Trauma Reporting: A Journalist's Guide to Covering Sensitive Stories

Trauma Reporting provides vital information on developing a healthy, professional and respectful relationship with those who choose to tell their stories during times of trauma, distress or grief.

Amid a growing demand and need for guidance, this fascinating book is refreshingly simple, engaging and readable, providing a wealth of original insight. As an aspiring or working journalist, how should you work with a grieving parent, a survivor of sexual violence, a witness at the scene of a traumatic event? How should you approach people, interview them and film with them sensitively? Trauma Reporting features guidance from some of the industry’s most successful news correspondents and documentary makers, including Louis Theroux, Lucy Williamson, Tulip Mazumdar, Richard Bilton, Jina Moore and many more, all sharing their experience and expertise. It also features people who chose to tell their sensitive stories to journalists, giving readers invaluable insight into what helped and what harmed.

The book also includes:

• What your interviewees may be going through and how best to respond, by trauma expert Professor Stephen Regel.
• A discussion on ethics, rules and regulations by Dr Sallyanne Duncan of the University of Strathclyde.
• Making sure you look after yourself, by Dr Cait McMahon of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma.

Insightful and innovative, this book is essential for new and established journalists across all media, students of journalism and broadcasting, and anyone who wishes to share the stories of those affected by trauma.

Jo Healey is a senior broadcast news journalist for BBC TV, specialising in highly sensitive human-interest stories. She developed and delivers training for BBC staff in working with emotionally vulnerable interviewees. She began her career in weekly newspapers, moving as a chief reporter to daily papers. Her broadcast career began in radio where she worked as a reporter, producer and acting news editor before moving to TV as a reporter and presenter.