effects will be set out later.
Colloquially, this state of hyper-arousal is sometimes described as a sort of “sixth sense”.50 It can help individuals making decisions that feel, and sometimes are, good, and cannot be rationally explained. Maybe hyper-arousal is part of some sort of intuition, or instinct. Even though there is no rational explanation for these phenomena, probably anyone reading this could
45 Harvard Health Publishing, “Understanding the stress response: chronic activation of this
survival mechanism impairs health”, accessed on 11 June 2019 via www.health.harvard.eu.
46 C.S.E. Weston, “Posttraumatic stress disorder: a theoretical model of the hyperarousal
subtype”, in Frontiers in Psychiatry 5 no. 37 (2014), 6-9.
47 Harvard Health Publishing, “Understanding the stress response: chronic activation of this
survival mechanism impairs health”, accessed on 11 June 2019 via www.health.harvard.eu.
48 Medical News Today, “Hyperarousal: Symptoms and treatment”, accessed on 11 June 2019 via
www.medicalnewstoday.com.
49 Medical News Today, “Hyperarousal: Symptoms and treatment”.
50 S. Knapton, “Anxiety acts like a ‘sixth sense’ which could save your life”, accessed on 12 June
2019 via www.telegraph.co.uk; K. Derla, “Aniety acts like a Sixth Sense that can safe your life”, accessed on 12 June 2019 via www.techtimes.com.
relate to a moment that his or her feeling made them influence a certain choice, which they were not able to rationally or logically explain. Himmelstein and Perry Faithorn describe intuition as “A perception of understanding grasped by the intellect, i.e. existing in the sphere of ideas. At times certain ideas would seem to emanate from an emotional hunch (a “sixth sense”) not originally discovered by logic.”51
Coping with psychological stress while reporting on traumatic events
In a 2002 research, Hal Himmelstein and E. Perry Faithorn analysed how journalists cope with the psychological stress inherent in reporting traumatic events.52 They argue that it is essential for a journalist’s performance to be able to cope with intense stress.53 They identified 15 operations that were performed and/or experienced by the executive aspect of the self – the ego – with varying rates of effectiveness.54 Three of those operations are directly relating to this research.
The first one is defined as empathy: being able to imagine what other individuals are experiencing, without taking over their emotional state. When empathy is being translated into action to contribute to those who could benefit, this activity is labelled altruism. These two phenomena, combined with the journalist’s defensive functioning, which protects the ego from threats by distorting internal and external realities to render the unacceptable tolerable to the conscious mind, result in the ability of journalists to cope with potentially traumatic experiences; being able to focus on their jobs, and not letting their emotions influence them.55
Fear and anxiety
Fear and anxiety are common phenomena, which each and every individual will probably have experienced during his or her lives. It contains the idea of danger, or the possibility of injury. It can make people narcissistically preoccupied with him or herself. In the Handbook on Fear and
Anxiety, there is a distinction made between the two. According to the authors, “fear is the
51 H. Himmelstein and E. Perry Faithorn, “Eyewitness to Disaster: How journalists cope with the
psychological stress inherent in reporting traumatic events”, in Journalism Studies 3 no. 4 (2002): 537-555.
52 H. Himmelstein and E. Perry Faithorn, “Eyewitness to Disaster”, 543. 53 Idem, 540.
54 Ibidem, 542. 55 Ibidem, 542-543.
motivation associated with a number of behaviours that normally occur on exposure to clearly threatening stimuli”, whereas “anxiety is the motivation associated with behaviours that occur to potential, signalled, or ambiguous threat”.56 However, both may integrate and overlap. David H. Barlow, who is a leading psychologist and psychiatrist specialised in the nature and treatment of anxiety disorders, made an important distinction as well. According to him, “fear” is seen as a reaction to a specific, observable danger, while “anxiety”, is seen as a diffuse, objectless apprehension.57
Deriving from these definitions, I will see fear as the emotion that comes to existence when there is an actual threat on one’s physical or mental being. Fear, therefore, is most likely to occur during or directly afterwards dangerous events, and relates mostly to the short-term effects of fierce events. In contrast, I will see anxiety as an emotion that arises without actual threat, and thus relates more to the long-term effects of fierce events. Intense fear could cause sleeplessness. When fear and sleeplessness persist for a long period of time (over one month), it could very well be that this could be caused by a stress disorder.
