Teaching Collegiate Journalists How to Cover Traumatic Events Using Moral Development Theory

Introduction

The term trauma journalism was coined by reporters in the mid-2000s. It was a “shorthand way of encompassing otherwise disparate work sharing some common approaches and themes” (B. Shapiro, personal communication, August 23, 2016). It was also a useful approach to gather creative reporting practices on survivors of violence and tragedy (B. Shapiro, personal communication, August 23, 2016). Bruce Shapiro, director of the Dart Center, defines trauma journalism as reporting on violence, conflict, or tragedy with a particular focus on the aftermath and long-term impact of events on individuals, families, and communities (B. Shapiro, personal communication, August 23, 2016). Subsequently, Shapiro offers an alternative term in trauma-informed journalism. He explains trauma-informed journalism as reporting shaped by an understanding of psychological injury and the long-term aftermath of violence. For journalists to be aware of such psychological injury, they must be at a particular stage in their moral development. College student moral development reflects “the processes through which individuals develop more complex principles and ways of reasoning about what is right, just, and caring” (Patton et al., 2016, p. 314).

The Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (ACEJMC) does not include trauma journalism as part of the standards for accreditation. Therefore, most institutions accredited by the Council do not include trauma in the curriculum. For decades, collegiate journalism programs have educated students on how to write news stories, interview sources, shoot and edit video, and apply mass communication law principles. Related literature suggests that a case can be made that these programs need to incorporate trauma training into their curriculum as a standard practice (Maxson, 2000).

Most journalists will encounter some sort of violence or death early on in their career (Johnson, 1999), and those most at risk of stress while covering traumatic events are recent graduates (Johnson, 1999; Maxson, 2000; Rees, 2007; Simpson & Boggs, 1999; Young, 2011). The young journalists are often the ones who are sent to interview the families of victims (Maxson, 2000). Findings such as these have pushed some institutions in the last three decades to start preparing journalists while still in college to face these types of situations.

Students have covered traumatic events for decades from Columbine to Virginia Tech and many others. Young (2011) says journalism schools spend time teaching the basics of journalism—how to write a lead, interviewing skills, and editing—but it is becoming even more “imperative” that educators are dedicating time to the emotional effects that come with being a journalist. “Acknowledgement can’t be the only step. Otherwise, journalism instructors and media managers are letting their reporters become the frogs that slowly boil to death” (Young, 2011, p. 16). These perspectives on the ways in which young journalists encounter traumatic events highlight the need to address trauma in journalism curricula. Through this article the authors establish the need to address trauma training to aid the moral reasoning of collegiate journalists.

Trauma Journalism in Education

An important, but often missing piece of postsecondary journalism education is understanding the psychological effects of covering traumatic events. Journalists are sent to the scene of car crashes and murders, genocide and terrorism, as well as wars and natural disasters—and have been doing so for centuries (Massé, 2011, pp. 1–2). However, research shows that students are not getting the proper training at the postsecondary level. Students in the field of journalism need to grasp the understanding of how to cover these events using ethical and moral decision-making skills while staying within the parameters they are taught in journalism education.

Journalists face potential challenges when reporting on traumatic events and must carefully consider answers to morally ambiguous questions, including the following: Is it ethically correct for a news organization to repeatedly report the killers’ names and faces after mass shootings? Is there a journalistic value to airing this type of information? Do news organizations need to camp outside a high school for nearly a month after two students killed 13 people and injured 24 others? Is it journalism or is it just entertainment? These are questions that are not on the minds of collegiate journalists until faced with the reality of having to cover a traumatic event. Some believe that journalists are simply exploiting the victims of these disasters (Simpson & Coté, 2006). In some cases, the public views journalists as treating victims as “props for stories” and being insensitive with excessive coverage (Simpson & Coté, 2006, p. 2). Not surprising, those most likely to criticize media coverage of traumatic events are the victims themselves (Simpson & Coté, 2006).

With increasing resistance from viewers on the media’s intense coverage of traumatic events, the need for training on how to properly cover these events is becoming more apparent. The Columbine High School massacre and the shootings on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) are examples of traumatic events that caused the public to scrutinize the media’s national reporting. The prolonged coverage and greater attention given to one particular story allowed for more criticism. Schildkraut (2012) noted that media coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings took on a life of its own beyond the actual events of that day in 2007. Despite the appetite for the spectacle of the media coverage, criticism came in the ways in which journalists were viewed to have treated survivors, as journalists experienced ethical conflicts between needed to gather information for the story and not causing or prolonging harm for victims and survivors (Walsh-Childers et al., 2011).

