Box 9.2: Tips for Coping With Traumatic Imagery Gavin Rees, a journalist and filmmaker, is the director of the Dart Centre Europe1. The Dart Centre is a project of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University in New York and is dedicated to promoting ethical and innovative approaches to the coverage of trauma and violence. Prior to that, Gavin produced business and political news for US, British and Japanese news channels, and has worked on drama and documentary films for the BBC, Channel 4 and independent film companies. Gavin is also a visiting research fellow at Bournemouth University and is a board member of the European Society of Traumatic Stress Studies and UK Psychological Trauma Society. Images from war zones, crimes scenes and natural disasters are often gruesome and distressing. When the imagery is traumatic, events that are happening far away can feel like they are seeping into one’s personal headspace. Negative reactions, such as disgust, anxiety and helplessness, are not unusual for journalists and forensic analysts working with such material. We know from research that media workers are a highly resilient group: Exposure to limited amounts of traumatic imagery is unlikely to cause more than passing distress in most cases. Nevertheless, the dangers of what psychologists call secondary or vicarious traumatization become significant in situations where the exposure is repeated, the so-called slow drip effect. The same is true when there is a personal connection to the events - if, for example, it involves injury to someone you know. Here are six practical things media and humanitarian workers can do to reduce the trauma load: 1. Understand what you’re dealing with. The first line of any defense is to know the enemy: Think of traumatic imagery as akin to radiation, a toxic substance that has a dose-dependent effect. Journalists and humanitarian workers, like nuclear workers, have a job to do; at the same time, they should take sensible steps to minimize unnecessary exposure. 2. Eliminate needless repeat exposure. Review your sorting and tagging procedures, and how you organize digital files and folders, among other procedures, to reduce unnecessary viewing. When verifying footage by cross-referencing images from different sources, taking written notes of distinctive features may help to minimize how often you need to recheck against an original image. 106