Long-term wellbeing
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and its Symptoms
The suffering from the short-term effects can be harming and seriously dangerous when they are also noticeable in the long run. In this regard, I already mentioned Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder several times. Thus far, the wellbeing of journalists has been measured quantitatively, using psychological tools. Research has pointed out that journalists, who cover violence, conflict, and war, are more likely to suffer from PTSD on average.58 The diagnosis of PTSD, which has
56 R.J. Blancard et al., “Introduction to the handbook on fear and anxiety”, in The Handbook on Fear and Anxiety, eds. R.J. Blanchard et al. (Boston: Academic Press, 2008), 3.
57 D.H. Barlow, Anxiety and Its Disorders: Nature and Treatment of Anxiety and Panic, (New
York: The Guilford Press, 2004), 3-7.
58 K. Backholm and K. Björkqvist, "The Effects of Exposure to Crisis on Well-being of
Journalists: A Study of Crisis-related Factors Predicting Psychological Health in a Sample of Finnish Journalists", In Media, War & Conflict 3, no. 2 (2010): 138-51; A. Feinstein, S. Feinstein, M. Behari and B. Pavisian, "The Psychological Wellbeing of Iranian Journalists: A Descriptive Study", in JRSM Open7, no. 12 (2016); A. Feinstein, J. Wanga and J. Owen, "The Psychological Effects of Reporting Extreme Violence: A Study of Kenyan Journalists", in JRSM
been set up and revised several times by the American Psychiatric Association, basically has four ingredients. These four ingredients must all be present at the same time, and they must be caused by one or more events that terrifies, horrifies, or renders someone helpless.59 These ingredients are distilled as follows: (1) recurrent, involuntary, and intrusive distressing recollections of an event; (2) avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma; (3) negative alterations in cognitions or moods associated with the event, or numbing (or both); (4) alterations in arousal and reactivity, including a heightened sensitivity to potential threat. These four conditions have to be vivid for at least a month.
In 2013, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (in short: DSM-5), was published. This handbook was originally published in order to make sure that scientists throughout the world wield the same definitions for certain psychological disorders. For the purpose of performing thorough and meaningful research, this is important. Insurance companies are utilizing standards of DSM-5 in order to determine whether a treatment can be compensated. In the DSM-5, trauma is defined as an event or experience (or a set thereof) that is shocking and overwhelming, typically involving major threat to the physical, emotional, or psychological safety and wellbeing of the individual victims and loved ones and friends.60 It
occurs suddenly and unexpectedly. It could be that individuals recur these events on a regular base, until the point of becoming continuous and chronic.
Individuals exposed to potentially traumatic events can experience posttraumatic reactions. They were all four mentioned above. When these reactions do not remit, and when individuals are not able to process their experiences, these reactions can become part of a stress disorder: from two days to a month this is called Acute Stress Disorder (ASD), but if they last more than one month they may be a Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.61 As a political scientist, it is not my task, nor my ambition, to classify my respondents. Even so, I did become aware of the fact that the participants of this research suffered from one or more symptoms of either PTSD or ASD.
Open 6, no. 9 (2015); A. Feinstein, "Mexican Journalists: An Investigation of Their Emotional
Health", in Journal of Traumatic Stress 25, no. 4 (2012), 480-83.
59 W. Coté, R. Simpson, and M. Scherer, Covering Violence, 29.
60 American Psychological Association (APA), “Clinical Practice Guidelines for the Treatment of
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in Adults”, accessed on 14 June 2019 via www.apa.org.
Following the DSM-5, I will categorize the symptoms of PTSD as follows: (1) recurrent, involuntary, and intrusive distressing recollections of an event; (2) avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma; (3) negative alterations in cognitions or moods associated with the event, or numbing (or both); (4) alterations in arousal and reactivity, including a heightened sensitivity to potential threat. Even though substance abuse is not exactly a symptom of PTSD, there is a strong link between PTSD and substance abuse.62 Because of that, I will also describe the substance abuse of some of the participants in this paragraph.
