Austrian meeting calls for journalists to be trained in the coverage of trauma.
By Petra Tabeling, Coordinator Germany, Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma.
Report on "Trauma-Opfer und Medien-Berichterstattung" in Linz, Österreich, bestnetKongress, 17 November 2007
How does a journalist negotiate successfully and appropriately the boundary between sensational reporting and observing an embargo on something really bad that's happening, for example a kidnap? How do the media find the right way of dealing with people who have been impacted by trauma and perhaps become victims?
These were the subjects of an unprecedented discussion in Austria in November organised by bestNET, bringing together experts from media, communications and trauma research from German-speaking Europe, including colleagues from the Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma associated with the ESTSS.
The symposium was moderated by Dr. Rubina Möhring, senior journalist with the Austrian state broadcaster ORF and President of the Austrian branch of Reporters without Borders. Also on the podium was Christoph Feurstein, a prominent Austrian journalist who famously interviewed Natasha Kampusch in 2006 after her release from eight years incarceration in a suburban Austrian house.
They were also joined by the host of the ORF current affairs show "Thema" Andrea Puschl, by trauma specialists Dr. Ernst Berger and Dr. Elmar Dobernig, as well as by Petra Tabeling, Dart Centre coordinator for Germany, Austria and German-speaking Switzerland.
The Kampusch case was headline news around the world, and especially Feurstein's exclusive television interview conducted with her shortly after her release.
His careful and respectful questioning, and his evident concern to engage with his interviewee's actual experience, were a positive example of how such an interview can be conducted - and notably clearer and more appropriate than much of what was publicly said at the time by various other legal and trauma experts.
Rubina Möhring
To Dr Möhring's question how best to prepare oneself as a media worker for dealing with victims, Feurstein commented:
"It's not the journalist who directs the interview, but as far as possible the victim/interviewee. We need a deeper understanding of the person who sits opposite us, and we need to take them seriously. This has to be a discussion where the person you are talking to forgets there is a camera present."
The delicate question of whether Natascha Kampusch had possibly been sexually abused was, therefore, for Feurstein, simply not an issue. She didn't want the question asked, and he didn't ask it.
Feurstein encouraged journalists who deal with trauma to look behind the headlines.
"Our job," he said, recalling other he has done for ORF involving young murderers, "is to direct our attention at what is happening, and not to look away. Perpetrators were themselves once victims who experienced their own trauma. For example, after my broadcast, mothers would ring me because they were shocked that these young people could have been their own son."
Trauma can be infectious.
Speaking of the challenges that face journalists in this work, Andrea Puschl told the Linz conference that "as representatives of the media, people want to tell us their stories, but we are still voyeurs." Austrians remember Puschl well from the several weeks she spent reporting live on a coal mining disaster in Lassing.
"As journalists," she said, "we have to hand over control of our interviews to the victims."
At the same time, the 100 or so participants at the packed Linz meeting, most of them therapists, readily recognised how the journalist can also be personally weighed down by what he or she experiences.
Puschl, a highly experienced reporter, described powerfully how, after years of reporting on victims and survivors of trauma, she was caught up by her own reactions during an interview in Bosnia.
"You feel helpless," she said. "I know today that trauma can be infectious, and we in the media have to learn how to deal with that."
The circumstances of the Kampusch reporting, for all the praise and the prizes it has received from so many quarters, also made clear how inadequate the support is that journalists experience in both their professional and their private lives.
"The Kampusch case did not traumatise me," said Feurstein. " Natascha and I quickly found a way of working together. But everything that happened around that was burdensome - the lawyers, the family, and my own employers. I often felt left alone. I was protected by the ideals I believe in, and by the privilege of being able to report this story. I've never been interested in stars and politicians, but people do interest me who have gone through extreme experiences.
"The stories which we show as journalists are also experienced by others who are sitting watching their televisions. And we show them that there are ways to help."
The journalists' explanations of what motivates them, and their personal stories about their daily work, were all very positively received by the Linz audience of therapists.
Dr. Ernst Berger, a psychotherapist who was also involved in psychological support around the Kampusch case, commented that journalists should be clear in themselves whether their purpose is to write a "cathartic report", to drive up ratings or sales, or through his or her reporting to protect others from experiencing the same fate.
Dr. Elmar Dobernig, a psychotherapist and specialist in the psychology of emergencies, criticised excessive demands that media reporting of victims be banned altogether.
Recalling his own experience with representatives of the press during his work with the Red Cross after the South Asian Tsunami, and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Dobernig said it was not right that contact with the media should be avoided as a matter of principle.
"As experts," he said, "we have to accept that the media have a right to be interested. But we also need to develop tools to ensure that the interests of all sides are borne in mind, for example in mass disasters."
The participants at the Linz conference agreed that journalists need to be trained both early and in their careers and as they continue how to deal with victims and survivors, and how to look after themselves. They noted the work already being done in this field of the Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma, and urged media organisations to consider setting up a joint fund to support this.
Petra Tabeling, November 2007