Workplace
Media employers must do more to look after the health and well-being of employees faced with trauma, cyberbullying and newsroom safety issues.
Trauma
Arecent case has highlighted the importance of media employers providing staff with appropriate support and training when they cover traumatic incidents.
The Conversation noted: “A landmark ruling by an Australian court is expected to have international consequences for newsrooms, with media companies on notice they face large compensation claims if they fail to take care of journalists who regularly cover traumatic events. The Victorian County Court accepted the potential for psychological damage on those whose work requires them to report on traumatic events, including violent crimes.”[i]
In February 2019, it was reported that a former journalist with The Age had been awarded $180,000 in damages for post-traumatic stress, anxiety and depression.[ii] The journalist had reported on some of the city’s gangland war and a particularly distressing death of a child involved in a custody dispute.
An Australian Association Press (AAP) report of the case said the journalist had worked in the role for almost a decade until taking voluntary redundancy in 2013 and covered major stories including the death of four-year-old Darcey Freeman, who was thrown off the West Gate Bridge by her father. The journalist had also covered gangland murders, road deaths, fires and police shootings.
On February 22 2019, County Court judge Chris O’Neill said on awarding the damages to the journalist: “She received no training in how to deal with the trauma of the incidents she was required to report upon. The things she observed when she was required to cover a story were graphic and traumatic, being close to scenes where, in particular, children had been killed, often violently, would be obviously distressing.”
The court was told during a three-week hearing that the journalist had repeatedly sought better support and debriefing from her superiors after covering stories. The day she reported on the death of Darcey Freeman in 2009, she requested to be transferred away from crime reporting.
The ABC program The Law Report[iii] said: “When four-year-old Darcey Freeman’s body was pulled out of Melbourne’s Yarra River — after she was thrown off a bridge by her father — an Age journalist was one of the first at the scene. Later, she told everyone in the newsroom: “I’m done, I can’t do this anymore. I have had enough of death and destruction.”
The journalist was transferred to the sports desk. The Conversation reported: “But a senior editor later persuaded her, against her wishes, to cover the Supreme Court where she was exposed to detailed, graphic accounts of horrific crimes…”[iv]
However, her mental condition worsened covering murder trials, including having to cover the case involving Darcey Freeman’s father.
The journalist alleged The Age:
- had no system in place to enable her to deal with the trauma of her work;
- failed to provide support and training in covering traumatic events, including from qualified peers;
- did not intervene when she and others complained; and
- transferred her to court reporting after she had complained of being unable to cope with trauma experienced from previous crime reporting.
“The Age contested whether the journalist was actually suffering from post-traumatic stress. It argued that even if a peer-support program had been in place it would not have made a material difference to the journalist’s experience.
“Further, The Age denied it knew or should have known there was a foreseeable risk of psychological injury to its journalists and simultaneously argued that the plaintiff knew ‘by reason of her work she was at high risk of foreseeable injury’.”[v]
The Conversation also reported: “Judge Chris O’Neill found the journalist’s evidence more compelling than the media company’s, even though the psychological injury she had suffered put her at a disadvantage when being cross-examined in court.”[vi]
The workplace environment played a particular role in the journalist’s condition. The judge said: “I am satisfied that the culture at The Age was such that the reporting of psychological symptoms and distress was not encouraged. This was for a number of reasons. No doubt, it was a competitive environment and a stressful workplace. To express symptoms of, for example, anxiety or depression was likely to be seen as a weakness and an indication an employee was not able to carry out the assigned work. In an environment where redundancies were a regular event, it was not an easy thing to be open and frank about the trauma to which younger journalists were exposed and their reaction to it.”[vii]
Judge O’Neill said: “She should never have been requested, let alone persuaded, to undertake work as a court reporter given her complaints to The Age after the Darcey Freeman incident.”
The judge added that it should have been obvious to management that something was wrong and there was a “clear indication” an underlying psychological disorder was emerging, the AAP report said. Despite this, repeated complaints to editors and human resources personnel failed to lead to training or support, the court was told.
