Poynter's Jill Geisler was among a group of Poynter faculty leading a recent conference on Covering Hurricanes co-sponsored by the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma. Here's her account of one of the conference sessions in New Orleans:
|
Year of the Storms:
Stories Yet to be Told |
|
|
Sandy Davis carries food and water in her car every day. No matter that the hurricane season is past. The staff writer for the Advocate, of Baton Rouge, can’t forget how very hungry she was, covering Katrina. Her paper had given her money, but there was nowhere to buy food. She turned down provisions offered her by emergency workers, because, she said, she would be taking it from the mouths of victims.
Her eyes seemed sad, even as she joked, “I could feed everyone here right now out of my car.”
She was talking about the fellow journalists in the room who took part in the New Orleans Dart/Poynter workshop. Like her, they had covered hurricanes. Like her, they carry memories that stay with them – and may have changed them.
Bruce Shapiro of the Dart Center asked them to think about a sense memory of Katrina or Rita; a smell, a sound, a sight. The memories were vivid:
• The lack of sounds. An entire city pitch black and silent.
• Blocked streets, a feeling of claustrophobia.
• A family of survivors, apologetic that they smelled so bad.
• A phone call to a newsroom from an elderly woman, seeking help. She was writing her name on her leg so rescuers could identify her corpse.
• The sound of helicopters and the smell of oil in St. Bernard parish.
• A family covered head to toe in the rank muck left behind in the homes in Lakeview.
• Abandoned shoes, everywhere.
• Helicopters landing at an interstate exit, unloading, some people desperately ill, the military arriving, absolute chaos, and the thought: this is the United States.
• Voices of callers to the television station assignment editor: Find my parents. Find my child. “I think I am in Arkansas,” said one.
• A card from a child to a TV news director who helped her reunite with her family.
• A victim alone in a hallway at LSU, just wanting to talk, worried about family and pets.
• The shriek of a Lakeview woman as she returned to what was left of her Lakeview home. A TV journalist saw it on a taped report, realized it was a friend, and felt she was violating her privacy by watching the tape.
• Night in the Superdome: “I can’t get the clapping sound out of my head when the roof came off.”
• The smell of “funky chicken” and the sound of buzzing flies in the apartment of a reporter who returned home to her own mess after covering hurricane victims.
• A woman’s face, and the hug she gave to a Houma Courier photographer who set up a online photo gallery of dozens of victims. He remembers the hug in slow motion, and hearing her say “I haven’t found my family yet, but you have given me hope.”
• Being cold for days on end. Walking through floodwaters for days, water that overtook boots. Still, said the reporter, “We’d always go forward.”
• The black sludge left behind in Lakeview. It was gray on the top, but turned black when your foot broke the surface.
• Seven children at the I-10 bus evacuation site, separated from families. The sound of a child waking up and crying out for mommy.
• A couple returning to their French Quarter home, asked about what they found, replying: “Two non-working watches, a gold chain and a set of keys.”
• Toxic water stains on the side of buildings that will never be erased.
• Screams for help. People pounding on ceilings and rooftops in the blackness of night.
• The sound of a journalist’s son – a Coast Guardsman in Mobile, telling his father, “I’ve been picking people off rooftops.” The pride that father felt hearing helicopters thereafter.
• A dehydrated woman at the New Orleans Convention Center, asking a photographer to come close to her.
• The sound of a man, struggling to find gas for his family, choking as he siphoned it from a car.
• The sound of hurricane Rita. The relentless growl of the wind, unlike any that a journalist had heard growing up in Wyoming. “This thing was alive,” he said.
Psychological trauma, Dart’s Bruce Shapiro told the group, is the image that won’t go away. It is the memory that is too alive to go away. He encouraged the journalists to remember the importance of taking care of themselves in the wake of these hurricanes and their memories.
Some advice:
• Sleep matters. Rest is important to both your physical and psychological well-being.
• Exercise helps.
• Take time each day to do something pleasurable for yourself.
• Don’t be isolated.
• Listen to your colleagues, let them know you care.
• Small gestures of kindness and solidarity can carry great positive meaning.
• Consider it a sign of strength, not weakness, if a staffer reaches out for professional counseling.
• Identify experts in handling psychological trauma so you can refer people to the best possible help.
• Make conversations about the impact of difficult stories a normal part of your newsroom life.
• Be alert to “trigger events,” future developments, news stories or anniversaries that bring memories and emotions to the surface, often powerfully and painfully.
Shapiro added: “It is also important to be aware of these issues because they are affecting your readers and your news sources, and should be part of the news agenda.”
Sandy Davis stocks her car with supplies these days because, as she said simply, “I got tired of being hungry.” Perhaps it is also a good coping strategy, providing the comfort of a plan, a hedge against uncertainty.
Journalists are the eyes and ears of their communities in times of trauma But as we learned in New Orleans and Biloxi conversations, they are victims, too.
