Coping with horror

Few reading a newspaper or magazine or watching a live report from a bombing, natural disaster or train or aircraft crashes spare much of a thought for the reporter bringing them the news. Their job is to report as accurately and dispassionately as possible, get the package back to the editor or written up on the laptop, and then move on to the next story. They may have witnessed scenes of unimaginable horror, the dismembered bodies and the blood-slick marble floors, smelled the distinctive odour that goes with the aftermath of a suicide bombing, watched the bodies being dragged from the collapsed building. They see it all — the general public gets the edited version, sanitised and cleaned up in order not to offend and to comply with ethical codes. But for the reporter, there is no editing, the images are there for as long as memory persists and that can be a lifetime and it can be profoundly troubling.



Thus it is that this newspaper extends the warmest of welcomes to the announcement that the University of Peshawar in conjunction with Germany’s Deutsche Welle Academy is going to establish a psychological trauma centre for journalists, to be launched this coming September. It will provide counselling for journalists working in K-P and Fata in order to help them overcome the sometimes debilitating effects of a job that few of the rest of the population would have the stomach for, never mind the skills. The new centre will initially work in close consultation with journalists to establish exactly what it is they need in terms of services. Within the journalist community there is often a ‘carry on regardless’ attitude, which while in many ways commendable, gallant even, can lead to powerful emotions being bottled up eventually to find an outlet in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and a descent into illness. It is not just reporters in zones of conflict that are affected, those covering cases of child murder or paedophilia are also impacted — indeed any extreme event that involves exposure to and a requirement to report on, harrowing events. This is a timely development and we wish it well.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 14^th, 2014.

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