Building journalists’ resilience through mindfulness strategies

Abstract

Mindfulness-based meditation has earned its place in a variety of settings after studies reporting the benefits of mindfulness-based interventions for the treatment of a range of psychological and health disorders and for building resilience and well-being in a variety of occupational groups. In the field of journalism, the realities of journalists’ exposure to trauma while reporting have been well documented. This article is the first to link those areas of research – suggesting that mindfulness-based meditation offers promise to help journalists build resilience to post-traumatic stress. It also presents a conceptual map to theorise the broader potential benefits of journalists using mindfulness-based meditation, including help with industry-related stresses such as job insecurity, coping with emotions and battling potential ‘moral injury’ in reporting. It explains that pedagogical approaches for equipping journalists with mechanisms for working with their emotions, thoughts and professional values have been lacking. Some media organisations and universities have experimented with meditation practice for a range of reported reasons, but evidence-based research into the efficacy of such programmes for journalists is overdue. This article bridges the knowledge gap that brings together mindfulness-based meditation practice, journalists’ resilience and well-being, and the potential for enhanced work practice.

Keywords

Emotion ethics interventions journalism meditation mindfulness moral injury professional values trauma

Introduction

Mindfulness-based meditation (MBM) has earned its place in the health sciences literature over the past four decades with several studies reporting the benefits of mindfulness-based interventions (see Khoury et al., 2013 for meta-analysis of outcomes). A separate body of literature has emerged over the past three decades in the area of journalism and trauma (Buchanan and Keats, 2011; Newman and Nelson, 2012). This article offers a groundbreaking link between these two important fields – foreshadowing the potential for introducing mindfulness-based interventions to help journalists build resilience to post-traumatic stress. It also maps broader potential benefits of journalists using MBM, including help with industry-related stresses including job insecurity, coping with emotions and battling potential ‘moral injury’ in reporting. These inter-relationships are presented in a conceptual map (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Conceptual map showing inter-relationship between MBM and areas of potential benefit to journalism.

The facts of journalists’ exposure to trauma in their reporting along with employment insecurity in the midst of technological disruption to the traditional news media models have been well documented (e.g. McMahon and McLellan, 2008; O’Donnell et al., 2016; Ricketson, 2017). Some media organisations including Reuters and universities including Ryerson University and Columbia University (and its affiliate Dart Centre Asia Pacific) have held MBM sessions in apparent attempts to equip journalists with contemplative practices to improve their resilience and to help them cope with trauma and reduce stress, but to date no studies have conceptually linked such activities with the academic research in the various fields of journalism studies and health sciences.

This article does so by examining the evidence-based potential for the use of MBM practices to enhance journalists’ resilience – which has been proven in other studies to have the capacity to help journalists avoid trauma resulting from their reporting and stress and burnout because of industry disruption. We start with a brief review of the use of mindfulness in psychology before turning to specific studies on the benefits of MBM for a range of occupational groups. We then offer a short review of the literature on journalism and trauma and identify key factors where MBM holds promise for helping journalists cope with the repercussions of traumatic exposure and occupational stresses, situations where recognising one’s arising thoughts and emotions might be instrumental. The phenomenon of ‘emotional labour’ – where journalists need psychological tools to access and utilise their own emotions while reporting and producing news content – is also explored. We examine the notion of ‘moral injury’ where journalists might suffer because of their perception that their moral compass has been compromised by breaching fundamental values or ethics, which can in turn feed into their susceptibility to post-traumatic stress. Finally, we suggest the key meditation techniques that might hold value for journalists and explain our conceptual map (Figure 1), encapsulating the links between these areas, opening potential benefits of MBM for journalism.

Mindfulness and MBM

Mindfulness can be traced back more than two millennia to early Buddhism, where the cultivation of mindfulness was thought to be an important path towards alleviating suffering and attaining enlightenment (Bodhi, 2011). More recently, MBM techniques have been applied for psychotherapeutic purposes in clinical psychology, where mindfulness has been defined as a state of ‘awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment to moment’ (Kabat-Zinn, 2003: 145).

