Making sense of Harvey: An exploration of how journalists find meaning in disaster

Abstract

Thirty journalists who covered hurricane Harvey and who also lived in affected areas were interviewed to explore how journalists make sense of and cope with their exposure to hurricane-related trauma. Baumeister’s four needs for meaning framework was used as a guide to uncover how journalists used justification, purpose, efficacy, and self-worth to find meaning in their traumatic experiences. Journalistic mission and purpose were strong drivers for making sense of hurricane coverage hardships. Justification and efficacy helped journalists reframe traumatic encounters. Self-worth helped reframe experiences as furthering career goals. The article discusses implications for news managers and journalists.

Keywords

journalism trauma disaster sense-making journalist

Hurricane Harvey made landfall along the Texas coast as a Category-4 storm on August 25, 2017. More noteworthy than wind and storm surge was the catastrophic rainfall that inundated 33 counties as the slow-moving storm slowly crept north. Over the course of 4 days, the storm dumped 27 trillion gallons of rain over Texas, with Beaumont and Port Arthur receiving 51 inches of rain in 24 hours alone (Griggs, 2017).

When a hurricane strikes, local journalists are among those affected because they end up immersed in the destruction (Houston et al., 2012), and as a result, are exposed to situations and experiences that can cause traumatic stress (Tandoc & Takahashi, 2016). Despite this, not much academic research has studied the psychological effects of natural disasters on local journalists. And even though journalists have become more aware that their profession requires exposure to extreme situations, they are not necessarily prepared to effectively deal with it (Puente et al., 2010).

This study applied Baumeister’s (1991) needs for meaning to local journalists’ experiences covering hurricane Harvey to understand how they made sense of the trauma of covering a hurricane. The goal was to highlight sense-making as a possible path for journalists as they attempt to process their experiences and emotions when covering trauma, and to elucidate specific sense-making mechanisms that could be used to help better prepare journalists for covering natural disasters and other trauma.

Literature Review

Journalism & Trauma

Research supports the idea that journalists are deeply affected by what they witness in the field (Keats, 2010). Journalists have been shown to manifest symptoms of traumatic stress including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD; Aoki et al., 2013; Freinkel et al., 1994; Keats & Buchanan, 2009; Pyevich et al., 2003; R. Smith et al., 2018), depression and emotional drain (Berrington & Jemphrey, 2003), and feelings of sadness, fear, shock, or anxiety (Backholm & Björkqvist, 2012).

These reactions affect decisions on which stories journalists want to cover and how (Carter & Kodrich, 2013) and sometimes cause journalists to avoid traumatic assignments all together (Buchanan & Keats, 2011). Elements of journalistic culture such as viewing emotional reactions as weakness, and more accolades for those who cover trauma, exacerbate traumatic stress symptoms in reporters (Keats & Buchanan, 2013).

Coping styles related to personal characteristics (Himmelstein & Faithorn, 2002) and professional identity have been explored, as well as the use of detachment and depersonalization (Novak & Davidson, 2013). Strong supervisor and peer support, better education and training regarding trauma and trauma coverage, and training newsroom managers to be more aware of the impact of trauma, have been shown to be successful at helping journalists cope with traumatic stress (Keats & Buchanan, 2009).

Journalism and Disasters

While research on the psychological impact of war and other traumatic events on journalists is quite widespread, fewer academic studies focus specifically on journalists and the psychological impact of natural disasters. In a study of journalists who covered the Indonesian tsunami in 2004, Weidmann et al. (2008) found that 6.6% of their participants met the criterion for PTSD, and one participant met the threshold for depression. Lack of supervisor and peer support were positively correlated with symptom frequency.

Usher (2009) interviewed 25 journalists from New Orleans who lived through and covered Hurricane Katrina. Participants said they struggled with covering an event that they were also victims of, and while results showed they also struggled with maintaining professional norms during their coverage, the study did not address psychological or emotional symptoms.

Puente et al. (2010) found journalists covering a massive earthquake in Chile actively detached their emotions from what they were experiencing to cope with the emotional and psychological demands of covering the disaster. This presented significant challenges when attempting to manage their reactions to the trauma they were witnessing and effectively do their jobs. Similarly, Tandoc and Takahashi (2016) interviewed national and local journalists who covered Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines. Participants highlighted their difficulties in hiding their emotions and the despair they felt trying to do their jobs while cut off from food, water, shelter, and their newsrooms. Emotional trauma continued for months after the journalists left the Philippines, and their symptoms were consistent with traumatic stress.

