By Devon Rudolph
What happens if my reporting goes unheard? This question has consumed my thoughts since our workshop with Gavin Rees, an advisor for the Global Center for Journalism and Trauma. He said that one sign of resilience in crisis reporting is a high sense of meaning in one’s work. For reporters who cover issues they find important to the functioning of society, their work holds strong meaning. Yet, it is possible to publish a story that has no societal impact. Maintaining our fundamental values when others dismiss our contributions, we discussed with Rees, is an integral element of remaining sane in the fraught profession of journalism.
Rees also compared journalists covering breaking news to doctors in an emergency room. When a catastrophe occurs, they drop everything to rush to the scene. An orderly day in the life of a journalist may quickly devolve when more pressing matters arise. It is clear from this metaphor that reporters cannot always put themselves first, and often don’t have control over their daily activities. When combined with the difficulties of reporting on a traumatic topic, journalists are exposed to stress that requires self assessment. As Rees explained, this doesn’t require an immediate withdrawal at the first sign of mental distress, but rather a recognition that everyone has limits.
Later in the day, our class had a quite different conversation with Kristin Brinker, a member of the far-right Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party. The focus of our course is migration, so we asked about the AfD’s anti-immigration platform. Brinker distinguished between Ukrainian and Syrian immigrants, implying that Germany welcomed Ukrainians because they accepted its “culture.” When further pressed about what it means to be German, Brinker emphasized religion, specifically “Christian Jewish.” Similar to the far-right MAGA movement, she tied religion to policy. Brinker also claimed that pro-Palestine protests are anti-German, considering the country’s history with Israel and the Holocaust.
At the end of this day, we shared dinner and conversation with students from the Technical University of Berlin. I talked with two students about our class journalism project in Germany, which led to a discussion about the core principles of journalism. They asked: what is journalism, and how is it different from tik-tok videos? Since the umbrella for what ‘counts’ as journalism can be so broad, I defended the position that principled reporters derive their core values from fact and truth. Influencers don’t have the same moral responsibility to ensure their reporting is informed by facts. Journalists seeking to find truths must do their best to make a bullet-proof, fact-based narrative, citing sources, quoting trustworthy facts, and reporting oppositional beliefs. This type of reporting not only holds greater authority, but it just may have the potential to change minds.