Mindfulness as a broader concept can be distinguished from MBM as a practice with applications in the health sciences. In psychology, mindfulness can be viewed as a dispositional trait in which individuals differ in their levels of mindfulness (Brown and Ryan, 2003), or as the practice of enhancing awareness and increasing mindfulness through practising MBM (Germer et al., 2005). As a trait, mindfulness is linked to enhanced psychological health and well-being. In correlational studies, higher levels of mindfulness have been associated with increased life satisfaction, self-esteem, empathy, optimism, emotion regulation and pleasant affect, as well as decreased neuroticism, rumination, dissociation and symptoms of depression and anxiety (for a review, see Keng et al., 2011). In addition, mindfulness appears to be associated positively with greater psychological resilience towards psychosocial stressors. Importantly, resilience has been defined as the tendency to overcome factors that place one at risk for psychological dysfunction, and the ability to adjust positively in the aftermath of a potentially traumatic event (Thompson et al., 2011). Higher trait mindfulness is associated with increased resilience in undergraduate students (Chamberlain et al., 2016; Wang et al., 2016) and health professionals (Kemper et al., 2015), and lower levels of burnout in clinical social workers (Thomas and Otis, 2010), emergency room (ER) nurses (Westphal et al., 2015), therapists (O’Donovan and May, 2007) and workers in general (Taylor and Millear, 2016). In relation to trauma, higher trait mindfulness is associated with decreased post-traumatic symptoms and symptom severity in war veterans (Dahm et al., 2015), individuals with substance use disorders and extensive trauma histories (Garland and Roberts-Lewis, 2013), individuals in at-risk professions such as firefighters (Setti and Argentero, 2014; Smith et al., 2011), and citizens who had experienced at least one traumatic event (Vujanovic et al., 2009). These reliable associations between dispositional mindfulness and increased psychological resilience and well-being across many populations have highlighted the potential positive psychological effects of increasing levels of mindfulness in at-risk populations. As we propose here, journalists may well be one such population.

As distinct from mindfulness as a psychological trait, MBM practice is a core component of a number of common standardised intervention programmes, including mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT; Segal et al., 2002), mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR; Kabat-Zinn and Hanh, 2009), dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT; Linehan et al., 1991) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT; Hayes and Wilson, 2003), complementing other techniques such as cognitive restructuring in MBCT, yoga in MBSR and values-based behaviour change in ACT. MBM, in particular, is thought to exert its beneficial effects in treatment through facilitating increased attention and emotion regulation, body awareness, values clarification, defusing from unpleasant thoughts and feelings, acceptance and change in perspective on the self (Hölzel et al., 2011; Keng et al., 2011). Indeed, increases in self-reported levels of mindfulness during the course of interventions predict improvement in a range of psychological symptoms and measures of well-being (for a review, see Keng et al., 2011). These skills are thought to enable individuals to identify and break free from maladaptive patterns of thinking and behaviour and respond with greater flexibility to challenging circumstances (Hölzel et al., 2011). Such adaptability – along with those benefits of increased attention and emotion regulation, values clarification and the ability to defuse from unpleasant thoughts and feelings – are crucial to preserving the mental health of journalists as they navigate potentially traumatic reporting experiences and the monumental changes in their occupational environments.

Of particular importance to this review, given the susceptibility of journalists to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) detailed below (e.g. McMahon, 2016; Newman and Nelson, 2012), mindfulness-based interventions appear to be effective in alleviating post-traumatic symptoms and PTSD across a range of trauma-exposed populations. In veterans diagnosed with PTSD, standard MBSR or MBSR-based programmes are associated with a decrease in PTSD symptoms (Bhatnagar et al., 2013; Kearney et al., 2012) and a decrease in depression symptoms (Kearney et al., 2012) from pre- to post-intervention. Across treatment studies with samples of victims of abuse, in which most or all participants are diagnosed with PTSD, MBSR was associated with a decrease in depression symptoms and PTSD symptoms (Goldsmith et al., 2014; Smith, 2009), and an increase in sense of coherence, self-compassion and acceptance of emotional experience from pre- to post-intervention (Smith, 2009). Even an intervention consisting solely of mindfulness meditation classes was associated with a decrease in PTSD symptoms (Centeno, 2013). Overall, there is mounting evidence to suggest that mindfulness-based interventions constitute an effective treatment for individuals exposed to trauma (for a review, see Banks et al., 2015). However, a meta-analysis of 10 randomised control trials of meditation interventions with adults diagnosed with PTSD after combat and violence exposure found that adjunctive meditation interventions improved PTSD and depression symptoms but better quality of evidence was required, and the effects of the interventions were ‘positive but not statistically significant for quality of life and anxiety’ (Hilton et al., 2017: 453).