Following hurricane Harvey coverage, Dworznik-Hoak (2020) found that 20% of local journalists had storm-related PTSD and 40% had depression. Interacting with victims, navigating the destruction and a lack of basic services, such as running water and electricity, were the most significant event-related stressors. Similarly, local journalists covering hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico suffered significant stress from a breakdown of basic services, including the ability to communicate, the loss of their own homes, and serving as first responders to victims (Nieves-Pizarro et al., 2019).

Coverage of natural disasters is worth further study because a large-scale natural disaster is a rare occasion when the personal and professional lives of a journalist merge (Puente et al., 2010) making the experience far more intense (Carter & Kodrich, 2013). These conditions leave journalists more open to physical and psychological stress symptoms (Berrington & Jemphrey, 2003; Weidmann et al., 2008).

Theoretical Framework

People have a fundamental drive for meaning that is an integral part of human nature (Lambert et al., 2013; Sommer & Baumeister, 1998) and central to human life (Park, 2010). People find meaning in experiences by creating narratives about them (Wigren, 1994), which in turn allows one to make sense of what has happened (Enosh & Buchbinder, 2005; Sommer & Baumeister, 1998) and learn from the experience (Wigren, 1994).

Narratives are used to makes sense of all types of human experiences; however, they are particularly useful when making sense of difficult or traumatic experiences (Kellas & Trees, 2006). A narrative about a traumatic experience fosters a sense of coherence or control over an event that is initially viewed as random and unpredictable (Sommer & Baumeister, 1998). Personal narratives about trauma can help one understand the experience and make it meaningful (Hunt & McHale, 2008), and can also lead to better coping and adjustment after the trauma (Dworznik, 2006; Greenhoot et al., 2013).

The job of a journalist is to interpret and make sense of events, then retell the stories of those events in a way that informs their audience. They are professional storytellers (Dworznik, 2006). The act of reporting can sometimes be cathartic for journalists (Novak & Davidson, 2013); however, journalists often struggle to make sense of their own experiences with trauma (Keats & Buchanan, 2013). Therefore, the study of sense-making through personal narratives is a logical fit with journalists and provides a unique avenue by which to gain a deeper understanding about how journalists process trauma and continue to do their work (Dworznik, 2006).

A useful framework for studying sense-making in personal narratives is Baumeister’s (1991) four needs for meaning. He asserted that people are motivated to find meaning in life by a drive to fulfill four basic needs: purpose, value, efficacy, and self-worth. The need for purpose suggests that people need their activities and actions to be oriented toward some future goal or fulfillment. Value suggests that people need to feel that their actions are right, good, and justifiable. Efficacy suggests people need to feel as though they have some control over their lives and events. The need for self-worth is fulfilled by finding ways to set oneself apart as superior to others to feel valuable and good. While the framework was developed for analyzing how people make sense of life as a whole, and therefore is not a mass communication theory, it is a useful tool for making sense of a wide range of single experiences from trivial circumstances to life-altering events (Baumeister & Newman, 1994; Sommer & Baumeister, 1998).

This framework has been used to investigate how people derive meaning from life or life experiences in a number of contexts. For example, Woodworth (2002) found that women with breast cancer framed their stories of diagnosis as either a loss of purpose or loss of control. Their narratives also revealed a postdiagnosis struggle with self-worth. Need for meaning has also been found to mediate the relationship between loneliness and perceived meaning in life (Stillman et al., 2009). Family rejection has been found to reduce feelings of meaningfulness in life via the four needs (Stillman & Baumeister, 2009), and feelings of belonging have also been found to predict which need for meaning is used to measure how one feels about the meaningfulness of their life as a whole (Lambert et al., 2013).

More related to this study, Dworznik (2006) used this framework to analyze the narratives of local television journalists to investigate how they made sense of their encounters with trauma on a daily basis. Participants met the need for purpose by focusing on how they learned a lesson from their experiences and how their actions helped them meet the goal of telling a great story. The need for value was used to justify questionable actions in the field, or experiences that were more traumatic than the journalists thought they would be. Emphasizing an unintended positive outcome was the most frequently used method to justify and therefore find value in the events. Focusing on the steps taken to do their jobs or the use of gallows humor were used to find efficacy in their experiences with trauma, and framing stories that showed how they did better than a co-worker or glorifying their profession helped participants satisfy the need for self-worth.