The last two symptoms require closer inspection. It could be that, related to those two symptoms, physical numbing occurs. This numbing is part of the fight-flight-freeze-response. It occurs when individuals become so afraid that their coping capacities leave them paralyzed in fear.63 When hyper-arousal as a short-term effect of traumatic experiences was described, it was already briefly set out that it is known as the fight-or-flight response. Whenever an individual encounters a dangerous situation, and he or she feels as if he or she has the power to defeat this situation, he or she enters the “fight”-mode. In contrast, whenever an individual encounters danger, which he or she is not capable of defeating, one will run away and thereby enter the “flight”-mode. A third aspect is added to this, with the fight-flight-freeze mode.64 One enters
“freeze”-mode, whenever an individual concludes that one can neither defeat, nor confront the dangerous situation he or she is encountering.
Trauma-related guilt
Just as shame, embarrassment, and pride, the feeling of guilt is a ‘self-conscious emotion’, which is aroused by self-reflection and self-evaluation.65 Feelings of guilt typically arise from ones recognition of one’s negative behaviours, and it arises from one’s own consciousness.66 When people experience guilt, they feel a certain tension, remorse, and even regret over what an
62 APA, “Clinical Practice Guidelines for the Treatment of PTSD”, 8.
63 L.F. Selzer, “Trauma and the Freeze Response: Good, Bad, or Both?” accessed on 14 June
2019 via www.psychologytoday.com.
64 L.F. Selzer, “Trauma and the Freeze Response”.
65 J.P. Tangney, “Psychology of Selfconscious Emotions”, in International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, ed. J.D. Wright (Elsevier Science & Technology, 2015), 475. 66 Idem, 476.
individual has done, however, it typically motivates reparative action.67 Just as other emotions, a sense of guilt is hard to describe. Some people may react differently from a feeling of guilt than others. However, the above-mentioned description comes rather close to reality. Moreover, it is almost certain that anyone can relate to experiencing a sense of guilt.
In the existing literature, it has been argued that there exists a nexus between trauma and guilt.68 Guilt can be part of PTSD and other psychological stress disorders. Also a relationship is found between trauma-related guilt and posttraumatic stress among journalists.69 Findings of a 2012 research among 50 journalists, who had been exposed to work-related trauma, showed that work-related trauma and trauma-related guilt cognitions were significantly associated with one another. Like a lot of psychological research that has been done, this analysis was purely quantitative. Trauma-related guilt is defined as “an unpleasant feeling with an accompanying believes that one should have thought, felt, or acted differently.”70
The occupation of journalism is unique in its sort, and distinguishes itself from other professional groups, as they are likely to either experience or witness traumatic events, but it is not their task, nor are they trained, to intervene.71 This separates journalists from, for example,
aid workers or militaries. What is more, is that journalists are expected to be objective. While intervening (for example by providing help) might seem to be the right thing to do, it could be directly opposed to what their professional ethical guidelines prescribe. Therefore the profession of journalism is complex in its relation to trauma, and could cause ethical and/or moral conflicts, contributing to the possibility of a sense of guilt among journalists.
67 Ibidem, 376.
68 K.C. Browne et al., “Trauma-Related Guilt: Conceptual Development and Relationship With
Posttraumatic Stress and Depressive Symptoms”, in Journal of Traumatic Stress 28 no. 2 (2015), 134.
69 T. Browne, M. Evangeli, N. Greenberg, “Trauma-Related Guilt and Posttraumatic Stress
Among Journalists”, in Journal of Traumatic Stress 25 (2012), 207.
70 E.S. Kubany et al., “Development and Validation of the Trauma-Related Guilt Inventory
(TRGI)”, in Psychological Assessment 8, no. 4 (1996), 428.