Strategies to develop resilience are a key to better mental health outcomes. Mindfulness-based interventions may be protective against the negative effects of trauma by increasing levels of resilience, as seen in at-risk youth (Ortiz and Sibinga, 2017). Acting with awareness and non-judgmental acceptance of unpleasant thoughts and feelings, abilities which are strengthened by mindfulness, are inversely related to important PTSD-related symptoms such as dissociation and reactivity (Garland and Roberts-Lewis, 2013; Vujanovic et al., 2009). Simply, mindfulness interventions are likely to provide individuals exposed to trauma with more adaptive coping strategies, buffering the effects of trauma and leading to better health outcomes.

Mindfulness-based interventions have also been investigated in individuals working in professions which are innately stressful and emotionally demanding, with promising results for decreases in burnout, stress and other psychological symptoms such anxiety and depression. These programmes serve an important purpose in preventing the development of psychological disorders and assisting individuals to continue working effectively. In police officers, Christopher et al. (2016) found that a mindfulness-based resilience training programme was associated with pre- to post-intervention improvement in a wide range of psychological and health factors, including resilience, perceived stress, burnout, emotional intelligence and regulation, mental and physical health, anger, fatigue and sleep disturbance. In nurses, mindfulness-based interventions are consistently associated with pre- to post-intervention improvements in reported levels of stress and burnout (e.g. Craigie et al., 2016; Dos Santos et al., 2016; Duarte and Pinto-Gouveia, 2016; Foureur et al., 2013; Gauthier et al., 2015) as well as other psychological variables such as life satisfaction (Mackenzie et al., 2006), negative affect, compassion satisfaction (Craigie et al., 2016), self-compassion, compassion fatigue, experiential avoidance (Duarte and Pinto-Gouveia, 2016), symptoms of anxiety and depression (Dos Santos et al., 2016), and a sense of coherence and general health (Foureur et al., 2013). Overall, there is convincing evidence for the usefulness of mindfulness-based interventions to individuals working in highly stressful and emotionally demanding professions.

Journalism practice and trauma and the need for resilience building strategies like MBM

Potential trauma exposure is a problem facing journalists in their news media practice. A growing body of research by both mental health (e.g. McMahon, 2016; Morales et al., 2014; Novak and Davidson, 2013) and journalism researchers (e.g. Barnes, 2016; Beam and Spratt, 2009) has examined the relationship between media professionals and trauma exposure. Findings have established several vulnerability factors for psychological injury and a variety of trauma responses. Journalists working in war zones are indubitably at risk of severe physical threats such as gunfire, kidnap and bomb blasts (Matloff, 2004). Nonetheless, most journalists report domestically and in general reporting roles are exposed to car crashes, crime, violence and natural disasters (e.g. Barnes, 2016; Drevo, 2016; Dworznik, 2011). However, it seems that it is not just direct exposure on assignment that may be stressful for journalists, but even the anticipation of going to report in a war zone can induce severe stress and anxiety for some reporters (Greenberg et al., 2007). It is also not unusual for reporters to be attacked by the public while carrying out their professional work even to the point of experiencing sexual harassment (Parker, 2015). Along with these threats, ethical challenges and personal identification with those they are reporting upon can also contribute to trauma responses (Muller, 2010).

