Columbia University Severs Ties with Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma
From natural disasters to mass shootings and riots, journalists are often first on the scene documenting the world’s tragedies. However, few in journalism take the time to step back and recognize how traumatic events can affect reporters, photographers, and others in the field as they convey what they have seen.
A traditional toxic mindset will not allow journalists to seek support. They think…that their colleagues will think less of them, or that their editor will take them off hard stories…because they’re not tough enough. That fear prevents people from seeking help.
Leona O’Neill, professor, Ulster University
This summer, Columbia University cancelled its partnership with the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma after 16 years, raising questions about the future of journalistic training for covering and coping with violence and tragedy. The move highlighted a pivotal moment for journalists facing rising mental health risks amid recurring exposure to traumatizing events.
The Dart Center, reorganized as the Global Center for Journalism and Trauma, an independent non-profit. It raised enough money to continue, though not at Columbia.
Bruce Shapiro, director of the Dart Center at Columbia since 2009, explained that he now continues the same work as the executive director of the Global Center, which aims to better adapt to a rapidly changing landscape within the industry.
“On the one hand, our core programs are continuing in the new global center, and on the other hand, we see this as a moment for innovation, a moment that requires a lot of agility to respond to threats to journalists and to new issues that are coming into the news agenda very quickly,” Shapiro said.
New Partner
The Global Center will be partnering with the non-profit Committee to Protect Journalists in Manhattan to develop programs that address the escalating threats journalists are facing, while looking for a new home. Prospects include both the City University of New York’s graduate journalism school and New York University’s journalism school.
The need for this support is clear: from beats that include local protests to global crises such as war and famine, contemporary journalists who cover conflicts, mass shootings, and natural disasters are constantly exposed to traumatizing events.
“The whole foundation of domestic journalism has changed,” said Dr. Anthony Feinstein, a psychiatry professor at the University of Toronto. He researches how trauma affects journalists.
“There are now multiple stressors that don’t seem to have much downtime between one stressful story and the next. Because of all of this, you really need to be trauma aware; it has become an increasingly stressful position,” Dr. Feinstein said in a telephone interview.
Beginnings
The Dart Center, founded in 1999, was set up as a resource center and think tank around two issues: what journalists need to know about the psychology and science of trauma to inform their reporting on victims of violence, and to support journalists who are traumatized because of their reporting.
Shapiro explained the new Global Center was formed after it became clear over the summer that the best way to continue its mission was to create a new, independent nonprofit to carry the work forward. “That mission has continued in the new Global Center for Journalism and Trauma. It’s the same core team, the same major projects for the most part.”
Shapiro said he had cobbled together, from several sources, roughly the amount of money the Dart Foundation had been donating.
Matthew Pearson, a journalism professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, who researches trauma-informed reporting, says the emotional toll of journalism no longer falls only on reporters and photographers who cover conflict zones or intense crises. In recent years, he said, it has become clear that no category of journalism is untouched by trauma.
“In years past, there may have been a time when sports and business and entertainment writers could sort of say, ‘No, I don’t have to get my hands dirty with any story,’” he said. “But as these social issues [like sexual harassment and racism] have complicated every realm of society, they also complicate every realm of reporting.”
Old Problem
Journalists have long faced difficult and traumatic reporting assignments including coverage of wars and the Civil Rights era. But the need to support them is more urgent than ever, Shapiro said.
“Trauma and violence are at the heart of so much of what is at the top of the news agenda today, whether it is conflict in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan; whether it is climate change; whether it is violent authoritarianism… issues like migration and attacks on immigrant communities in the U.S.,” Shapiro said. “All of these issues require journalists, on the one hand, to have special knowledge about the impact of violence on the individuals and families and communities we report, and all of them also require us to look after ourselves.”
Although this era of change has brought increased fear and distress in journalists, in newsrooms, the traditional expectation of “toughing it out” remains strong.
Journalist Leona O’Neill, a professor at Ulster University in Northern Ireland and founder of Media Strong, a mental health symposium for journalists, witnessed the murder of a colleague during a 2019 riot in Derry. O’Neill reflected on her Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, as well as what she says was an utter lack of support from her newsroom. “Because of the newsroom bubble, the story is the only thing that matters,” O’Neill said. “Getting the story out. Being the first with the story. There are so many demands.”
O’Neill added that many journalists are afraid to ask for help because of the stigma that they must be able to handle the tough parts of the job.
“A traditional toxic mindset will not allow journalists to seek that support. They think…that their colleagues will think less of them, or that their editor will take them off hard stories…because they’re not tough enough. That fear prevents people from seeking help,” she said.