71 T. Browne, M. Evangeli, N. Greenberg, “Trauma-Related Guilt and Posttraumatic Stress
Eudaimonic perception of wellbeing
Whether they are directly related to stress disorders or not, the above effects are undeniably negatively contributing to the wellbeing of the journalists. Positive effects could manifest in a eudaimonic sense of wellbeing. In short, eudaimonic wellbeing focuses on meaning and self-realization, and defines wellbeing in terms of the degree to which a person is fully functioning.72 In this regard, wellbeing is being seen as a construct that has everything to do with experiencing and functioning optimal. Research on wellbeing has broadly derived two important approaches to wellbeing: eudaimonic and hedonic. Hedonic wellbeing focuses on happiness and defines wellbeing in terms of pleasure attainment and pain avoidance, thus this is in contrast with the eudaimonic approach.
In Aristotle’s eyes, hedonic happiness made humans slavish followers of their own desires; he saw hedonic happiness as something vulgar. According to him, true happiness is found in the expression of virtue: doing what is worthy.73 Working on Aristotle’s view, Erich Fromm, an internationally known psychologist and philosopher, asserts that hedonic wellbeing leads predominantly to momentary pleasure, and eudaimonic wellbeing is rooted in human nature; its realization is contributing to human growth.74 In this regard, the euidamonic approach
to wellbeing argues that not all desires automatically lead to an improvement of one’s wellbeing. According to Alan S. Waterman, eudaimonic is an ethical theory that implies that people should live in accordance with one’s true self, or daimon.75 Daimon gives direction and meaning in one’s life, and realization of it represents the greatest fulfilment one is capable of living.76 In short, one could argue there is a contrast with the hedonic view, which defines wellbeing in terms of pleasure versus pain. However, these two can sometimes be coexistent, and even complementary. In this thesis, I will view eudaimonic wellbeing as a certain awareness of self-fulfilment; individuals fulfilling a ‘greater cause’ in life; living up to one’s ideals.
72 R.M. Ryan and E.L. Deci, “On Happiness and Human Potentionals: A Review of Research on
Hedonic and Eudimonic Well-Being”, in Annual Review of Psychology 52 (2001), 141.
73 Idem, 145.
74 E. Fromm, “Primary and Secondary process in waking and in altered states of consciousness”,
in Academic Psychology Bulletin 3 (1981), xxvi.
75 A.S. Waterman, “Two Conceptions of Happiness: Contrasts of Personal Expressiveness
(Euidamonia) and Hedonic Enjoyment”, in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 64, no. 4 (1993), 678.
Gratitude and appreciation
Gratitude is broadly defined as the appreciation of what is valuable and meaningful to oneself.77 It represents a state of thankfulness and appreciation.78 An analysis conducted by Adler and Fagley, two leading scientists within the field of gratitude and appreciation, argue that appreciation is something that involves noticing and acknowledging its values and meanings and feeling a positive emotion connected to it.79 It has been argued that there is a connection between gratitude and appreciation on the one hand, and wellbeing on the other. Appreciation is related to life satisfaction, and positively affects wellbeing. Feelings of appreciation enhance positive mood and feelings of connection to the appreciated subject and/or the nature of existence. 80 This hypothesis has been confirmed by in another research by Alex M. Wood, Stephen Joseph, and John Maltby.81 This may connect with the wellbeing of journalists who report from Conflicted Affected and High Risk Areas, as it could well be that the fact that journalists report from certain areas, their appreciation from what they have in their home country is being increased, which then could enhance their wellbeing.
77 R.A. Sansone and L.A. Sansone, “Grattitude and Well Being: The Benefits of Appreciation”,
in Psychiatry 7, no. 11 (2010), 18.
78 Idem, 19.
79 M.G. Adler and N.S. Fagley, “Appreciation: Individual Differences in Finding Value and
Meaning as a Unique Predictor of Subjective Well-Being”, in Journal of Personality 73, no. 1 (2005), 79.
80 M.G. Adler and N.S. Fagley, “Appreciation”, 82.
81 A.M. Wood, S. Joseph, and J. Maltby, “Gratitude uniquely predicts satisfaction with life:
Incremental validity above the domains and facets of the five factor model”, in Personality and
Processing experiences
When we assess the available literature on coping with and processing of trauma for journalists, the aspect that is most common is “taking care of oneself”. There are various ways how individuals can take care of themselves. Within this process of self-care, it is of course important to manage one’s physical health. However, in this thesis I am more interested in the mental and emotional aspects of taking care.