As well as threats and visual trauma exposure, reporters interview highly distressed people who may relate graphic details of witnessing death, experiencing tragedy, injury or sexual violations (Muller, 2010). It has been estimated that 80 to 100 per cent of domestic news professionals are confronted with at least one event during their professional lives that could induce PTSD (Dworznik, 2011; Newman et al., 2003; Pyevich et al., 2003; Smith, 2008; Teegen and Grotwinkel, 2001). Smith et al. (2015) concluded that while most journalists showed substantial resilience when exposed to traumatic situations, a minority risked ‘long-term psychological problems, including PTSD, depression, and substance abuse’. Estimates of PTSD occurrence range from 4.3 per cent (Pyevich et al., 2003) to 19 per cent (Drevo, 2016) for domestic reporters from the United States, and 8.6 per cent of Australian domestic trauma-reporting journalists (McMahon, 2016). However, more than one-quarter of an international group of war correspondents (28.6%) experienced lifetime PTSD (Feinstein, 2004). PTSD is one of several potential negative psychological manifestations of exposure to such situations. While the research on journalists found that the majority did not experience PTSD (Feinstein et al., 2002; Newman et al., 2003), other negative reactions such as dissociation (Freinkel et al., 1994), depression (Feinstein et al., 2002; Freinkel et al., 1994; Weidmann et al., 2008), substance misuse (Buchanan and Keats, 2011; Feinstein et al., 2002), somatic complaints (Hatanaka et al., 2010; McMahon, 2001) and negative thoughts about the self, including guilt (Browne et al., 2012; Pyevich et al., 2003), were evidenced.

The moment of trauma occurring is known as peritrauma. The high level of distress experienced in this moment is associated with severe trauma outcomes and PTSD (Backholm and Björkqvist, 2012; Hatanaka et al., 2010; McMahon, 2001). Furthermore, personal factors can also contribute to negative trauma impacts, such as a sense of being out of control, ethical challenges, personal identification with the story, empathy (Backholm and Björkqvist, 2012; Greenberg et al., 2007; Marais and Stuart, 2005; Muller, 2010; Nelson, 2011), lack of management support (Newman et al., 2003; Weidmann et al., 2008) and job stresses (Greenberg et al., 2007). Such factors can increase the potential for PTSD by making journalists reticent about mentioning their vulnerability or need for support after witnessing trauma because they are worried any indication of perceived weakness might result in them not being assigned to major news events in the future (Lyall, 2012; Ricketson, 2017). It is not uncommon for journalists experiencing PTSD to also experience high levels of self-blame and guilt (Browne et al., 2012). This may be partly due to trauma-affected journalists holding more negative views about themselves and the world (Pyevich et al., 2003) and links to the potential to ‘moral injury’ we identify in the next section.

There is recent acceptance by clinicians that serious psychological injury can occur via online exposure, and as such electronic trauma exposure has been included in the latest edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.) (DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association, 2013) as a potential cause of PTSD. With developments in technology, vicarious exposure to traumatic content for field and newsroom journalists, producers and editors seems to have increased (McMahon, 2016). The dynamic 24-hour, online news cycle potentially exposes media professionals to the graphic results of terror attacks, natural disasters and other violent content daily, including unedited vision forwarded by users and contributors or made available via social media (Feinstein et al., 2014; McMahon and McLellan, 2008; Weidmann and Papsdorf, 2010).

It is well documented that many journalism practices and news situations place journalists at risk of trauma exposure. Journalists with PTSD symptoms might exhibit a range of work-related detrimental factors including being late to work, missing deadlines, difficulty concentrating and sub-optimal performance (Drevo, 2016; Nelson, 2011; Smith et al., 2015). MBM is well established as a resilience-building tool, which might reduce the impact of journalists’ exposure to traumatic situations in their reporting. This suggests the need for studies aimed at endowing media workers generally with tools, routines and practices, which might strengthen their psychological resilience.

Other potential benefits of MBM: Coping with industry disruption, emotion and ‘moral injury’

Research in other areas indicates there could be further benefits of MBM for journalists – most notably improved capacity to cope with the stresses associated with industry disruption, developing a toolkit to become aware of emotion and an awareness of ‘moral injury’ where trauma can be complicated by a journalist’s feelings of guilt.

