Moral of the story

by Maira Butt and Samantha Fink

Megan Taros is the kind of journalist who strived to hold power to account. To her, writing about things that affected marginalized communities and put pressure on governments felt like her calling. Under the pressures of the fast-paced newsroom, however, she felt this calling crack.

“One thing that gets in the way of good coverage is ‘We need this to run now,’” she says. “Sometimes people are encouraged to rush [stories] and not take the time that they deserve. If we want to make amends with communities we’ve harmed, we can’t fx them with 500 word stories.”

Taros experienced this frst-hand when writing a story about rent infation in Pheonix. When rent prices seemed to skyrocket overnight, she had 24 hours to put together a story. With limited time and competing priorities, Taros didn’t get a chance to speak to prospective tenants-–an oversight that left her readers less than satisfed.

“It made me feel terrible,” she recalls. “I feel like I did leave out a crucial voice.”

Ridden with regret and not being able to take back what was already burned onto the internet, Taros suffered a moral injury.

Moral injuries, also known as ‘injuries of the soul’, occur when a person feels they have transgressed their own moral code by engaging in, failing to prevent, or witnessing an act that goes against their own value system. It’s not a phenomenon unique to journalism, having been commonly observed in the military and, in healthcare workers.

It was brought to the attention of journalists in 2015, after a study by Antony Feinstein revealed that reporting on the migrant crisis and being unable to do anything but witness had affected the journalists who had been there.

According to Clothilde Redfern, Director of the Rory Peck Trust, an international NGO supporting journalists, moral injuries will affect a quarter of the journalism profession. They are more common among the industry than PTSD, even in war reporting, however, over half of journalists don’t even know what they are.

Part of the reason is because the word ‘moral’ can be loaded for journalists. Objectivity and impartiality are central to the profession and to ethical guidelines from IPSO, IMPRESS and the NUJ. “If you’re having ‘moral injuries,’ you’re in the wrong profession. Your values have nothing to do with your job. Go and be an activist,” said one respondent in a Facebook discussion conducted as background research. And this was not an isolated reaction: the vast majority of respondents were appalled at journalists having moral dilemmas in reporting. “You have totally misunderstood the purpose of journalism,” said another. be the reason newsrooms miss the symptoms of moral injury in their employees.

But Redfern says it’s impossible for people to be objective, and instead of impartiality, journalists should focus on authenticity. “We’re all humans, it’s more important to be transparent about where you’re telling the story from and where you come from, than pretend to wear this cloak of objectivity and impartiality,” she says.

According to Redfern, we can distinguish between moral dilemmas and moral injuries. “A moral dilemma that is making you uncomfortable can be worked through with a professional, a mentor, or your editor,” she says. ““A moral injury will be so diffcult to manage that you may not even be able to work.”

In her experience, the “injured” often experiences guilt and anger at frst, possibly leading to depression and burnout. They may even lose motivation and drop out of journalism. When things get bad, these journalists come to the Rory Peck Trust, who support them through their Therapy Fund.

In an increasingly competitive and digital climate, there is pressure over writers to publish as quickly as possible. However, this rat race can leave journalists later wondering if they’d reported as faithfully as possible.

Melissa Stanger, a former journalist at INSIDER and now a psychotherapist who specialises in working with reporters, says: “I’ve had times where clients have said ‘I wish I did something differently,’ not because they made a source feel uncomfortable but because they felt it was reported with not enough humanity in the piece.” She adds: “I’ve also had clients tell me how hard it was to not break down and lose composure. They’ve said, ‘I really wanted to break the fourth wall, and just be with this person, not as a reporter but as a human.’”

Redfern believes it is this perception that emotion equates to unprofessionalism that can lead to stigma for a person suffering from a moral injury. “We’re emotional beings,” she says. “It’s part of our biological makeup.” The pressure to publish can also

As one solution, Redfern thinks journalists need to see moral injuries as regular parts of the profession and embed their existence into practice. The Rory Peck Trust encourages newsrooms to use moral injury assessments as a matter of course around sensitive stories to keep tabs on writers’ mental health. That way, the newsroom will lose less staff as well—to occasional mental health days, or permanently.

Many journalists perceive misinformation and disinformation as the biggest threats facing journalism in the modern age.

According to Redfern, it’s moral injuries. “Really good journalists are rare,” she says. “They are really invested in what they’re doing and therefore more likely to suffer from moral injury because of their investment in their work.”

Far from being stigmatised, she feels these journalists should be cherished. “We need those people, we really, really need those driven people who will dedicate their life to their vocation of uncovering wrongdoing in the world and holding power to account, just like we need all the vocational teachers, nurses and doctors. They’re purpose-driven people, and we as a society need far more of those.”