Mark Brayne, who works for the Dart Centre for Journalism & Trauma, provided several guidelines how to deal with potentially traumatic events. Some aspects he mentioned are particularly important for this research. He argues that acknowledging feelings and talking about emotions is not a sign of weakness, and is important for one’s own wellbeing. Talking and connecting to human beings helps the human brain to make sense of and to come to terms with trauma and tragedy. Also, journalists need to find themselves a sensitive listener, who will not pass judgement.82 The Committee for Protecting Journalists has published a guide for journalists as well. They advise journalists to take care by allowing themselves to grieve, articulating their emotions by sharing them, and speaking to a professional. In short: sharing experiences is important to prevent mental problems.83 This is stipulated by the numerous websites on PTSD as well.84
Despite the fact that it is not mentioned in the above guidelines, it has been argued that writing about fierce events can serve as a therapeutic process. Just like talking about personally upsetting experiences, writing about them improves wellbeing.85 It serves as a means of processing experiences. In 2009 Art Markman, a psychologist, dedicated an article about this on Psychology Today. According to him, making traumatic memories more coherent makes
82 M. Brayne, Trauma and Journalism: A Guide for Journalists, Editors, and Managers, (New
York, NY: Dart Centre for Trauma and Journalism, 2007), 12-13.
83 Committee for Protection of Journalists, “CPJ Journalists Security Guide”, accessed on 10 June
2019 via www.cpj.org.
84 See, for example: www.nimh.nih.gov;
www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/post-traumatic-stress-disorder/; www.ptsd.va.gov; www.adaa.org.
85 J.W. Pennebaker, “Writing about emotional experience as a theraupeutic process”, in Psychological Science 8, no. 3 (1997), 162.
memories of these events less likely to be reoccurring.86 Moreover, writing about trauma facilitates the making of meaning.87 Thus writing about traumatic experiences could be an appropriate way of dealing with them.
Conflict Affected and High-Risk Areas
Conflict Affected and High-Risk Areas is a definition that was originally proposed within the mining industry. Because of its universal applicability, it was applied in this thesis. By utilizing this definition, it was not necessary to exclude journalists who were affected by their experiences in countries that are not seen as conflict areas, but still involve high risks for journalists operating in them.
Conflict Affected and High-Risk Areas “are identified by the presence of armed conflict, widespread violence or other risks of harm to people. Armed conflict may take a variety of forms, such as a conflict of international or non-international character, which may involve two or more states, or may consist of wars of liberation, or insurgencies, civil wars, etc. High-risk areas may include areas of political instability or repression, institutional weakness, insecurity, collapse of civil infrastructure and widespread violence. Such areas are often characterized by widespread human rights abuses and violations of national or international law.”88
86 A. Markman, “Trauma and the Benefits of Writing About It”, accessed on 12 June 2019 via
www.psychologytoday.com.
87 C.L. Park, “Disclosing Trauma Through Writing: Testing the Meaning-Making Hypothesis”, in Cognitive Therapy and Research 26, no. 5 (2002), 598.
88 Responsible Minerals Initiative, “Conflict Affected and High-Risk Areas (CAHRAs)”,
ResponsibleMineralsInitiative.org. http://www.responsiblemineralsinitiative.org/emerging-risks/conflict-affected-and-high-risk-areas/ (Accessed on 15 March 2019).
Methodology
As was explained above, the wellbeing of journalists having experienced and covered traumatic events was thus far exclusively researched with quantitative research methods. This research was performed through the usage of psychological surveys, questionnaires, in order to measure psychological symptoms of distress, thereby making conclusions of the wellbeing of journalists. The present research distinguishes itself from previous work. It was carried out by semi-structured interviews with with ten participants who were recruited by snowball sampling. Through e-mail, a research design was sent to numerous journalists and news organizations. The primary aim of this study is to describe the experiences of these journalists, and analysing how their experiences relate to their wellbeing.
