By Dr Erin Smith, CEO Dart Centre Asia Pacific and Trina McLellan, Acting Board Chair, Dart Centre Asia Pacific
While change is something journalists and media workers manage every day, when its relentless pace is coupled with an unending stream of demanding, sometimes distressing news coverage, the personal price can too easily be high.
Finding timely understanding or support can easily become an afterthought in newsrooms that prioritise deadlines, the competition to be first, as well as an around-the-clock dedication to duty over all else.
In shrinking newsrooms, there are fewer opportunities for mentoring and support for newcomers as they engage in some of the most difficult stories they will ever cover. And many media workers spend a good deal of time working alone.
All staff are dealing with rapid changes in technology, communication, software, automation, artificial intelligence and much more; all of these require upskilling that must be fitted into an already crammed schedule.
While the pressure is there to learn new skills, take on more tasks, perhaps back up immediately after tough assignments and “just get on with it,” it is equally important to foster self-awareness, self-care, and resilience to promote sustained professional, emotional, moral, and psychological wellbeing.
And now, all Australian states and territories are, or will soon be, introducing legislation requiring employers to minimise risks to their workers’ psychosocial wellbeing.
Experience – and increasing research – shows that workplaces shunning that responsibility carry an increased risk of harmful health and safety incidents, direct and vicarious trauma exposure, roster disruptions, staff turnover and, potentially, expensive litigation.
No one in the media today is immune from pressure nor from unscheduled additional work. It can be as onerous for frontline reporters, presenters, photographers, camera crews, sound technicians, producers, researchers, and social media teams as it is for the people who manage them.
Journalists can take steps to buffer the impact of trauma and to maximise resilience when professional and personal lives collide. It all starts with a simple, consistent self-care plan, as important a part of the journalist toolkit as a notebook or camera. A good self-care plan involves implementing a range of activities that provide the brain with a chance to recover from workplace stress, graphic imagery, bearing witness to the suffering of others, online abuse, and the news cycle. This is especially important when the events journalists are reporting impact their own local community.
But it is not only a matter of self-care. Newsrooms and media companies have a significant duty of care, which is amplified under the new legislation. This means providing appropriate training to journalists, desk teams and managers; access to qualified professional mental health resources when necessary; and treating psychological injury as a significant occupational health risk for journalists alongside physical safety.
For the past two decades, the Dart Centre Asia Pacific (DCAP) has worked with media organisations, universities, and industry groups to help newsroom personnel better understand the nature of trauma, its impacts, its symptoms, and the preventative value of self-care.
To find out how DCAP can help your newsroom, email erin.smith@dartaspac.org
Visit the Dart Centre website