Whether or not journalists encounter severe traumatic events in their actual reporting, recent research confirms a high incidence of stress among journalists about their job security and work roles in a financially stretched and rapidly changing news industry environment (e.g. Domingo et al., 2015; O’Donnell et al., 2016; Zion et al., 2016). In Australia alone, more than 3000 journalists have lost their positions in traditional media outlets since 2010 through layoffs and other redundancy schemes, including 2500 journalists in the 2012–2015 period (Zion et al., 2016: 117). It has been described internationally as an era of ‘mind-blowing uncertainty’ (Domingo et al., 2015: 56). As O’Donnell et al. (2016) noted, Australian journalists made redundant in 2012 expressed feelings of ‘sadness, anger, disillusionment, betrayal, guilt, resignation and anxiety’ (p. 44). While job loss is not listed among the DSM-5 classification as a trigger for PTSD, it has been acknowledged as a contributor to other mental health conditions such as depression (Price et al., 2002). Zion et al. (2016) described media workers’ redundancies as ‘a critical life event that can have long-term deleterious impacts, ranging from the breakup of workplace communities to loss of income, social isolation, and poor physical and mental health outcomes’ (p. 120). Their study of 225 redundant Australian journalists found ‘a clear indication that the process of job loss was highly unsettling and traumatic’ (p. 121). Given the demands of the 24/7 digital newsroom and the further stresses of a heavily disrupted and contracted mainstream media environment, it is concerning that research has identified ‘personal existential issues’ (McMahon, 2016) and the ‘maelstrom of pressure’ (Muller, 2010: 5; Smith, 2008) of control, work demands, stress, empathy and organisational support as factors exacerbating negative trauma experiences for journalists. The lack of organisational and social support for media workers who have witnessed traumatic events or material adds to a feeling of isolation that has been pinpointed as a predictor of negative post-trauma outcomes (Beam and Spratt, 2009; Hatanaka et al., 2010; Newman et al., 2003; Weidmann et al., 2008). Considering the evidence from studies cited above of how MBM stands to reduce burnout, minimise stress and enhance well-being, there are strong occupational health arguments for journalists being introduced to MBM as a coping strategy. An indicator of the extent to which Australian journalists and photographers experience mental illness can be found in the 135 media workers’ compensation claims made in the first decade of this century, which Lyall (2012: 32–33) reported as costing media organisations an average of 26.4 weeks’ absence per employee and amounting to $4.2 million in compensation.

The connections between emotion and journalism are now on the international research radar with a developing body of outputs examining both the way journalists tap into and use emotions of their audiences and the emotional impact of journalists’ work on their own mental health within what has been called the ‘emotional public sphere’ (e.g. Bakir and McStay, 2018; Beckett and Deuze, 2016; Glück, 2016; Peters, 2011; Richards and Rees, 2011; Soronen, 2018; Wahl-Jorgensen, 2013, 2016). Journalists engage in ‘emotional labour’ as part of their work – requiring them to adjust or suppress emotions in a range of contexts, a negative consequence of which can contribute to ‘emotional exhaustion’ (Hopper and Huxford, 2017: 93). Richards and Rees (2011) examined the emotional labour engaged in by producers of media content who are suspected of suppression of emotion due to libertarian values like the notion of objectivity. This also has support in the psychology literature where emotion and its management has recently been identified as a key element in determining whether or not professionals will succumb to PTSD and affiliated conditions. Some key risk factors for PTSD among journalists are related to a journalist’s own emotions, including empathy (Nelson, 2011), temperament (e.g. negative emotionality such as neuroticism and hostility; Marais and Stuart, 2005), difficulty with emotional expression (Teegen and Grotwinkel, 2001), avoidant styles of coping (Smith, 2008), peritraumatic response (Hatanaka et al., 2010; McMahon, 2001) and guilt cognitions (Browne et al., 2012). Other emotion-related factors have also been identified as important to journalists’ resilience, including emotion regulation (Nelson, 2011) and personal hardiness (Smith, 2008). Yet there is a gap in the area of the research related to pedagogical approaches to the teaching of emotion in journalism, identified as lacking in any of the introductory news writing textbooks surveyed by Hopper and Huxford (2017). The most prominent advice they found the textbooks offered to new journalists was to suppress emotions, with no indication of how this might be achieved (p. 102). The classic journalistic ideal of objectivity was invoked to encourage reporters to maintain a ‘sense of detachment’ (p. 101). Such shallow instructional advice supports the need for research into MBM techniques – including emotional focusing mentioned below, which can offer journalists tools for internal access and assessment in the midst of an emotion-charged reporting or workplace situation.