I conducted semi-structured interviews with journalists, in which they had to answer predominantly open-ended questions, allowing them to talk about their experiences and how these made them feel. Eventually 10 journalists were willing to be interviewed. Participants were all exposed to the experience and/or witnessing potentially traumatic events, including war, conflict, violence, murder, rape, shooting, and armed robbery. Participants included eight writing journalists and two photojournalists. The ages of the participants lie between 28 and 64. They have been working in journalism for at least 3 and up to 28 years. Participants had to answer open-ended questions, which were laid out in advance. The questions were about topics that were complied in a topic guide, which is included in the appendix.
I collected data from these participants by recording and transcribing the interviews. After the collection of data, I made a thematic analysis, which is the process of identifying patterns or themes within qualitative data.89 After carefully and thoroughly reviewing the data, I used open-coding to develop codes. These codes were not pre-set, but modified throughout the process. Several codes fitted into themes, which were eventually used for the analysis.
As the interviews illustrate, the effects on short-term wellbeing were mostly mentally. These effects became apparent during or immediately after (within 24 hours) experienced events. They manifested in four phenomena I distinguished, notably: (1) focus ; (2) instincts; and (3)
89 M. Maguire and B. Delahunt, “Doing a Thematic Analysis: A Practical, Step-by-Step Guide
for Learning and Teaching Scholars”, in All Ireland Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher
fear.
The long-term effects manifested predominantly mentally as well, and they can be felt in the daily lives of the respondents. The long-term conception of wellbeing is being referred to as the optimal psychological functioning and experience.90 First, the effects positive and negative effects of returning to the home country will be described. No participant considered him or herself to suffer from a stress disorder, but PTSD-related symptoms were clearly visible for some of them. However, thereafter, five PTSD-related themes will be distinguished: paranoid feelings, flashbacks, freezing, alcohol, and feelings of guilt. Consequently, an overarching positive experience will be distinguished: the euidaimonic notion of wellbeing, which manifested in a sense of self-fulfilment, and a feeling of appreciation of the home country after returning.91
Finally, the processing of their experiences is explained. As a means of processing, participants argued that sharing their experiences with social connections was contributing to their wellbeing. Another phenomenon that helped journalists processing their experiences is writing about them. By writing the respondents relived their experiences, ordered their thoughts, and were able to give meaning to those experiences and thoughts.
Before reading this essay it is important for the reader to know that I do not in any way condemn or denounce quantitative data. Quantitative methods are indispensable within academics. They serve a completely different purpose than qualitative methods. The latter is often complementary to the first. Quantitative methods are meant to discover and measure facts – positive knowledge – about social phenomena. It assumes a positivist stance of a fixed and measureable reality, which is set out in numerical and statistical data.92 Qualitative methods are concerned with understanding human behaviour and assume a constructivist stance of a dynamic and negotiated reality.93 Scientists agree that quantitative research does not capture the totality of human experiences. For capturing the totality of human experiences, qualitative data is better suited. As Virginia Brown and Victoria Clark put it in a guest editorial for the International
90 R.M. Ryan and E.L. Deci, “On Happiness and Human Potentials: A Review of Research on
Hedonic and Eudaimonic Well-Being”, in Annual Review of Psychology 52 (2001): 141.
91 Euidaimonic wellbeing focuses on meaning and self-realization, and defines wellbeing in terms
of the degree to which someone is fully functioning. More about this can be read in R.M. Ryan and E.L. Deci, “On Happiness and Human Potentials: A Review of Research on Hedonic and Eudaimonic Well-Being”, in Annual Review of Psychology 52 (2001): 141-166.
92 S. McLeod, “What’s the difference between qualitative and quantitative research?”, accessed
on Simply Psychology via www.simplypsychology.org on 09-06-2019. Last modified in 2017.
Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Wellbeing: “Qualitative offers rich and compelling
insights into real worlds, experiences, and perspectives of [journalists] in ways that are completely to, but also sometimes complimentary to, the knowledge that we can obtain through quantitative methods.”94
With this thesis I will add qualitative data to the existing scientific debate on the wellbeing of journalists. Journalists’ experiences and how they are felt will be the central theme in this descriptive analysis. By using thematic analysis I distinguished the three themes I described above; all of which are composed of their own subthemes. These themes are identified patterns, which have all been coded in my set of transcribed interviews. Experiences and feelings are central, and because of the immaturity of the wellbeing debate this method allows me to add variation to, and therewith innovation of, the debate. I can add elements that are insinuated by the journalists themselves.
