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Afterword
- Johns Hopkins University Press
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182 Afterword * * * All I know is just what I read in the papers. Will Rogers My interview with a defensive Maggie O’Kane started on a difficult note. ‘‘I don’t necessarily buy your theory that we are all traumatized,’’ she told me. I assured her that was not my view. And indeed, the results of my studies proved us correct. After a decade or more of confronting extremely hazardous situations, some journalists do develop psychological problems such as post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. They are a minority, albeit a substantial one. This should not be surprising, given the nature of what front-line journalists do. The more remarkable observation, perhaps, is that most emerge relatively unscathed. Through a complex interplay of factors that determine motivation, a self-selection process is at work, ensuring that most journalists who choose conflict as their area enjoy what they do, are very good at it, and keep the life-threatening hazards from undermining their psychological health. Many experience distressing residual symptoms such as troubling dreams, flashbacks, and startle responses, but these by themselves do not constitute evidence of formal psychiatric illness. There is, however, one clinically relevant statistic I have not yet given: the journalists who developed a disorder such as PTSD or became seriously depressed seldom received treatment. This neglect, at times approaching disdain, was part of a wider, macho culture of silence that historically enveloped the profession when it came to the question of psychological health and other emotive issues such as divorce and dysfunctional relationships, heavy drinking habits, and the effects of work on spouses and children. It helps explain not only the failure of news organizations to provide treatment for their employees, but also why a study such as mine had not been Afterword 183 done earlier. While the management of news organizations was partly to blame for this, journalists themselves also played a part, through a combination of naiveté, embarrassment, and concern that future career prospects would suffer if word of their emotional distress reached their news bosses. Only in the past few years have attitudes become more enlightened and informed. Research and education are the means to strip away remaining taboos and misconceptions. Conscious of the sensitivities of journalists and their managers to questions that probed their psyches, I was at pains throughout my studies to emphasize that my aim was not to pathologize a profession. But it has never been more important to ask the types of questions I did of those who chose war as their workplace. I never encountered a war journalist who did not view his profession as highly dangerous. And now there is evidence that these hazards are multiplying. Even before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, one event in particular sent a chill through the ranks and put journalists on notice of ominous new threats lying in wait. The Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was murdered. While opinion among journalists is divided on whether Pearl miscalculated the risks attached to his story, one respected colleague, Scott Anderson, noted in his New York Times article that Daniel Pearl was a careful man who looked out for his safety. ‘‘What is haunting to the rest of us,’’ wrote Anderson, ‘‘is that there appears no cautionary lesson to be derived from his death, nothing we would have done differently.’’ In the past, journalists had been killed accidentally by stray bullets or artillery shells, or deliberately, because they were mistaken for combatants or because a warlord wanted some unsavory truths suppressed . But the death of Pearl, as Janine di Giovanni pointed out in her London Times article, added a new, horrifying dimension to these threats— a journalist was decapitated because of his Jewish religion. In a post–September 11 world seething with religious and ethnic hatred , nationality has joined religion as a new risk factor for journalists. A visit to Jerusalem and the embattled news bureaus at the height of the second intifada provided me with sad and dispiriting evidence of this. Just off the Old Jaffa road, sat a nondescript three-story building, home to many of the major television news organizations. Even before I made it up to the CNN offices, I was repeatedly given well-meaning, but nevertheless alarming , advice by the journalists I met: never take a bus ride; if your taxi stops behind a bus, instruct the driver to move and, if he refuses, get out and walk; make sure your taxi stays away from the...