The domain of journalism ethics is also a field ripe for the testing of MBM as a system of reflection – again with an emphasis upon the building of resilience to minimise trauma. MBM can inform journalists’ notions of professional identity and their abilities to reflect in the moment upon their moral or ethical behaviours. In their seminal work on resilience, Southwick and Charney (2012: 171) identified 10 resilience factors as they related to an individual. All could apply in a journalistic context, but four stood out as particularly relevant:

Facing fear (with high relevance to traumatic situations);

Mental and emotional training (including perhaps MBM);

Enhancing cognitive and emotional flexibility;

Solidifying the moral compass (which we deal with now).

Southwick and Charney (2012) devoted their fourth chapter to the ‘moral compass, ethics and altruism: doing what is right’. There, they argued that ‘adherence to our own moral compass and resilience are often inextricably linked to one another’ (p. 67).

Studies also link the literature on mindfulness to various occupational groups’ professional values and their ethical decision-making via this so-called ‘moral compass’. When this is considered in a media context, the reliability of a journalist’s professional values and ethically based ‘moral compass’ could enhance their resilience to negative post-trauma outcomes (Muller, 2010). According to McMahon (2016), early evidence suggests ethical factors (such as where journalists perceive they have breached their ethical obligations) combined with poor organisational support might be more problematic for journalists than actual exposure to potentially traumatic events (e.g. Muller, 2010; Smith, 2008). Yet when journalists feel they have been able to report in accordance their own moral compasses, a potentially traumatic news event might in fact become a positive professional experience (McMahon, 2016; Muller, 2010). Existential and personal dilemmas about whether it is ethical to report a particular event or to interview traumatised sources, combined with organisational stresses such as declining resources and job displacement (Deuze et al., 2010; O’Donnell et al., 2016) can all be counter-productive to post-event mental health and well-being (Backholm and Björkqvist, 2012; McMahon, 2016; Smith, 2008). Some research projects have linked the likelihood of burnout and PTSD with the strength of professional values, moral compass and ethical standards. Altun (2002) surveyed 160 Turkish nurses and found a relationship between their experience of burnout and the professional values they espoused. Those who had a high sense of personal accomplishment nominated freedom, altruism and truth as priority values.

Having a core identifiable meaning and purpose to one’s role as a journalist – along with training to improve one’s social networks and mechanisms for coping – were identified as important resilience factors by Novak and Davidson (2013). This was supported by a recent application of social identity theory to a cohort of Swiss journalists which found ‘journalists’ professional identity serves as a resource that helps them to cope with uncertainty’ (Grubenmann and Meckel, 2017: 732). Furthermore, Sherwood and O’Donnell (2018) conceptualised professional identity as a set of values and work practices which were ‘contested and complicated’ (p. 1). O’Donnell et al. (2016) found in their survey of 225 journalists who had been laid off between 2012 and 2014 in Australia, ‘more journalists described their identity as weak or fading (64.6 per cent) rather than intact (31.4 per cent)’ (p. 1033), indicating a journalistic professional identity might not survive beyond redundancy. This indicates that professional identity alone might not be enough to sustain a journalist through harrowing life experiences such as redundancy. Perhaps techniques designed to entrench it, examine it, nourish it and draw upon it might just offer the solace a practising journalist needs on difficult assignments. In explaining the notion of ‘mindful journalism’, Pearson (2014: 45) suggested journalists adopt a ‘mindful approach to their news and commentary accommodating a reflection upon the implications of their truthseeking and truth-telling as a routine part of the process’.