The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma has been a leader in the education and training of trauma for journalists and educators. The Center began in 1999 at the University of Washington’s Department of Communication to serve as a resource for journalists, educators, and mental health professionals involved with traumatic events. It was also designed to provide awards, fellowships, training programs, and research studies in trauma journalism (Dart Center, n.d.). The Dart Center’s research unit, based at the University of Tulsa’s Department of Psychology, has extensively researched the connection between journalists and traumatic events. It is committed to educating journalism educators with the necessary training involving trauma. It also provides professional development opportunities in which journalists can get the recommended trauma training that might be lacking in the industry. The Dart Center is a project of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in the City of New York with two other centers in Asia and Europe.

Evidence has shown that in the few instances where trauma journalism is included in the curriculum, journalism students feel better prepared to cover traumatic events in the field (Dworznik & Grubb, 2007). The International Center for Media and the Public Agenda, part of the University of Maryland, conducted a study of 106 accredited journalism institutions around the United States and found that nearly three fourths of them do not have stand-alone courses teaching collegiate journalists how to cover violence and trauma (“Teaching Journalism Education: Teaching Merits, Curricular Challenges and Instructional Approaches,” 2009). Common approaches to training for trauma journalism rely on simulations, case studies in upper level courses, and internships, preceded by readings and class discussions in lower level courses. However, not all approaches to trauma journalism are created equal, and in their study, Dworznik and Grubb (2007) noted that some participants were thrust into covering a trial connected to a traumatic event, but with no preparation regarding the traumatic event that would be relived during the trial. Absent sufficient preparation, not only are journalism students ill equipped to their own emotional reactions, but they are also ill equipped to assess what they experience from an ethical perspective.

Ethical Considerations

Ethics and morals are often used interchangeably, when they are actually different. Ethics refers to rules provided by an external source. For example, a code of conduct in the workplace would be ethics. Morals, on the other hand, refers to an individual’s own principles of what is right and wrong. Ethics is something a person does, not who a person is (Tuggle et al., 2014, p. 250). Morals would be who a person is, not something a person does. According to Carr et al. (2014), people must be trained in ethical behavior and continue to work at it.

In the field of journalism, specifically trauma journalism, ethical behavior refers to the question of whether to show dead bodies, report on suicides, name the killers, show live footage during a hostage situation when the suspects could have access to a television, or deciding to potentially invade a victim’s privacy immediately following a traumatic event to ask for an interview. Journalism education traditionally does not teach students how to cover traumatic events. A review of the Standards for Journalism Educators (Journalism Education Association, n.d.) reveals that addressing ethics is not explicitly central to either knowledge or performance standards of journalism teachers. However, what journalism education has done for decades and continues to do today is to teach students what it means to be ethical in their general reporting, not necessarily specific to trauma journalism. In the existing progression from journalism education to the journalism industry, the burden of continued education and professional development in the area of ethical behavior in regard to trauma is placed upon news organizations. Unfortunately, the potential ill effects of covering traumatic events are not often discussed in newsrooms (McMahon, 2010). There are such few journalism programs that incorporate trauma into their existing curriculum that any expectation of incorporating ethical behaviors relating to the coverage of traumatic events is not likely.

The current context of ethical journalist practice has become complicated by the 24-hr news cycle and the role of social media in reporting and consumption of news (Ward, 2009). The changes in the ways in which news is reported and consumed have pushed the boundaries of traditional journalism ethics (Hindman, 2017). The rush to be first has been attributed to questionable journalism practices, particularly in the coverage of traumatic events (Schildkraut, 2012).

Trauma Journalism Vignettes

Covering events in the 21st century involves a new element of coverage that journalists did not have to contend with decades ago, the Internet. Social media and the audience’s demand for immediacy of news coverage requires a new type of coverage for journalists. Reporters and photographers not only have to be on the scene immediately but for longer periods of time. Today’s news cycle is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Journalists are required to cover every angle of a story on every media platform. Due to the need to fill airtime in the 24-hr news cycle, journalists can face questions of whether to compromise their ethics and morals.

In this section, we provide vignettes of two traumatic events that received worldwide attention and are often revisited during the news coverage of new traumatic events. Through each vignette, we offer perspectives of the types of decisions journalists faced in each of these events. Following the vignettes, we examine the implication of those journalistic decisions through the lens of moral development theory and offer recommendations for integrating moral development theory into undergraduate journalism programs to better prepare journalists as moral agents when covering traumatic events.

