Silent Battles: A look at the mental health of war reporters

Para leer este articulo en español, haga clic acá

“I saw parts of a human body dismembered and scattered on the street, then I saw a burned body in an alley that was still smoking,” says Cesar Gonzalez, a cameraman for NBC, after being sent on his assignment for the day. He was the first to arrive at the scene, even before the police arrived. “I was in complete shock.

First my mind told me that those were not real human bodies, that they were toys or mannequins.”

Like Gonzalez, many journalists are exposed daily to similar scenarios, where they are confronted with painful images, difficult to digest and full of suffering. The work of a journalist is built around stories in which its protagonists seek to give voice to those who do not have one and expose reality in its rawest state. However, in this process of telling and making visible the stories of others, journalists often leave aside their own emotional well-being, forgetting that they themselves are also part of the human narrative.

Yuri Cordero, Producer of Univision’s Primer Impacto, tells how in her program “We see children being killed in the most grotesque way, we see videos that are so hard… Two things happen, either you become so cold that it doesn’t affect you anymore or it becomes so hard -the job- that sometimes you even take the pain home with you.”

It could be said that it is an open secret that it has been taken for granted that journalists are not permanently impacted by the events they cover.

Exposure to the traumatic events they report on has been considered part of their work and a normal risk of the profession, similar to that of an emergency doctor or a police officer.

Many have considered journalists who cover death and destruction to be unusually emotionally strong, somehow immune to the reverberating impact of the human suffering they witness.

“I remember speaking to a psychologist once and saying: well, I’ve been doing the news for decades, and I have to report on many dead and wounded people, but it doesn’t affect me. And she stopped me there and said, ‘No, no, no, that’s not true. It does affect you, all the things you see affect you,’” said Jorge Ramos, who recently stopped being co-anchor of Noticias Univision, with more than 40 years of experience, and one of the most prestigious television journalists in the Americas.

Until recently, journalists thought that if they publicly acknowledged that the experiences lived in their reports were something that could affect them in their career.

“Talking about it meant two things: first, a personal weakness and you could put your job at risk. You didn’t want your colleagues and bosses to find out that you were feeling bad about covering an assignment, so it could mean that in the future they wouldn’t send you to cover other things,” said Ramos.

The mental health of journalists is an issue that is often ignored, both by the media outlets they work for and by the public they report to.

Throughout their careers, journalists can encounter intense and often traumatic experiences: wars, natural disasters, accidents, humanitarian crises and everyday violence.

“We were shot several times. Seeing or hearing a shot go by is a horrible thing,” says Pablo Gato, a war correspondent with more than 30 years of experience.

“It scares you tremendously, because you clearly see that any part of your body that it hits will be completely torn apart,” said Gato.

Repeated and close exposure to these types of situations leaves significant marks on their mental health, affecting not only their emotional well-being, but also their professional performance and personal quality of life.

Despite this, many journalists manage to bear the weight of these experiences and continue with their vocation to report, driven by passion and commitment to the truth.

This can also be the experience of any journalist or war or conflict correspondent.

“Last year I was in Israel during the war between Hamas and the Israeli government and I went through I don’t know how many alarms where we had to go hide somewhere because Hamas rockets were coming towards Israel and every time I heard a siren, even though I know I’m not in Israel, I still think that something could happen to me and it took me months and months to recover and understand that those sirens suddenly didn’t mean danger to me,” said Ramos.

After exposure to traumatic situations, mental health problems can arise. A common condition is Acute Stress Disorder (ASD), which usually appears in the first month after the trauma. If symptoms persist beyond this initial period, it can develop into Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

A study by US Veteran Affairs found that, compared to other journalists, war correspondents reported a higher rate of

Pamela Correa is a graduate student from the Journalism in Spanish Language + Multimedia Program. From the Dominican Republic, this proud island girl enjoys the beach, music and dancing. She majored in psychology, minored in sociology and is now looking forward to this new journey on the communications pathway.