This is underscored by the fact that the notion of ‘moral injury’ – transgressions upon one’s moral compass or professional codes – has been listed as a risk factor for PTSD among journalists (Drevo, 2016). A 2017 study of 114 journalists who had covered the refugee crisis in Europe found that while the participants showed few signs of PTSD and depression and were not drinking to excess, they did report ‘difficulties related to moral injury, defined as the injury done to a person’s conscience or moral compass by perpetrating, witnessing, or failing to prevent acts that transgress personal moral and ethical values or codes of conduct’ (Feinstein and Storm, 2017). Moral injury has been defined in various ways, with Shay (2014) stating that it involves someone being forced to breach their moral compass by someone in authority (e.g. the journalist told to invade privacy and grief in doing the death knock story), while Litz et al. (2009) extended it to include any behaviour where someone has chosen to breach their moral compass, whether they have opted to do so themselves or the breach has been imposed upon them.

This notion of the ‘moral compass’ – described by Southwick and Charney (2012) as ‘inextricably linked’ to resilience – has arisen often in the literature on journalism and trauma (p. 67). Muller (2010) expressed it in the positive, suggesting the ability to report according to their moral compass paved the way for rich and meaningful professional experiences for journalists. Backholm and Björkqvist (2012) and Smith (2008) framed it in the negative – that stress increased when media professionals were torn by ethical questions such as the interviewing of traumatised sources in a ‘death knock’ situation. Muller (2010: 8) added questions of taste or decency to the death knock as further examples of the skewing of ethical boundaries increasing distress and post-trauma effects. In their comparison of post-trauma outcomes among journalists covering school shootings in the United States in 1999 and in Finland in 2007 and 2008, Backholm and Björkqvist (2012) identified the breach of personal ethical boundaries as one of three key peritrauma predictors.

Emotion, ethics and the likelihood of post-traumatic stress were examined in combination in a Norwegian study of journalists covering the 2011 Oslo terror attack, which found news journalists working on stories related to crises could experience feelings of guilt after confronting ethical dilemmas about how to proceed without causing further harm to victims (Backholm and Idås, 2015). They identified this emotion of work-related guilt had an indirect effect on the relationship between the exposure to such ethical dilemmas and the severity of PTSD reactions and suggested news organisations could address the issue by preparing journalists for the potential exposure to ethical dilemmas in assignments. Guilt was identified as a symptom of PTSD in the DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).

Drevo (2016) identified moral injury after a traumatic event as a predictor of occupational-related outcomes among journalists. This linking of a journalist’s professional and ethical values and ‘moral compass’ with the potential for ‘moral injury’ by sensing one has compromised them – or has felt compelled to do so – underpins our suggestion that strategies for accessing and reflecting upon one’s ethics and values should be included in any meditation regime for journalists to help build resilience.

Meditation techniques with potential application in journalism

A range of meditation techniques are used internationally; both in scientific interventions and in daily practice by meditators. Hölzel et al. (2011: 537) identified different meditation techniques and their health science applications including instructions to participants, findings and identified areas of the brain they had been proven to impact, including (a) attention regulation, (b) body awareness, (c) emotion regulation (including reappraisal and exposure, extinction and reconsolidation) and (d) change in perspective on the self. While there might be many MBM techniques that could be used effectively among journalists, these four stand out as candidates for holding therapeutic benefits and promise as resilience builders.

MBM appears to be a versatile practice that can be utilised for interventions using alternative modes of delivery (such as audio recordings and Internet modules) and continue to have a therapeutic effect. Results have been found with other cohorts even in alternative meditation intervention delivery modes such as a 1-day workshop followed by daily at-home meditation for 8 weeks (Foureur et al., 2013), 5-minute meditation sessions prior to each shift for 30 days (Gauthier et al., 2015) and even via online modules instead of face-to-face instruction (Kemper and Khirallah, 2015).