Moral Development Considerations

Through the preceding vignettes, we have provided glimpses into the ways in which journalists covered these traumatic events, and the choices they faced in doing so. In considering these vignettes as lessons for collegiate journalists, moral development serves as a useful lens through which to consider how journalism programs can better prepare journalists to make ethically and morally sound judgments when covering traumatic events.

Moral development should not be viewed as an individual starting as an amoral person, or starting at zero and working toward a pinnacle of ultimate morality. Rather, development in any form should be seen as “the reorganization of skills” (King, 2009, p. 598). This reorganization results in new ways of thinking and through their reorganization efforts, individuals encounter opportunities to apply these new approaches. Central to considering moral development is the idea that individuals progress from finite conceptions of right and wrong to embracing greater complexity in evaluating moral choices (Mayhew et al., 2016).

Kohlberg (1969) took Jean Piaget’s work with young children and adapted it for adolescents and college students. Kohlberg (1969) developed three levels of moral reasoning: preconventional, conventional, and postconventional. He then divided the levels into six stages. The postconventional level was aimed at college students as it looked at individuals basing decisions on “overarching moral principles” (Renn & Reason, 2013). However, students develop their moral reasoning at various intervals and therefore could be at any one of these levels by the time they reach college.

James Rest (1979) took Kohlberg’s moral development theory and removed some of the limitations to reveal a less structured approach called the neo-Kohlbergian approach of morality (Rest et al., 2000). Kohlberg’s original model focused more on individual reasoning while Rest presented a broader view of moral development through a more macro-type approach, expanding upon more than just one’s self to include society. Rest (1979) broke down the six stages into schemas that allowed a person to be in more than one stage at a time, something Kohlberg’s model did not allow for.

Ultimately, scholarship about moral reasoning shifted from Kohlbergian and neo-Kohlbergian schemas to what Rest (1988) termed as a four component model (4CM). The 4CM offered a means of considering the influence of other psychological processes that are possibly at play in moral reasoning (Mayhew et al., 2016). Thinking about moral development more holistically is an approach that would be useful in integrating moral development considerations into addressing trauma journalism into journalism curricula. These other psychological factors that the 4CM takes into account include sensitivity, motivation, and character (Mayhew et al., 2016).

As a means to operationalize and test an individual’s position in the schema, Rest refined Kohlberg’s Defining Issues Test (DIT) as the Defining Issues Test 2 (DIT-2) (Mayhew et al., 2015). Through decades of moral reasoning scholarship, the DIT-2 has been validated through individual studies (e.g., Mayhew et al., 2015; Rest et al., 1999) with those studies further evaluated through meta-analyses (Mayhew et al., 2016).

Lessons to be Learned About Covering With Past Traumatic Events

With some background on moral development theory, we now provide a discussion of the lessons to be learned from the vignettes, in the context of moral development theory. Addressing the link between moral development and covering traumatic events in journalism curricula is critically important, as college has a unique effect on the capacity for higher levels of moral reasoning (Rest, 1988). When students enroll in courses with an explicit purpose of addressing moral content, students experience greater gains on moral development indices than those who enroll in courses where the link to moral content is more implicit (Mayhew & King, 2008; Mayhew et al., 2016).

Perhaps there needs to be some kind of tangible outcome following enhanced moral development to aid collegiate journalists engaged in trauma journalism. Transformative learning can be a more readily applied benefit of this development. Transformative learning is “learning that occurs when individuals and society arrive at broader meaning perspectives and worldviews as a result of reconceptualizing previously unquestioned assumptions through rational and extrarational processes” (Gilpin-Jackson, 2014, p. 96). For transformative learning to occur, student journalists have to experience a traumatic event, feel a connection to the event or the people involved, and find personal resolve through their emotive responses to covering the trauma.

Recommendations

It is important for faculty who prepare journalists to teach in a way that leads students to critical journalistic decisions. “[D]ata suggest that choice, a construct related to autonomy, is important in moral growth” (Coleman & Wilkins, 2004, p. 514). For example, one approach in a trauma journalism course would be to examine traumatic events such as the Columbine and Virginia Tech shootings, in relation to how they were covered by the media. Then, have open discussions about the lessons learned from each event and how journalists could improve coverage of future traumatic events.

