Covering Disasters

1. Your plan.
• Take a few minutes during the first day's coverage to plan for the days to follow beyond the first day. Follow-up coverage is vital.
• Think about coverage before disaster occurs. Does your newsroom have sufficient resources to cover a disaster? Do you need an overall plan?
2. Your focus.
• Have certain people/teams responsible for different areas. Here is a breakdown of The Oklahoman's teams during the bombing in 1995 and the tornado outbreak in May 1999:
  Bombing
  - Law enforcement (the scene, investigative, tracing how donations are spent, etc.); victims (dead and injured. This includes a person responsible for accuracy of numbers and spelling of names.);
  - Help and recovery (how the community can help and how victims can get help); and
  - Business (effect on, insurance, etc.).
  Tornado
  - Areas hit by tornadoes (three teams that concentrated on Midwest City, Del City and Bridge Creek, Moore and other state areas);
  - Profiles of Life (stories about the victims' lives, person responsible for accuracy of numbers and spelling of names, etc.);
  - Business; and
  - Help and recovery.
• In initial days of coverage, meet with representatives of teams, copy editing desk(s), photography and graphics or arts department at least twice a day to discuss scope of coverage.
3. Your story affects people.
Teach your reporters and editors about how to approach and interview victims. Remind them during the coverage.
a) Emphasize that victims must be treated with dignity and respect.
b) Victims should be approached but allowed to say no. If the answer is no, the reporter should leave a card or number so victims can call back later. Oftentimes, the best stories come this way.
c) Each victim is an individual and must be treated that way, not just as part of an overall number.
d) Little things count. Call victims back to verify facts and quotes. Return photos (If possible, hire runners to get and return photos).
• Emphasize writing "Profiles of Life" about the victims, instead of the usual stories about how they died.
  a) Try calling funeral homes or a representative first to connect with a family member. In most cases, victims' relatives wanted to talk when they realized that the reporter was writing a "Profile of Life." Some of these led to bigger stories, too.
• Establish policies that affect your coverage.
  a) The Oklahoman reporters covered public memorial services for the victims of the bombing and tornado, but not private funerals.
  b) Don't rerun the bloody images on anniversaries and key dates. However, consider showing comparison images of destruction with current ones on the recovery's success.
  
4. Your community is important.
• Readers and viewers need outlets to provide help. They need forums to vent their feelings.

a) Use newspaper (or station) and online product: to provide forums on what people are thinking, words of encouragement, etc.; offer lists for ways people can help and how they have helped (acts of kindness).
b) Find ways people are helping and report on them throughout the recovery process. (This provides hope for the community.)
• That coverage must begin to focus on other parts of the community at some point. How much coverage is too much? When does the journalist become infatuated with a story when the public is not?
• A community is much more than a mass killing or disaster. Your newspaper or media must reflect that.
5. Your newsroom's 'Wall Effect.'
• Like a tennis ball that's hit against a wall, the emotional trauma could affect the reporters interviewing the victims.

a) Offer individual counseling and even group debriefing. (Professions such as police and firefighters now require debriefings.)
b) Offer meals to reporters and editors during the first days or weeks of coverage. Then gradually end these so they will be encouraged to go elsewhere - a return to their own normalcy.
c) Offer e-mails or memos that offer: encouragement; reminders; what day and date it is; tips to alleviate stress; letters and notes from readers.

 

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Victims face wall of grief

Most victims or victims' relatives face a wall of grief in the aftermath of a death or disaster. The wall blocks them from seeing that their lives may improve tomorrow. They don't see into the past or future; they see the present and feel the pain of the moment.
Then the reporter approaches them and violates their grieving space. Or, in a disaster, several reporters approach them.
So it's important to teach reporters and editors about coverage of victims. Here are several tips concerning that coverage:

• When approaching a victim, politely and clearly identify yourself before asking questions.
  
• Treat each victim with dignity and respect. Special AP Correspondent George Esper has said, "We should frame our questions with respect and research. We must be sensitive but not timid."
  
• Treat each person as an individual, not as part of an overall number. Each person is different and should be treated that way.
  