This study focuses on a specific event, a natural disaster, rather than the overall trauma experienced in news work. This focus is warranted, given that research shows that intensity of exposure to traumatic events can exacerbate the negative psychological impact of those events (R. Smith et al., 2018) and that the very nature of a natural disaster creates a far more intense experience for the journalists covering it (Carter & Kodrich, 2013). Therefore, this study employed Baumeister’s (1991) four needs for meaning to explore how journalists made sense of their experiences covering hurricane Harvey using the following research question:

Research Question 1: How did local journalists frame their personal narratives using value, purpose, efficacy, and self-worth to make sense of their experience covering hurricane Harvey?

Method

Sommer and Baumeister (1998) argue that because meaning in life is often related in story form, research investigating the construction of meaning is primarily qualitative in nature. Therefore, this study employed qualitative methods. In-depth interviews were conducted with 30 reporters who covered Harvey and also lived in the affected areas. These participants were appropriate because studying journalists who also experience the natural disaster as it unfolds offers a more holistic understanding of their experience (Tandoc & Takahashi, 2016).

News managers were contacted from the 16 news outlets in the Texas cities hardest hit by Harvey. Six (three newspapers and three TV stations) agreed to allow their reporters to be contacted for the study. Through newsroom emails, 21 newspaper journalists and 26 television journalists were contacted about the study. Newsroom managers did not encourage or discourage participation. Invitations were emailed three times over a 3-week period. Thirty journalists agreed to take part (16 newspaper and 14 television). Each participant was interviewed over the course of 1 month from October to November of 2017. They also completed an online survey as part of a larger study on hurricane coverage. Interview data are used here (See Table 1 for a description of the sample).

Table 1.

Participant Demographics.

Descriptor	Category	Number
Gender	Male	12
	Female	18
Ethnicity	Caucasian	18
	Hispanic	10
	Other	2
Media outlet	Newspaper	16
	Television	14
Newsroom position	Reporter	19
	Newspaper editor	3
	Reporter/photographer	3
	Photographer/videographer	2
	Television anchor	2
	Weather	1
Years’ experience in news	0–4 years	13
	5–10 years	6
	<10 years	11
		19 had 3 years or less in their current city
Age	22–25	7
	26–30	6
	31–35	7
	<36 years old	9
		*one missing

Interviews

A semistructured interview process was used because it facilitates participants’ willingness to share viewpoints and experiences (Monteiro & Marques-Pinto, 2017), as well as allows the researcher to probe interesting and important aspects of the narratives as they arise, which is important in the study of sense-making and meaning (J. A. Smith & Osborn, 2008).

The author conducted telephone interviews that were recorded with participant permission. Participants were asked to describe their experiences covering Harvey including triumphs and hardships, emotions felt, and reactions experienced, as well as significant moments. Since the interviews were 2-months posthurricane, participants were also asked to reflect on their experience as a whole. Participants were not asked explicitly about meaning making. They were asked only to share their experiences (McTighe & Tosone, 2015). How those narratives were structured revealed efforts to make sense of or interpret experiences. Interviews lasted 22 to 90 minutes.

Interviews were transcribed and analyzed using the interpretive phenomenological approach (J. A. Smith & Osborn, 2008), which focuses on the lived experiences of individuals to uncover meaning (Giorgi & Giorgi, 2008). Transcripts were loaded into the qualitative software MAXQDA for analysis. Following the method outlined by J. A. Smith and Osborn (2008), the transcripts were read and reread, coded, and compared for similarities, using Baumeister’s (1991) four needs for meaning as a guide. Meanings were interpreted by the author through a process of sustained engagement with each text and constant comparison between texts until similarities among themes emerged (J. A. Smith & Osborn, 2008). The four needs helped guide the interpretation of the meanings of the described experiences with the purpose of uncovering implicit sense-making attempts within the narratives (Giorgi & Giorgi, 2008). This method was appropriate because focusing on major themes that emerge from interviews allows those themes to reveal the overall meaning-making efforts of the narrator (Enosh & Buchbinder, 2005).

Results

Subjects in this study noted they participated in continuous daily coverage of Harvey and its aftermath for an average of a little over 4 weeks. The majority of the participants’ time was spent covering stories about survivors, cleanup efforts, and rebuilding. The most frequently interviewed people were those who had lost property or were homeless, storm survivors, and government workers.

Fourteen participants indicated they experienced some sort of property damage or loss due to the hurricane. Seven had damage to their cars or they were “totaled,” 11 had damage to or lost their homes, and 5 indicated they lost or had damage to their personal belongings. Five sustained damage or loss to both their homes and cars. Two sustained minor injuries during coverage. All indicated they kept working on storm coverage despite their personal loss and did not take any significant time off during the initial coverage period to deal with their personal situations.

