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4.2 Dealing with traumatised people
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Journalism Skills for Engaged Citizens
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More on Interviews
This week we delve further into the art of interviewing, and watch and discuss some good and bad examples involving the key characters in Newstown.
Rencontrer les enseignants
Dr. Denis MullerSenior Lecturer and Senior Research Fellow
Centre for Advancing Journalism
Dr. Margaret SimonsAssociate Professor and Director
Centre for Advancing Journalism
Welcome back to the course.
I'm Denis Muller, and
this week we're going to talk about a particular type of interviewing.
Interviewing traumatised people.
Margaret last week, talked about interviewing skills generally.
Some of the things she had to say, especially about empathy, and dress,
and using open questions are very appropriate for
the interviewing of traumatised people.
No matter how people may look or
be acting in the immediate aftermath of some traumatic event.
Whether it's a bush fire or a motor accident or some other tragedy.
They will be traumatised and we know this from the psychology.
They enter a recoil phase.
They take stock.
They try to re-orient themselves to the new reality and they will be in shock.
And it shows up in all sorts of different ways.
As you can see from the slide, some people get euphoric.
We know that after the Black Saturday bushfires, people lay on the ground and
beat the ground with their fists and yelled and screamed and laughed out loud.
Just because they'd survived.
So these symptoms of euphoria, of hysteria, of hyperactivity,
running around talking to people, looking at everybody except themselves.
These are all symptoms of the hyper-arousal or
the shock effect which follows on from being involved in a disaster.
But other reactions are quite the opposite.
And there is this very dangerous state called dissociation.
And when you see people in this state,
the very important thing is to leave them alone.
because what they've done, is they've shut out the reality.
They've closed down completely at an emotional level because they just can't
cope with what's going on.
And if you intrude on that and drag them back, into the current reality,
then you will do psychological harm to them, for which there's no justification.
So if you see somebody in a trance-like state, leave them alone.
Some people will be crying, they'll be upset, obviously, some people
will be very upset, and plainly, you don't go anywhere near those people.
But some people who are just quietly crying or
interacting with other people, they are actually in touch with what's going on.
They are exhibiting reasonably healthy responses to the trauma and
you may approach those people, gently of course.
But without the same risk of doing harm
as you would be taking if you were to approach somebody who was dissociative.
So, take some time to observe how people are behaving before you make an approach.
So that you are at least minimising the risk.
We can't completely eliminate the risk of doing harm, but
our ethical obligation is to minimise that risk.
And if you're in doubt, seek advice from somebody.
It could be probably medical people or emergency services people who are about.
And you can always obtain advice from people like that.
The main thing to remember in the aftermath of a disaster.
And no matter what the scale of it is,
whether it's the loss of one person, or the loss of hundreds of people,
is that they will have been overwhelmed.
There will have been some enormous force, a terrible collision,
a flood, a fire, something which has
overwhelmed them completely and caused various, quite severe losses.
And in particular, the loss of independence, very important to recognise
people who are in the aftermath of a disaster will feel really quite helpless.
And there's an example from the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria in 2009.
A woman says that, I was standing there with everything I owned.
I had lost everything.
I had a completely useless set of keys to a house, a car and
a business that were all now gone.
And so that sense of being absolutely bereft really eats away of
people's sense of self, their place in the world.
The loss of independence brings with it a loss of autonomy.
Our capacity to control our own destiny, even our own bodies.
Sometimes in the aftermath of trauma, of course,
people lose control of their bodily functions.
It's a symptom of a much wider sense of loss of control.
And so what is important in
the recovery process is to help rebuild that sense of personal autonomy.
And we can do that as journalists by placing as much
power as possible in the hands of the survivors with whom we're talking.
We can by talking to them.
We help reduce their isolation.
And we can diminish that sense of helplessness.
We have an ethical obligation to do it.
We can do it just by doing our job and if we do it well,
there's a much better chance that we will get an interview, get a story, and
we'll get a better one than we would have got had we behaved unethically or
unprofessionally or unfeelingly.
So this matter of empowerment, overcoming the loss of autonomy.
How do we do that?
The first thing is to make an honest and empathetic approach.
I'm Dennis Muller from the Age Newspaper.
I'm making an approach to you because you appear to been caught up in this disaster.
Make it clear that you are more concerned for
their welfare than you are for getting just the story.
So you are conveying to them that you are not here just to exploit you,
I actually care about you.
And you need to mean it, of course.