• Never ask "How do you feel?" or say "I understand how you feel." Simply say, "My name is..." and "I am sorry for what happened" Then ask questions such as "Could you tell me about your relative's life?" or "How did this occur?"
  
• Realize that you are violating the victim's space and may receive a harsh or emotional reaction at first. Don't react harshly if you receive this reaction.
  
• Allow the victim to say "no" after you make the approach and he or she refuses to answer your question. If the answer is "no," simply leave a card or number so the victim can call you later. Sometimes the best stories come this way.
  
• Know that little things count. Call the victims back to verify quotes and facts. Ensure photos are returned immediately.
  
• Try to call funeral homes or family representatives first to connect with a victim's family member. In most cases, relatives will want to talk about the victims' lives. In some cases, these may lead to bigger stories.
  Do not retell gruesome details on anniversaries or key dates unless they are vital to the story.
  
• Encourage reporters to avoid words such as "closure" to indicate that victims or members of the community have overcome the trauma connected with a death or disaster. Diane Leonard, whose husband, Secret Service agent Donald Leonard, was killed in the Oklahoma City bombing, said: "This will be a journey we'll be taking the rest of our lives. You can't put a time frame on when the critical time frame will be after a trauma. It's part of us, and always will be."

'The Wall Effect' in covering victims

Most journalists face inevitability in their careers: They must cover a tragedy and interview people who are pinned against a wall of grief. The wall blocks the victims from seeing that their lives may improve tomorrow. They only see who's in front of them and feel the pain of that moment.

Then comes the phone call or the knock on the door from the journalist. Then the questions. The victim's reaction can vary, but any journalist knows that a good interview involves an outpouring of emotion.

What can happen is what I call "The Wall Effect." Like a tennis ball thrown against a wall, the victim's emotion, all that grief, can bounce back and absorb the person facing the victims -- the journalist. The effect causes the journalist to feel the victim's pain and loss. The isolation. The guilt feelings. The separation from family members or friends who have died in the past or the anxiety that family members may be lost in the future. Then comes the loss of sleep and the increased feelings of stress.

Journalists usually first encounter the wall of grief at the beginning of their careers.

With little or no training, they are assigned the police beat. They learn and gain experience by covering one tragedy. Then another. Then another. Victims coverage becomes a repetitive part of journalists' careers that builds into more than just memories.

"The way I look at it is you sort of gather this human obligation," journalist Julian Borger, who covered the Bosnian war, told The Washington Post. "You accumulate it. You take this human obligation on your shoulders and do nothing with it except to write out your story. It may be a wonderful story, but that doesn't account for the personal notion of the cumulative obligation on your shoulders. You're left with all this accumulated guilt. It's like a crust you carry about."
That crust can grow by covering mass tragedies in Bosnia or crimes at a local or statewide paper. A person who has been a journalist for more than 20 years may have covered or been involved in the coverage of hundreds of victims. In Oklahoma, that would include the Oklahoma City bombing, the Edmond Post office massacre, the Sirloin Stockade and Girl Scout murders, other multiple killings and many other crimes. All tragic. All with victims.

Thirteen years ago, I covered a triple murder at Wynn's IGA in Edmond. Three Wynn's employees were herded into a stockroom early July 3, 1985, and shot at close range. Several hours after I had started covering the killings for The Oklahoman, I learned the victims' names. One was night manager Rick Cast. I hadn't realized until then that Rick, who was a fellow journalism student at Central State University, had taken the job six months earlier to save money so he could open a photography business.

One sidebar that I wrote about the killings included quotes from a friend who said Rick had talked abouth dying the day before his death. He had said that several of his relatives had died when they were 34. Rick was only five days from his 34th birthday.

Whether it is a mass tragedy or a friend's death, any journalist can suffer from a "Wall Effect."

Cratis Hippocrates, former head of journalism at Queensland University of Technology in Australia, and Dr. Gary Embelton, Queensland's head of psychology programs, have studied what happened to journalists who covered a tsunami that hit Papua New Guinea July 17, 1998. The tidal wave killed about 3,000 people. In a 1998 speech at Michigan State University, Hippocrates said, "Trauma in the newsroom exists. It's a real thing." He believes journalists, especially news managers, have difficulty in dealing with that trauma.