Analysis of their interviews revealed 10 main subthemes under Baumeister’s (1991) original four categories of needs for meaning. A hierarchy of subthemes based on number of mentions and number of participants who framed their narratives using the subtheme is in Table 2.

Table 2.

Hierarchy of Themes and Subthemes

Subtheme	Description	Main theme	Participants	iD number of codes
Accomplishments/career advancement	Focus on how proud they were of their accomplishments, their teams’ accomplishments, or how the experience would help their careers	Purpose/fulfillment	11	20
Negative emotions	Blaming unwanted emotions on the unexpected magnitude of the hurricane that they could not have prepared for	Value/justification	8	18
Overall experience	Made sense of the overall physical hardships (i.e., displacement and lack of basic services) by downplaying the experiences	Value/justification	12	26
Journalistic mission	Focus on how difficult experiences served their mission as a journalist, as well as how there was still work to be done, and it was their purpose to do that work	Purpose/fulfillment	12	22
Besting another	Focus on doing better than a co-worker and competing media entities and describing how they pushed back against editorial decisions	Self-worth	8	16
Lessons learned	Focus on what they learned from those experiences or the experience as a whole	Purpose/fulfillment	8	10
Appreciation/recognition	Focus on audience appreciation for their work, outside recognition, or specific changes that came about due to their stories	Self-worth	7	14
Encounters with victims	Focusing on how the victims wanted to talk or wanted their stories told	Value/justification	5	7
Emotional control	Focusing narrative on how they regained control of their unwanted emotions or how they did their job to avoid the emotions	Efficacy	4	5
Guidance	Fear and anxiety associated with not receiving as much direction as needed from newsroom managers	Efficacy	4	3

Value

Baumeister and Newman (1994) suggest people need to believe that their actions have positive value or are justifiable. Methods for finding meaning in this way include downplaying consequences, shifting blame or responsibility, or focusing on admirable intentions (Sommer & Baumeister, 1998). Participants used value to make sense of their overall experience, the overwhelming and unusual rush of emotions they felt or expressed, and their encounters with disaster victims.

Overall Experience

The biggest challenge for journalists covering disaster is often the personal scarcity or physical hardships of living and working in areas affected by the disaster (Puente et al., 2010). Many participants had to live and sleep in their newsrooms or at each other’s homes for weeks. These hardships affected their personal and physical well-beings and added unexpected difficulty to their jobs. The most commonly used method for making sense of these hardships was to downplay them. Participants explained away experiences such as not being able to shower for a week, or not being able to get to their homes, by noting that all of it “could have been worse,” was “not a big deal,” or that so many others had far worse experiences. A male newspaper reporter whose home was too damaged to live in said:

It sucks, but it wasn’t the worst thing. The important thing was I didn’t lose any loved ones during it. I lost possessions or materials, sure, but that’s nothing really. Not like the stuff that matters. (Personal communication, Oct. 2017)

Another male newspaper reporter whose family had been living in temporary housing for two months, downplayed the hardship by suggesting, “This whole thing, just for me and my family, this amounts to just a massive inconvenience. It’s almost what I call a first world problem.” (Personal communication, October 2017).

This type of reappraisal of an extreme stressor using downward comparison or underemphasis is common and allows a person to reveal the implications of the trauma in a more positive way (Hunt & McHale, 2008; Park, 2010). Given that journalists are expected to survive even the toughest conditions in the name of getting the story, downplaying hardships of Harvey was an appropriate way to justify, and therefore make sense of, their overall experience. Journalists are not supposed to be the story. By framing their experience in this way, they weren’t.

Negative Emotions

Journalism requires objectivity, which often demands that a journalist not show any emotional reactions to stories (Hopper & Huxford, 2017). Therefore, journalists are often eager to explain away their emotions (Dworznik, 2006). None of the participants had ever covered a disaster of this magnitude before. As a result, they experienced a rush of difficult emotions, as they struggled to cover the devastation and its victims. These emotions included anxiety, fear of personal safety, sadness, depression, and a general feeling of being overwhelmed. Participants reported breaking down at home or in the parking lot at work. They also mentioned being surprised by the need to step away from a story for a moment to get their emotions back in check. This type of emotional purging is a common coping mechanism among journalists who cover trauma (Seely, 2019). However, this study’s participants seemed to feel the need to find value in, or justify, these outbursts. They did so by connecting them to the unexpected magnitude of the hurricane and the level of continuous exposure to the victims and damage. In other words, the rush of emotions not typical of journalists was justified because this experience was unexpected, unusual, and not like anything they had ever experienced before. A female newspaper photographer with 15 years’ experience described covering a rescue drop-off point this way:

But it was just like boat, after boat after boat of all these people . . . It was just so hard to see that. There were definitely several times in being there and covering that, that I had to go around the corner of the building and just like stop for a second because I was like, I’m just going to like lose it, just break down and start crying because the sadness was just so palpable everywhere. (Personal communication, October 2017)

Focusing on the emotional process of an event like this enables a person to explain the emotion and create some distance between themselves and that emotion as well (Enosh & Buchbinder, 2005). This seems especially important in a profession such as journalism where emotional reactions are discouraged (Monteiro & Marques-Pinto, 2017). By focusing on the magnitude of the event and their exposure to the aftermath, the journalists in this study could justify the emotional reactions they had been socialized to keep in check.

Encounters With Victims

Interviewing victims is arguably the hardest part of a journalist’s job and is made worse when the context is disaster. Participants noted that it was extremely difficult to approach victims, and they were constantly worried about backlash or making a situation worse for a victim. However, disaster coverage cannot happen without speaking to victims, so a common justification used to find value in and make sense of this task, was to focus on the fact that the vast majority of the victims they approached “wanted to talk” or “wanted their stories to be told.” The encounters were framed as “beneficial for them [victim] in some way,” and a “healing part for them [victims].”

It is possible to transform the meaning of an unpleasant situation by finding a more acceptable reason for its occurrence. The event is reappraised in such a way as to justify it based on its positive aspects (Park, 2010). For these journalists, the very difficult task of approaching victims was transformed and justified by focusing on the idea that the victims wanted to engage with them. Dworznik (2006) found journalists used a similar justification for interviews with victims in daily news. Because people want to believe their actions have value and are morally justifiable (Sommer & Baumeister, 1998), these journalists made approaching victims more appropriate by believing that the victims wanted and/or needed their stories to be told. This placed a more positive meaning on a wholly negative aspect of their hurricane experience.

Purpose/Fulfillment

Baumeister and Newman (1994) said people can find meaning in an experience by relating it to a positive outcome or some desirable future state. These are usually idealized or mythologized notions such as learning something, a greater appreciation for life or reflecting on one’s accomplishments (Sommer & Baumeister, 1998). Traumatic narratives in particular are often retold to find meaning through lessons learned and insights provided (Greenhoot et al., 2013). Focusing on purpose and fulfillment was a popular way to find meaning for the participants in this study. They sought meaning through their journalistic mission, what they accomplished and what they learned.

Journalistic Mission

Belief in the purpose of their work is a strong motivator for journalists during disaster (Himmelstein & Faithorn, 2002; Novak & Davidson, 2013; Seely, 2019; Tandoc & Takahashi, 2016). The same was found in this study. The long days of coverage, the physical hardships, and the emotionally difficult encounters, were all given meaning because the participants felt that telling this story was their mission or purpose. They felt that this was their job—to serve as a vital conduit for information—and the idea that they were fulfilling this mission kept them going. This mind-set was also found in radio reporters in Puerto Rico following hurricane Maria (Nieves-Pizarro et al., 2019). A female newspaper reporter with 3 months experience said:

And so I think that knowing that all of these people were dependent on us, was definitely a motivating factor. And as much as we wanted to be a grouch about it, just stay home and sleep in our beds, we knew that people’s lives were literally depending on the information we needed to provide for them . . . It’s not really a choice, you just know you have to get up and do it until it’s done. (Personal communication, October 2017)

Participants focused on the idea that they were trained to serve a unique and important purpose in the disaster, and it helped give their adverse experiences a more positive and fulfilling meaning. Meaning-making efforts such as these help restore a sense that the world itself is meaningful and that one’s own place in it, even during disaster and trauma, is worthwhile (Park, 2010).

Accomplishments/Career Advancement

Reflecting on one’s own accomplishments is also a common way to bring meaning to a situation through purpose or fulfillment (Baumeister & Newman, 1994). In this study, participants found meaning in their experiences by reflecting on how proud they were of the work they were able to do. The participants also made references to the accomplishments of their team or newsroom. This type of meaning making was especially salient because most reporters in this study had only a handful of years of experience. A female newspaper reporter with 3 months experience said:

So for a very young, inexperienced newsroom I’m really proud of the work that we did and the content that we put out, and I’m very proud of everything we were able to do. (Personal communication, October 2017)

The focus on accomplishments was also tied to the positive impact the experience would eventually have on their careers. The age and experience level of the participants made this focus on personal accomplishments and career advancement a logical choice. As Greenhoot et al. (2013) noted, reframing a traumatic event by identifying the positive life impact it had can be a powerful method for finding meaning and coping with the experience.