Stigma
Feinstein connected with these sentiments, saying that the stigma of toughing it out has become highly problematic. Feinstein said there should not be distinct cultural attitudes for psychological and physical injuries. He argued that if a reporter were to break an arm, they would be treated immediately. However, when the injury is psychological or emotional, many journalists are expected to continue working and push through it, creating what Feinstein said is a harmful double standard.
The lack of care when it comes to trauma and mental health highlights how newsroom cultures continue to prioritize stories over the well-being of the reporters producing the work.
This intense pressure from newsrooms not only belittles the emotional distress journalists often face but also worsens it. Some mental health experts say that this can cause an emotional breaking point.
Emily Sachs, a clinical psychologist and co-director of the Global Center for Journalism and Trauma, explained that, due to fear of missing deadlines or performing inadequately, many journalists seek help only when their ability to work begins to deteriorate.
“Usually, I find that journalists come to therapy very often when the trigger is that the distress is at a level where it is impacting their functioning, and they’re worried they’re not going to be able to do the job,” she said.
Craft and Mission
Sachs added that many passionate journalists who entered the field out of a love for storytelling and a sense of morality experience deep internal conflicts when their organizations fail to protect the values that originally drew them to journalism.
“The people who went into it because they loved the craft and the mission and wanted to do it right, those people suffer with moral distress and get disgusted when their institution is not upholding it and start to realize it’s costing their mental health,” Sachs said.
Her observations show that while emotional distress follows situations that many journalists are exposed to, a lack of institutional support often compounds trauma.
When organizations send reporters and photographers into dangerous or traumatic circumstances without providing adequate resources and support systems, experts argue that it becomes the organization’s responsibility to help their staffers and freelancers.
“It comes down to a duty of care,” said Pearson, the Canadian journalism professor who studies how trauma affects journalists. “I think that news organizations, journalism schools and anybody who is asking somebody else to get on the front lines of difficult stories, whether that be a car crash…or war in another country…[these institutions] ought to have a duty of care for the people they are asking to do that.”
Pearson explained that this responsibility should extend beyond physical safety and should include readily accessible mental health resources.
“Newsroom benefits ought to include mental health support, and the best mental health support that is unlimited…and by unlimited, I mean if an employee needs to seek care weekly, that is not going to be taken out of their personal pocket,” Pearson said.
While Pearson emphasized the responsibility of organizations to implement mental health support, others, like O’Neill, have personally experienced the consequences of inadequate duty of care from these institutions.
Duty of Care
O’Neill highlights why this duty of care is vital. Journalists “are sent into the worst situations possible,” she said. “They have to gather all the information and the gruesome details…then they have to come back and write all that up so the public can consume it.”
This reflects the broader issue that institutions that rely on journalists’ courage fail to protect their well-being.
“It’s very difficult to shake that off and show people journalists are humans and they’re not robots,” said O’Neill.
She believes that change must start by breaking the silence on this crisis and debunking the stigma that surrounds reporters’ mental health. “When you take the stigma out of a conversation, it takes the silence out of the conversation.”
Similarly, Pearson’s work in trauma-informed journalism argues that the future of the press depends on building strong institutional systems of support.
“Trauma-informed journalism is an approach to our work as journalists that brings an understanding of both what trauma is and the impacts it can have on people….and that needs to inform us as we approach a particular type of coverage,” he said.
This perspective explains what awareness and focus are needed to be implemented in the industry to prepare reporters properly.
“It’s really important now for journalism organizations to understand that there is a human cost to covering conflict and violence,” he added. “We need to think about those costs….by creating and talking about ways to report on traumatic incidents in a more thorough way.”
Open Conversations
As a professor, Pearson said that he is always thinking about how we are preparing people to enter the industry.
Feinstein emphasized that the need for open conversation and information needs to begin even before journalists enter the newsroom.
“Education [around trauma in journalism] needs to start at [university level] and in our journalism programs.” As a professor, he also argues that trauma awareness must be embedded not only into newsrooms but also into journalism education.
As the Global Center for Journalism and Trauma replaces the Dart Center at Columbia University, its leaders hope to continue providing vital aid for reporters.
“It’s going to be the work of the Dart Center, and the team is the same core team… and the mission is the same,” said Sachs, program director of the Global Center for Trauma’s Journalist Trauma Support Network. “The program has just been sunset at Columbia and transitioned to an independent non-profit…and therefore it intends to do really the same work [even] outside the limitations of the academic bureaucracy that Columbia is.”
While the work is not yet done, experts such as Feinstein, O’Neill, Pearson, Sachs, and Shapiro are leading the conversation on supporting journalists’ mental health.
“The world needs journalists; they need those lights shone in dark places,” O’Neill said. “Journalists are the bravest people in the world. You know, they’re amazing.”
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