The Conversation in its coverage of the case said: “Historically, the idea of journalists suing their employers for occupational PTSD was unheard of. Newsroom culture dictated that journalists did whatever was asked of them, including intrusions on grieving relatives, or ‘death knocks’ as they are known. Doing these was intrinsic to the so-called ‘school of hard knocks’. Cadet journalists were blooded in the newsroom by their ability to do these tasks…
“What is alarming from the evidence provided to Judge O’Neill is the extent to which these attitudes still hold sway in contemporary newsrooms. [The journalist] said that as a crime reporter she worked in a ‘blokey environment’ where the implicit message was ‘toughen up, princess’.”[viii]
The case is a timely reminder of the need for media outlets to support their staff and to monitor workplace health and safety issues particularly for journalists reporting on traumatic incidents. Some media employers have been proactive in this area, even providing peer-support programs.
Ben Shapiro, executive director of the DART Centre for Journalism and Trauma, a project of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, told the ABC’s Law Report[ix] that there are important lessons for media organisations. “Scientific, evidence-based studies about trauma and resilience in news professionals have been accumulating for nearly 20 years. So this ruling is a wake-up call. It says that news executives have enough information to be legally responsible for providing journalists with trauma-awareness training and support.”
MEAA works with the Dart Centre[x] which is dedicated to informed, innovative and ethical news reporting on violence, conflict and tragedy. While DART provides ample resources for journalists, the need for employers to provide proper resources for their staff is highlighted by this case.
Cyberbullying
MEAA is disappointed that more has not been done to tackle cyberbullying, particularly following the report[xi] of the Senate’s Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee inquiry into the Adequacy of existing offences in the Commonwealth Criminal Code and of state and territory criminal laws to capture cyberbullying.
MEAA made a lengthy and detailed submission[xii] to the inquiry, as did Women in Media. MEAA also appeared at the inquiry’s public hearings. The details are contained in the MEAA 2018 press freedom report.[xiii]
As MEAA noted in the 2018 report, MEAA members are required to engage with the public in numerous ways. Initially, this is through contacting sources and recording them for a news story.
The dissemination of news through publishing or broadcasting a story is a second method of engagement. In the past, this sometimes gave rise to follow up contact with the audience responding to stories via mail or telephone. It could even be as simple as talkback radio or letters to the editor. But the development of digital social media platforms has introduced a new significant way for journalists and the audience to interact. Social media has allowed individuals to speak directly to journalists.
This change has been embraced by media employers who now insist that their employees use social media platforms to promote and engage with audiences in order to build traffic around digital news stories. Indeed, the number of hits on a news story has become a new and even somewhat oppressive key performance indicator imposed on journalists (on top of demands to file more words, with fewer errors, for immediate publication on the media outlet’s web site in advance or publishing or broadcasting on traditional media).
In many cases, journalists are being compelled by their employers to express opinions regarding news events, the news stories they are working on and other news stories by developed by their media employer — all with the aim of interacting with an online audience, driving engagement and building traffic numbers to impress advertisers.
It is the unfortunate nature of social media that discourse can quickly dissolve into heated discussion, often without reference to facts or objectivity, and often with too great a willingness to allow debate to become personal, abusive and threatening.
The fact that many social media users depend upon and even thrive on disseminating abuse, often behind the veil of anonymity, leaves many journalists exposed to quite horrifying cyberbullying.
Journalists are, by their nature and by the requirements of responsible journalism, accessible to the public. They usually engage openly, using their own names, in order to make social media the tool for increasing audience responsiveness — exactly the sort of increase in “eyeballs” on news stories that media employers demand of their journalist employees.
As outlined above, the nature of journalists’ contact with their audience on digital media platforms, including via social media, makes them particularly vulnerable to cyberbullying. As part of their employment they must openly engage with the audience which, in return, may hurl abuse and threats at them — again, often under the protection of anonymity.
MEAA believes that our members, as workers in the media industry, should be able to work free from cyberbullying. MEAA will be stepping up efforts with media employers to ensure employers create and operate policies to protect their staff, ensure they work in a safe and healthy environment, that training and counselling regarding with dealing with cyberbullying is made available, and that employers take steps to deal with cyberbullies on behalf of their employees.
Newsroom safety self-assessment
On April 3 2019 several press freedom groups launched a newsroom self-assessment tool kit[xiv] that will help news outlets review and improve their current safety practices and protocols; the resource pays special attention to gender issues, mental health care and digital security.[xv]
“Safety of journalists is an important facet of press freedom. Until journalists feel secure, their ability to carry out quality, investigative coverage is restricted. While states bear the primary responsibility for ensuring journalist safety, news organizations have an important role to play in journalist protection,” [International Press Institute] executive director Barbara Trionfi said. “This resource we join in launching today will go a long way toward ensuring the adopting of best practices to promote a safe working environment for journalists…”
The News Organisations Safety Self-Assessment comprises a brief set of key questions and guideline notes that should prompt a constructive conversation around safety best practices and encourage practical and effective ways to advance such practices. The Self-Assessment supports news organizations to identify and better understand their own weaknesses and strengths in relation to the security of all individuals working for them exposed to danger, including freelancers.