The DIT-2 could be a useful tool for journalism educators when presenting the moral dilemmas trauma journalists often face (Coleman & Wilkins, 2004). Using the DIT-2, faculty in postsecondary journalism programs could present students with various situations they may encounter in the field of trauma journalism and ask the students to rank their decisions. Rest (1988) found through using the DIT, moral reasoning is developmental and increases dramatically in high school and college, which was consistent with Kohlberg’s findings. If moral reasoning continues to develop for college students, it would be beneficial for students to not only learn how to cover traumatic events from a journalistic standpoint but to learn how to make adequate decisions on coverage according to their moral reasoning skills. Use of the DIT-2 with journalism students can be a tool to activate students’ moral development, as it places individuals in a state of mind to consider dilemmas from a moral standpoint (Auger & Gee, 2016).

It is necessary to note that socialization is an important part of moral development for journalists (Reinardy & Moore, 2007). Although moral development and moral reasoning are often treated as purely individualistic, the importance of social context should not be ignored (King, 2009). Socialization is an important part of induction into a profession, as those who have experienced the journalism field can impart lessons as they share their own stories and insights into their development as journalists (Reinardy & Moore, 2007). Through their stories, seasoned journalists can offer collegiate journalists glimpses into the dilemmas they have faced, and the choices they made in those moments.

Trauma Curriculum

In 1991, professor Bill Coté and psychiatrist Frank Ochberg, MD, created the first of its kind, Victims and the Media Program at Michigan State University, to teach students how to report on victims of violence (Johnson, 1999). Victims were brought into the classroom to share their experiences with students, be interviewed, and to critique media coverage (Johnson, 1999). Soon after, the University of Washington developed its own trauma journalism program under the guidance of professor Roger Simpson. Since then, programs have been created at the University of Missouri, Indiana University, and Columbia University, where the Dart Center for Trauma and Journalism is housed.

The University of Washington conducted a study in 1998 to assess the effectiveness of the trauma training journalism students had received since the program began 4 years earlier (Maxson, 2000). Researchers contacted alumni of the program who were working in the field of journalism. The former students reported experiencing trauma while covering stories such as dead bodies in a car wreck, a school shooting, and concerns for their own safety while covering a story about drugs in a dangerous area (Maxson, 2000). A major issue for the journalists in the study was a conflict of values and morals when it comes to victims and survivors. They felt as if producers and editors did not have a sensitivity to the reporters and photographers who had to knock on the doors of people who had just lost a loved one. An education reporter told a story of how she chased down high school students after a stabbing and remembered being disgusted with herself but still wanting to get the story. The graduates told researchers that what they learned at the University of Washington in trauma training, such as asking if the person wants to talk, waiting until they are comfortable to talk, and not asking the tough questions at the beginning of the interview, was helpful when confronted with traumatic events on the job (Maxson, 2000). Although the graduates said they felt that nothing could truly prepare someone for a traumatic event, having had trauma training was valuable (Maxson, 2000).

While postsecondary institutions are slow to incorporate trauma journalism into existing curricula, this study provided evidence from prior research that shows the need. Collegiate journalists need to learn the basic journalism skills of reading, writing, editing, and research. However, in the 21st century of increasing domestic traumatic events, teaching these journalists how to cover them with an ethical and moral foundation is imperative. As Kohlberg and Rest found, students in college are at a pivotal point in their moral development. Education takes place as adolescents are developing key psychological skills, including moral and ethical decision-making. Journalism educators will be doing a great disservice if students are not gaining these valuable reasoning skills as it relates to covering traumatic events.

Because covering traumatic events is not adequately addressed across collegiate journalism curricula, journalists new to the profession experience gaps in their preparation (Dworznik & Grubb, 2007). Intentional inclusion of trauma journalism in the context of moral judgment and reasoning in journalism curricula can aid journalists in two key ways. First, understanding impacts of trauma and revisiting trauma through interview can help journalists approach individuals and communities in more ethical ways (McMahon, 2010). Second, ethical treatment of those affected for the purposes of reporting a story can result in more in-depth reporting (McMahon, 2010).

Conclusion

Journalists have covered traumatic events for decades, but journalism education in the United States only began to incorporate trauma into the curriculum since 1991. Currently, only a handful of colleges and universities teach trauma in existing courses, have created new trauma journalism courses, or have developed trauma programs. Acts such as the Columbine massacre and the Virginia Tech shootings raised several concerns about how journalists should cover these traumatic events, as well as how to cope with repeated exposure to such events.

All postsecondary institutions are challenged with educating students in a particular subject area. Collegiate journalists studying trauma journalism will at some point face making decisions based upon their own moral reasoning. Regardless of the situation, students learning trauma journalism also need to learn how to develop their own moral reasoning in order to make sound judgments for news organizations.