Lessons Learned

Related to this was the theme of having learned something. It provided another variation on the idea of personal growth that is a key part of finding meaning through purpose or fulfillment (Sommer & Baumeister, 1998). Learning from a traumatic experience serves as a coping mechanism because it allows a person to connect positive changes within themselves to the traumatizing event (Carlier, 1999) and has been found in similar sense-making studies (Dworznik, 2006; McTighe & Tosone, 2015). These participants honed in on what they learned and the positive ways in which those lessons affected their skills or themselves as a whole. A female newspaper reporter with 1-year experience explained how covering Harvey taught her the very valuable “digital first” skill:

It’s something that I probably should have been thinking about anyway because it’s 2017 and like, catch up. But I think it forced a very quick switch of like, “Okay. The order of priority is Twitter, website, print. Twitter, website, print.” (Personal communication, October 2017)

Efficacy

Experiencing trauma can cause a person to feel like he or she has lost control of his or her world, but retelling the experience can help the narrator regain those lost feelings of control (Kellas & Trees, 2006; Park, 2010). Indicators of this type of meaning include a focus on maintaining control of uncontrollable events or overcoming difficult obstacles in one’s path. These types of narratives help add coherence and stability to what is initially viewed as a random and unpredictable experience (Sommer & Baumeister, 1998). In this study, participants said they gained meaning through efficacy when they recalled emotionally difficult encounters or situations where they lacked guidance.

Emotional Control

Journalists are trained to remain objective when covering a story, in part by being socialized to set their emotions aside. This is especially true during times of disaster when it is important to void emotions in order to focus on professionalism (Puente et al., 2010). Therefore, it can be argued that when the journalists in this study were faced with encounters that challenged their ability to keep their emotions in check, they needed to make sense of those experiences by focusing on control. This thought process was evident through the use of phrases such as, “You have to stay detached as a reporter,” “I needed to keep it together and not panic,” and “Emotions don’t serve you well at all when you’re out in the field.”

When describing emotional encounters that threatened their ability to keep control, participants framed their narratives in one of two ways. First, they highlighted or focused on how they regained control of or kept their emotions in check. For example, a young reporter who felt that contact with her parents was causing her to panic, focused her narrative on the moment when she pushed back on their repeated requests for her to leave town, thereby turning a potentially frightening situation into a moment of courage or triumph. Participants also focused on how they did their jobs. As an emotionally challenging event was described, the narrative would quickly switch to the steps they took to get their job done. For example, one reporter quickly glossed over the emotional details of when he called his wife to tell her that their house had survived unscathed and instead focused on how he “got that out of the way” and quickly moved on to continue reporting.

In each case, rather than addressing the rush of emotions that they were feeling, they reframed the narrative to better reflect their journalistic training. People tend to underemphasize those elements which are potentially embarrassing or do not fit their perception of themselves (Hunt & McHale, 2008). A lack of emotional control runs counter to journalistic norms, so participants underemphasized the emotional aspect of the experience, while overemphasizing the specifics of doing their job. This strategy was also used by journalists when discussing encounters with trauma during daily news coverage (Dworznik, 2006).

Guidance

The majority of media markets hardest hit by Harvey included smaller towns, which tend to have to smaller, less-experienced staff. Travel and communication were difficult, and in most cases, no coverage plan had been developed. This led to a lot of confusion on the part of the reporters. Those who lacked a concrete plan from their managers felt the anxiety associated with being forced to fend for themselves in a situation they were unprepared for. As a result, narratives of these experiences focused on how they or their fellow reporters took control of the coverage and included phrases such as, “kicked from the nest,” “no specific assignments,” “expected a lot of self-sufficiency and fending for ourselves,” and being told to “just do what you can.”

Narratives that focus on the successful exercise of one’s profession in the face of adversity are a common way to create meaning through efficacy (McTighe & Tosone, 2015). While the experience may be truly unpredictable, the concentration on efficacy allows for a coherent meaning to develop while reinterpreting the experience to reflect positively on oneself (Sommer & Baumeister, 1998). The participants in this study were faced with new and traumatic situations and had no prior experience on which to draw for guidance. That unpredictability of not knowing what would happen was given meaning by focusing on the small ways that they could regain a semblance of real or imagined control.