The resource pays special attention to gender issues, mental health care, digital security needs and working with freelancers and fixers, aspects which are often neglected in organizational policy and protocols. The Self-Assessment includes links to relevant articles, reports, guides and other existing resources, as well as a basic glossary.
The organisations involved in this initiative recognize the crucial role that news managers, publishers, executive directors and editors play in advancing a culture of safety, and have come together in partnership to create and promote this useful tool.
“Although this is a resource primarily aimed at news management, we encourage anyone in the news chain to use these guidelines to learn more about their organization’s safety provisions and start a productive conversation around safety issues,” Elisabet Cantenys, executive director of the ACOS Alliance, said. “Keeping safety protocols relevant is a major challenge for most news organizations. Here we offer a practical and useful tool, which we hope will take us a step closer towards embedding a culture of safety.”
“Aside from the moral imperative to protect all the individuals who contribute to a news product,” Cantenys continued, “Investing in a robust safety policy and protocols can save an organization from the financial loss and reputational damage of a crisis that could have been prevented, or could have been carefully managed.”[xvi]
[i] “Media companies on notice over traumatised journalists after landmark court decision”, Matthew Ricketson and Alexandra Wake, The Conversation, March 6 2019 https://theconversation.com/media-companies-on-notice-over-traumatised-journalists-after-landmark-court-decision-112766
[ii] “Reporter awarded $180k for stress, anxiety”, AAP, nine.com.au, February 22 2019 https://www.9news.com.au/2019/02/22/15/43/reporter-awarded-180k-for-stress-anxiety
[iii] “Trauma of news journalism in focus after The Age found responsible for reporter’s PTSD”, The Law Report, ABC, March 22 2019 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-22/ex-age-journalist-awarded-damages-for-ptsd-world-first/10896382
[iv] “Media companies on notice over traumatised journalists after landmark court decision”, Matthew Ricketson and Alexandra Wake, The Conversation, March 6 2019 https://theconversation.com/media-companies-on-notice-over-traumatised-journalists-after-landmark-court-decision-112766
[v] ibid
[vi] ibid
[vii] “‘Psychologically scarred’: Age crime reporter wins $180,000 for workplace trauma”, Emily Watkins, Crikey, February 27 2019 https://www.crikey.com.au/2019/02/27/psychologically-scarred-the-age-crime-reporter-wins-180000-for-reporting-trauma/
[viii] “Media companies on notice over traumatised journalists after landmark court decision”, Matthew Ricketson and Alexandra Wake, The Conversation, March 6 2019 https://theconversation.com/media-companies-on-notice-over-traumatised-journalists-after-landmark-court-decision-112766
[ix] “Trauma of news journalism in focus after The Age found responsible for reporter’s PTSD”, The Law Report, ABC, March 22 2019 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-22/ex-age-journalist-awarded-damages-for-ptsd-world-first/10896382
[xi] Adequacy of existing offences in the Commonwealth Criminal Code and of state and territory criminal laws to capture cyberbullying, Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee, Parliament of Australia, September 7 2017 https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Legal_and_Constitutional_Affairs/Cyberbullying/Report
[xii] MEAA Media submission to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee’s inquiry into the adequacy of existing offences in the Commonwealth Criminal Code and of state and territory criminal laws to capture cyberbullying, MEAA, January 3 2018 https://www.meaa.org/mediaroom/meaa-media-submission-on-cyberbullying/
[xiii] Criminalising Journalism: the MEAA Report into the State of Press Freedom in Australia in 2018, MEAA, May 3 2018 https://www.meaa.org/download/criminalising-journalism-the-meaa-report-into-the-state-of-press-freedom-in-australia-in-2018/
[xiv] News Organisations Safety Self-Assessment, International Federation of Journalists et al, April 3 2019 https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/c1a6a6_340c78a5b79d46c8b38861724fbf2a30.pdf
[xv] “Newsroom safety self-assessment resource launched”, IFeX, April 3 2019 https://ifex.org/international/2019/04/03/safety-self-assessment/
[xvi] ibid