"Journalists have a history of denial. There is a perception that you are unprofessional if 'you can't handle it,' "Hippocrates said. "Journalists claim they are unaffected to their colleagues. But this false bravado takes its toll."

That's probably what happened to war correspondent Ernie Pyle.

In his story, Washington Post staff writer Paul Hendrickson explained what biographer James Tobin meant in naming his book "Ernie Pyle's War." "The title refers to two wars: the one he chronicled for millions of American readers stateside, and the one that steel-wooled his insides. The amount of death Pyle saw added up to his own genocide and Holocaust."

So much that Pyle predicted to friends that he would die after he arrived in the Pacific in early 1945. Before he was killed by a Japanese machine gunner on April 18, 1945, Pyle wrote: "I've been immersed in it too long. My spirit is wobbly and my mind is confused. The hurt has become too great."

Pyle's example shows what "The Wall Effect" can do to journalists, whether they cover war victims or victims of a disaster in Oklahoma City.

Tips to deal with the Wall Effect

News Managers or Editors:

1. Ask and listen. Ask whether the staff or team member is OK or has problems. Then listen. Encourage stair members to talk to others who have faced similar situations.
   
2. Let reporters take breaks. Allow them time to get away from the coverage. To participate in a family gathering. To do a hobby. To attend a sports event. To simply get away. Also, some driven reporters must be ordered to take a day off.
   
3. Know your reporters' limits. Allow them to even say "no." If they express concerns about a situation, listen -- and assign someone else if necessary.
   
4. Offer counseling. Many professions, including police and firefighters, offer debriefing sessions and counseling.
   
5. Offer continued training or reminders in stress and victims coverage. Do it occasionally during a year.

Reporter or team member:

1. Know your limits. If you've been given a troublesome assignment, politely express your concerns to your supervisor. Tell the supervisor that you may not be the best person for the assignment. Explain why.
   
2. Take breaks for yourself. A few minutes or a few hours away from the situation may help relieve your stress. And eat: Healthy, if possible, but don't miss a breakfast, lunch or dinner. You need the break and you need the food for energy.
   
3. Find someone who is a sensitive listener. It can be an editor or a peer; but you must trust that the listener will not pass judgment on you. Perhaps it is someone who has faced a similar experience.
   
4. Learn how to deal with your stress.
   
   • Attend functions that teach you about how to deal with stress or with victims coverage. Oftentimes, you can hear advice that will help you deal with your situation.
     
   • Attend a church, find a hobby or exercise -- or all three. These can be effective for your mental and physical well-being.
     
   • As Oklahoma City counselor Charlotte Lankard advises: "Write about it. Talk about it. Cry about it." She recommends exercise, even deep-breathing.
   
   
5. If your problems become overwhelming, seek counseling from a professional.

Memo (Example of memo sent to newsroom about tornado victims' Profiles of Life - May 4, 1999)

Everyone who collects information in the aftermath of Monday's tornadoes should be aware that we will do Profiles of Life on all victims who have died.

These are short profiles that tell about the victims' lives, not their deaths. They should be short stories with a beginning and end.

We will run these profiles as soon as they are written. Most will be 10 inches or less. (Please see attached examples from the bombing.)
Bryan Painter will coordinate the profiles with Steve Lackmeyer. Tamie Ross is contacting funeral homes and asking for their cooperation. All have been receptive.

We've created a basket called Proflies. If you logged in before 10:30 a.m. please restart your computer and the basket will appear in your basket menu. Please send all information about the person's life to this basket and let Bryan know.

We will have runners available to pick up photos, etc. Please ask Patti Shubert or Marcia Peeler if you need one. All photos must be placed in an envelope and sent to Jim Argo or Roger KIock for scanning into the system; let Bryan or Steve know that a mug has been obtained and given to Photo.
Here are some suggestions for compiling the profiles: