Trauma reporting and its impacts on journalists: A case study of leading Chinese news outlets

The reporting of traumas such as disaster, war and conflict often generates imposing newspaper headlines as news deemed to have impact, proximity and scale tends to attract the audience’s attention. Journalists are asked to seize “immediate, dramatic and novel” news to evoke “excited curiosity”, by digging and exposing “the blood, injury and violence”, a trend that is more evident in commercial news outlets. 1 Reports about conflicts and disasters also conform to the fourth-estate mantle of serving the public interest: to inform, educate and unite the public, especially in the event of a tragedy. In China, there is now more room for journalists to navigate when reporting such topics and since the 1990s there have seen numerous occasions when Chinese correspondents have been able to cover traumatic events like disaster, war and conflicts in and out China. This has been aimed at domestic and even international audiences. 2 Conventionally, journalists are deemed to be the impact-makers through their agenda-setting and framing, but the impact on themselves is largely neglected. This omission is further complicated by the profession’s negative attitude towards stress and its symptoms, or generic help-seeking.