Give them the power to stop the encounter at any time.
Sometimes, they'll cry.
That's an opportunity to say, do you want to continue or not?
Ask open questions.
Let them tell you what they want.
They have very little power left.
But one thing they do have is the power to decide.
Whether to talk, whom to talk to, and what to talk about.
And you need to keep those powers of theirs in the forefront of your mind.
Related to this is this rather difficult question of consent.
Now often in journalism we don't need to get people's consent.
Plainly, if a politician is holding a press conference,
we don't need to ask him if he consents to be quoted.
But generally speaking, we do ask people, don't we?
We say we would like to interview you.
Do you agree?
And people will generally say yes or no and that is what we call simple consent.
Certainly in journalism, we very rarely are able to get people to give
informed consent simply because we can't give them a risk and benefit analysis.
And we can't tell them what the consequences will be of talking to us.
But certainly simple consent is usually the standard.
However, in the aftermath of a disaster,
survivors are in no position even to give simple consent.
So what do we get?
What we get is what I call instinctual consent.
And it's based on the survivor's assessment on how you,
as the journalist are treating them.
Are you recognising and respecting their autonomy?
They don't use those words of course, but that's really what they're assessing.
Are you treating me with respect?
Are you interested in me as a person?
Are you trying to exploit me or are you not trying to exploit me?
Those sorts of questions are what lies behind the decision
to either agree to an interview or to refuse one.
And we know from the research after the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria,
that in fact this is sufficient.
Because of the 27 people that were interviewed for
that research in depth, 23 of them said, look,
the exposure that I got through the media did me more good than harm.
And that was the because the journalist they had been dealing with,
had been honest with them, had treated them respectfully,
had kept their promises to them, had respected and acknowledged their autonomy.
Some people cry.
Some people cry spontaneously and
that's an opportunity to offer to pause and see what they say.
Mostly they continue.
If you are gentle with them and
considerate, let's say look it'll be okay, just give me a few minutes.
You can offer them perhaps some water to drink, something of that kind.
Just be humane.
If they don't want to continue, you must accept that of course.
But inducing people to cry is harmful.
Because it's exploitative and it undermines their sense of self.
They are already feeling dependent.
And if you back them into a position where you are reducing them to cry,
then you are actually setting back their recovery and not assisting it.
And that is ethically unjustifiable.
So, best practice, empower the survivor, demonstrate that you acknowledge and
respect their autonomy, be empathetic but don't be pitying or condescending.
Just be decent with people.
Show that you put their welfare ahead of the story.
Be mindful of the fact that after 48 hours or
so, people no longer want to talk about what has happened.
They want to focus on what is happening now.
And what the future might hold.
And to drag them back, after about 48 hours, and have them
recount the experience that they went through can be psychologically damaging.
And once more can set back their recovery.
Ask open questions.
Are you able to tell me what happened?
What would you like to tell me about the person they may have lost.
You can follow up with questions of clarification of course,
ask them to expand if they wish, but
don't push them to answer questions they don't want to answer.
Certainly, avoid saying, I know how you feel.
You simply don't.
And the answer that people, of course, want to give is, well,
how do you think I feel?
And don't editorialise, don't say oh, that must have been terrible or
you must feel better about that.
You simply don't know.
And you're layering your reactions onto them.
Once more, it is a failure of empathy and a failure to recognise autonomy.
Last week Margaret, in talking about interviewing generally,
spoke about barriers.
And when you are dealing with traumatised people,
it is very important that you minimise the barriers.
One way of doing it is to think carefully about how you are dressed.
Remember that survivors, or people caught up in tragedies,
will very often be poorly dressed.
They might be dressed in borrowed clothing.
Their clothing might be bloodstained.
It might be ripped.
If you show up in a bright, shiny,
white suit and shiny shoes, you are putting yourself above them.
Remember, if you are going to cover these sort of things,
you don't have to dress down, but dress sensibly.
So that you're likely not to create a barrier like that.
In all of your dealings with people, don't be emotional.
It can be very difficult because sometimes the situation is confronting
by themselves might be very upset in a way that upsets you.
And there may be very unpleasant things going on around you.
There could be dead bodies.
There might be immediate danger to you all.
But the important thing is to try to keep your own emotions under control and
try to be engaged but professional.
Now we are going to show you a series of videos of
interviewing a person who's in the position of a survivor.
And we are going to show you a video which we think is good practice and
another video which we say is bad practice.
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