Self-Worth

The final way to seek meaning in traumatic experiences is through a focus on self-worth. In general, people strive for a sense of positive self-worth by seeking out ways of establishing that they are good, admirable people who possess desirable traits, especially in the face of traumatic experiences that can threaten self-worth (Sommer & Baumeister, 1998; Stillman & Baumeister, 2009). Common indicators of this type of meaning making include, invoking positive recognition by others and proving oneself superior to others in some way (Baumeister & Newman, 1994). Lack of experience created a situation that had the potential to threaten the self-worth of the participants if they did not perform up to their own expectations or those of their peers. Despite the physical and emotional hardships, they were driven by their journalistic mission to do well. As a result, their narratives focusing on self-worth were framed around the themes of appreciation and recognition for their work and how they were able to do better than another.

Appreciation/Recognition

Participants repeatedly mentioned the appreciation they felt from their readers and viewers. They noted that given journalists are often derided by the public, the level of appreciation they experienced was pleasantly surprising. For once, they felt they were not news media vultures praying on the loss of others. Instead, they felt they were being recognized as providing a service that was appreciated. For example, a male newspaper reporter with 2 years’ experience said:

Really the support that motivated me the most was just random people coming up to me and saying thank you for doing the work that you’re doing . . . It really warmed my heart in a way I wasn’t expecting, to hear people approach me and say thank you. (Personal communication, October 2017)

Audience appreciation was often cited as a reason for pushing through hardships and fatigue or to deflect potential ego threats. For example, one anchor, who was embarrassed for having teared up on the air, focused her narrative instead on audience emails she received later saying they appreciated her even more because she showed emotion. In this way, the audience acknowledgment and appreciation of her slight loss of emotional control negated any ego threat it may have created due to the potential violation of journalistic norms. This type of reinterpretation of ego threats is a way to make a potentially negative experience reflect positively on oneself (Sommer & Baumeister, 1998).

Participants also found meaning through self-worth by focusing on the positive recognition their stories received or the positive outcomes they generated. Positive recognition involved mentioning numbers of views or social media shares a story received. These narratives included phrases such as, “They were texting me saying, ‘Keep going! 100,000 people are watching right now!’” and “That one was shared over 1000 times and the reach was like 200,000,” as well as, “And that story ended up being the most shared and viewed story. I think the Pope had actually tweeted some version of that.” As Baumeister (1991) suggested, people need to find a basis on which to measure their self-worth, some criteria according to which they can regard themselves and convince others to view them or their work positively. These shares and views provided a concrete and numerical way for that to occur.

Positive recognition was also measured through pinpointing specific outcomes that resulted from stories the participants covered, such as stories leading to people getting the help they needed. Especially in narratives describing how they were tired and desperate to move on from Harvey coverage, the participants tended to end these with a focus on how that particular story helped someone in some measurable way. Admitting they didn’t want to cover Harvey any more was a potential ego threat, especially given the level of on-going need. Focusing on a positive outcome helped diffuse the ego threat and is a common way for journalists to find inspiration and motivation to continue their work (Novak & Davidson, 2013).

Besting Another

A second way in which people can derive meaning through self-worth is by framing narratives around how they did better than another. This “other” can be anyone, but in the case of this study, the participants noted how they did better than competing news media entities, their bosses, as well as their own co-workers. As Baumeister and Newman (1994) suggested, meaning can be made through proving oneself superior to others. The journalists in this study found meaning in their traumatic experiences by showing how they outperformed those around them.

For example, participants shared stories about how they did better than their co-workers or their competition. This type of narrative framing has also been shown in journalists as they discussed traumatic encounters in normal daily news coverage (Dworznik, 2006). Participants made references to being able to cover the story better than their national counterparts because they had connections the nonlocals did not. They also talked about surviving the conditions better than their local competition or making better choices. For example, one videographer said, “. . . but we didn’t end up breaking any cameras, and I don’t know how that happened. Our competing station down here, they broke five.” Another mentioned how a competing newspaper photographer told her she would never be able to get to a location because she would have to wade through chest-deep water, but instead she found a better route. She said, “So I’m like, ‘Okay. I don’t have to wade through chest-deep water. I mean that’s the most direct route, but if I just walk around, I can get to it.’” Participants also focused on how they stood out even among their own co-workers. They explained how they were willing to continue doing victim stories when others were not, or how they continued to do the harder jobs that others declined to do. A female newspaper reporter with 2 years’ experience described how her co-worker headed back to the newsroom while she chose to stay and ended up with a better story:

And he (co-worker) kind of thought I was crazy. But I ended up, I don’t know it seemed like the right place to be. It seemed like a thing that I needed to do. And I knew that I wasn’t going to get that in the office. So I ended up getting a ride with some volunteers back to the shelter and getting access to a shelter that we hadn’t been able to get into before. (Personal communication, October 2017)

Hunt and McHale (2008) suggested that individuals deliberately focus on particular elements in a narrative in order to make that experience fit with how they want to be perceived. In these ways, we can make traumatic experiences more meaningful because they serve to boost our perception of ourselves rather than detract from it. Covering Harvey was extremely difficult and it had both physical and mental consequences for these journalists. By focusing on ways they persevered, especially over others, these difficult experiences were given a positive meaning that boosted self-worth, potentially aiding in personal growth following the trauma (McTighe & Tosone, 2015).