Conclusively, and as was already stated before, it is important to know that this is a qualitative research. It is not about measuring phenomena. Rather it is about understanding and describing them. In this qualitative approach, the constructivist view will be adopted that reality is socially constructed. Therefore, knowledge is subjective, and experiences are central in this descriptive study. The data on these experiences will be presented in raw form, in order to accommodate a comprehensive interpretation of the journalist’s experiences.
94 V. Brown and V. Clarke, “What can thematic analysis offer health and wellbeing
researchers?”, in International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Wellbeing 9 (2014): 1.
Findings
After conducting the interviews, the transcription texts were restructured and several themes and subthemes became apparent during the content analysis. Short-term experiences related to wellbeing were distinguished, which were felt and endured by participants during the events they encountered or within 24 hours thereafter. Consequently will be set out how their experiences affected the daily lives of participants, elaborating on the long-term effects on the wellbeing of the participants. Lastly I will describe how participants processed their experiences.
Short-term experiences related to wellbeing
Within this theme, several subthemes are set out, notably: (1) focus; (2) instincts, and (3) fear. These themes were distinguished and were most important relating to the short-term perception of the participants.
Focus
It became apparent that the journalists that have been interviewed experienced something they all related to as a professional focus. This focus made sure that the participants did not actively process the things they were encountering. While reporting on or witnessing of horrific situations, including raping, bombing, and shootings, participants were too busy documenting and observing what happened, instead of processing what was actually happening around them. It seemed as if the journalists did not process their emotions. The reason behind this was threefold.
First, the journalists found it extremely important to objectively document what was happening. Emotional involvement is not productive when doing so. Emotional involvement entails that objectively doing your job is not possible anymore, at least according to the journalists. Being able to report on events objectively is something the participants saw as being extremely important for their ethical standards. In this regard, Maria Brinkman explained: “If a doctor has too much emotional involvement during a surgery, it could go wrong. It’s the same with conflict journalism and working from warzones. You have to make sure your emotions won’t get to you.”95 Hans Jaap Melissen made a similar comparison, setting out: “You have to behave like a judge. You mustn’t pick sides. If a judge judges on his family, he becomes
emotionally involved. I think you have to stay out of that. It’s exactly the same in a warzone that you’re covering. Reporting on wars has to be like that.”96
A second reason that these journalists did not seem to process their emotions is because they were aware of the fact that encountering extreme and potentially traumatic events was one of the reasons they were there in the first place. It was as if the journalists were so consciously aware of their own cause and their own ideals within their profession that they felt as if it was their duty not to become emotionally involved. Because of this awareness, they almost obsessively carried out their jobs, and did not even allow themselves to be affected emotionally. Lennart Hofman aptly set this out when he was interviewed: “You just have to do your job when you’re there. So you’re really focused, professionally, and you think: “Okay… This is what I do for a living, and now I’ve got to do my job.”97
Third, the journalists that covered potentially traumatic events all felt as if they were perfectly equipped for covering trauma. They all noticed that they were perfectly capable of handling extreme situations: handling stress, not panicking, not getting emotionally involved. The journalists that were interviewed considered themselves to be resilient, which made them able to witness and cover horrific events. Trauma-related resilience can be seen as one’s ability to overcome potentially traumatic events.98 The passage below perfectly illustrates how Roger
Waleson showed resilience during war-time:
“We were crying this one time, during a mortar strike on a street completely filled with children. We were in an Iraqi army vehicle, and my friend, who was my fixer, said: “These are my fellow countrymen.” It tore him apart. He broke. Patrick Chauvel [famous war photographer] was sitting next to us, and he broke as well. And that was when I broke as well. We started crying. It’s definitely intense.”
[…]
“Then you discuss what happened. And if you then see those photographs, then you start crying again. But it was motivating. I realized that these kinds of events are the reason I work as a conflict journalist. This was why I had become a war photographer. This is why I do what I do. I
96 Interview with Hans Jaap Melissen. 97 Interview with Lennart Hofman.