Conclusion

This article has advocated the use of MBM practice to be introduced to journalists as a way of building resilience to help address the problem of journalists’ exposure to trauma. It has further suggested there could be benefits beyond the trauma domain, in the areas of reducing stresses resulting from the disrupted media workplace, emotional recognition and adjustment and in ethical reflection. A vital conceptual aspect of the discussion above is the intertwined nature of the phenomena covered and their potential relationships to MBM, as illustrated in the conceptual map (Figure 1). It has been established that MBM can be used to treat those who have experienced PTSD, but also that it can help build resilience among those who might be exposed to trauma and thus help them avoid its potential impacts on their mental health. It can also help minimise stress and burnout and shore up well-being, vital when journalists are undergoing unprecedented career disruptions. It might too provide techniques for accessing emotions and ethics – looping back to the building of resilience because of the relatively new phenomenon of ‘emotional labour’ and the evidence that trauma has been linked with so-called ‘moral injury’.

While its effectiveness with journalists across these domains awaits formal study, the practical use of MBM with journalists has been implemented informally, as reported by Faizer (2017a, 2017b) and as mentioned above. It has recently surfaced in the context of a pay and conditions dispute between Reuters journalists and their US management, with journalists taking ‘anywhere from 15- to 20-minute meditation and yoga breaks, as well as mindfulness and breathing exercises’ amid an industrial standoff with employers (News Guild, 2017). In 2018 Reuters joined with the University of NSW and the Black Dog Institute to introduce a training module called ‘Raw Mind Coach’ aimed at building resilience among journalists which included 12 guided meditations. Reuters Head of Journalist Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy Dean Yates reported about 250 journalists worldwide had signed up to the programme in its first month of offering (Yates, 2018).

All these elements justify measures to help shore up journalists’ resilience as the prospect of either themselves or close work colleagues actually developing PTSD becomes a daunting reality. Teegen and Grotwinkel (2001) and Drevo (2016) have identified the fact that younger journalists with less experience were more likely to exhibit PTSD symptoms as a result of exposure in their journalism practice. Add to this the workplace stresses of a displaced industry where journalists face ‘uncertainty and fear about the sector’s future work prospects’ (Zion et al., 2016: 119), the onus falls upon journalism educators to endow students with resilience to help them cope with the documented PTSD risk factors along with disruptive career events. The empirical evidence shows that MBM offers a useful technique to help journalists survive their assignments and industry upheaval with their mental health intact.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Dr Clarissa Carden of the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research for her valuable research assistance with this article. They are also appreciative of the insightful feedback from reviewers, which has been incorporated into the published article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research and the Griffith University School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science for the preparation of this article.

ORCID iD

Mark Pearson

Author biographies

Mark Pearson is a Professor of Journalism and Social Media in the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. His recent books are The Journalist’s Guide to Media Law (6th edition forthcoming with Mark Polden, Allen and Unwin, 2019), Mindful Journalism and News Ethics in the Digital Era (with Shelton A Gunaratne and Sugath Senarath, New York: Routledge, 2015) and Blogging and Tweeting Without Getting Sued (Allen and Unwin, 2012). He tweets from @journlaw and blogs from .

Cait McMahon is a registered psychologist and the founding managing director of Dart Centre Asia Pacific since 2003. Dart Asia Pacific has its headquarters in Melbourne, Australia and holds trainings and other programmes throughout the Asia Pacific region. McMahon has been interested in the nexus of journalism and trauma since working as staff counsellor at The Age newspaper in Melbourne in the mid-1980s and 1990s. This interest pushed her to pursue postgraduate research on trauma-exposed journalists in 1993 with subsequent publications. Her PhD focused on Australian trauma-reporting journalists, post-traumatic stress and post-traumatic growth. She has received a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM), one of Australia’s highest civil accolades, for her work with journalists and trauma.

Analise O’Donovan is a Professor and Head of the School of Applied Psychology at Griffith University, Queensland, Australia. Her primary areas of research include effective training of clinical practitioners, positive psychology and trauma. As a clinical psychologist, she has also worked in a range of mental health settings. She was the recipient of the Australian Learning and Teaching Council Australian Awards for University Teaching and has considerable experience providing training and workshops in a range of areas, including well-being at work and supervision.

Dustin O’Shannessy is a doctoral candidate and research assistant in the School of Applied Psychology at Griffith University, Australia.

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