Conclusion

The needs for meaning framework has proven useful for analyzing a wide range of narratives based on everything from trivial circumstances to life-altering traumas (Sommer & Baumeister, 1998). This study helps contribute to this framework by expanding it into the journalism field and applying it to a specific situation experienced by many people. The needs for meaning framework proved to be a useful guide for elucidating which experiences are most troubling for journalists covering disasters and how they chose to make sense of those experiences. This is an important piece of understanding how and why journalists develop traumatic reactions to their work and can be used to create practices that may help reduce traumatic stress risk (R. Smith et al., 2018). In addition, this study helps to add to the body of knowledge about trauma because studying nonclinical populations illuminates successful coping strategies and ways of managing reactions while widening the lens of what qualifies as trauma (Novak & Davidson, 2013). This study also provides further support for the value of narrative in understanding the experiences of journalists who live and work in areas affected by disaster (McTighe & Tosone, 2015).

Given that debriefing and counseling are common methods for dealing with the emotional consequences of a traumatic event, these results suggest that encouraging journalists to talk about their experiences covering trauma may be an appropriate avenue to explore as a way to help them process their experiences and continue working (Dworznik, 2006). Studies have already shown that finding meaning in trauma leads to better posttraumatic adjustment and growth, and better mental health (Greenhoot et al., 2013; Kellas & Trees, 2006; Solomon, 2004). Therefore, the results from this study can help journalists recognize the potential positive aspects of their traumatic experiences and help them find meaning in those experiences (Dworznik, 2006).

Documenting these sense-making pathways can also help newsroom managers provide better resources to support their journalists during traumatic events (McTighe & Tosone, 2015). For example, focusing on their journalistic mission was a strong motivator for participants in this study. Newsroom managers can help encourage this type of sense-making by reminding journalists of the importance of what they are doing and the vital and unique role they are playing during the disaster. In addition, remembering to offer specific recognition and praise for a job well done can also help journalists find meaning in their difficult experiences and encourage positive work outcomes (Biggs et al., 2014).

Helping journalists focus on their self-worth can also result in more positive psychological outcomes during disaster coverage. In this study, audience appreciation and measurable recognition for their work served as a strong positive influence on the appraisal of participants’ traumatic experiences during Harvey. Newsroom managers can encourage this type of response by highlighting recognition from the audience and other measurements of reach for coverage. These elements increase personal pride and result in more positive psychological reactions (Snell et al., 2014).

Finally, these narratives highlight the need for specific plans and organization during a disaster or large-scale traumatic event, especially in newsrooms populated by younger and less-experienced reporters. Briefing reporters and photographers on what they might see and encounter while out in the field and reminding them that emotional reactions are normal and expected, may help journalists feel less compelled to justify their reactions and be more accepting of them. In addition, formal guidance throughout the duration of coverage can not only reduce negative responses such as anxiety and feelings of being overwhelmed, but it can also foster feelings of efficacy which can lead to better adjustment to the stressful event (Park, 2010).

This study has a few limitations that need to be addressed. The case study nature of this study prevents generalization of the results to all journalists. Future studies should attempt to get a larger sample of journalists who have covered a disaster. Second, all news media outlets that responded to this study were from small media markets. Larger media outlets in the United States typically have more resources and personnel that could have affected journalists’ experiences covering the hurricane in a different way than in smaller markets. Future studies should address the market-size discrepancy.

Covering traumatic events of all types will continue to be a part of a journalist’s work. And while studies of traumatic stress symptoms continue to show that journalists can be psychologically affected by the trauma they cover, qualitative studies like this help add context to that trauma and provide pathways for journalists to better understand their own reactions and make sense of them. News managers can also learn how to better provide the necessary environment and resources that are conducive to positive growth following trauma coverage.

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Gretchen Dworznik-Hoak

Dworznik-Hoak is assistant professor of journalism, Kent State University. Dworznik-Hoak is the corresponding author: gdworzni@kent.edu.

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