Live News - A Survival Guide - International Federation of Journalists

CHAPTER 6Post-Traumatic Stress Disorderfrom across the region came together to discuss investigative journalismand reporting on corruption. The most successful sessionwas on post-conflict stress. In an atmosphere where professionalsfelt safe to speak, hard-boiled correspondents who had covered theconflicts of the previous decade were able to recognise in themselves,and talk about, symptoms that indicated ‘unfinished business’.The Media Diversity Institute reported on the Igalo conference,saying: “To everybody’s surprise, the participants from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro and Kosovoopened up with such honesty and a clear need to contribute to thetopic, that we required additional time to wrap up the session. Itincluded a number of eyewitness accounts of war crimes, somerelated only with great difficulty. Some of the participants hadreported from the most notorious Balkans killing fields. How to doso and not be affected? In this session the macho sentiments thatprevail in Balkans journalism appeals had been stripped to thelevel of touchy confessions. Our participants discovered PTSDsymptoms in themselves, and began to look more closely at relationswith families and friends. They emphasised the unbridgeablegap dividing the indigenous journalists and ‘professional’ warreporters. They talked about my country’s and other country’swars, sometimes with resignation, often with disappointment.Those who contributed expressed their need for appropriate trainingin emotional awareness. (Counselling, group work, workshops,and therapy). They asked questions about how to deal with emotionsand why they mattered. In general terms participants agreedthat the main goal surrounding the protection of journalistsshould be to serve the betterment of journalism — most importantlyto create more balanced journalism.”Vedat Spahovic, a freelance journalist who reported fromSarajevo before leaving to study PTSD, confirmed from his own perspectivethat journalists from within each country had a worsetime of it because they were seeing their own people being killed,they had not chosen to be war reporters and they could not leavethe area. “I don’t know what is good about being a war reporter. Inever liked being shot at. It is very different being a home warreporter than being a war reporter coming in from outside.”When Dr Feinstein presented his research at the Freedom Forumpanel in 2001, Priyath Liyanage from the BBC World Service calledfor more work on the impact on local journalists. He noted that a92