{"id":23262,"date":"2019-03-15T18:47:57","date_gmt":"2019-03-15T22:47:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=23262"},"modified":"2019-03-15T18:48:06","modified_gmt":"2019-03-15T22:48:06","slug":"brocks-banter-coping-with-the-world-around-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/brocks-banter-coping-with-the-world-around-you\/","title":{"rendered":"BROCK’S BANTER: Coping with the World Around You"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this line of work, you sometimes have to cover events\nand stories that are naturally outside your comfort zone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To pick just one example from my time coming up through\nCarleton University\u2019s journalism program, one hardened-before-her-time CBC\nreporter told us that the most dreaded job when she was first starting out in\nher career was covering a Royal Visit sometime in the 1990s, when she wanted to\nbe out in the field, covering crime scenes and hot political turmoil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some people might thrive on the police beat, for\ninstance, tackling the seedy underbelly of our society head-on, issues like\nhuman trafficking, knowing that the work they do by shedding a light on these\nvery important issues can go a long way towards eradication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there are others still who shudder at the very\nthought of getting this kind of assignment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are few things more difficult for a reporter than\nbeing assigned a story on a murder, a missing person, or other tragedies that\nrequire you to delicately approach a grieving family for their personal insight\non what they\u2019re feeling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Usually, if approached in the right way, they are\nunderstanding, conscious of the fact we\u2019re simply doing our job and giving them\nan opportunity to speak; an opportunity which often gives them a chance to pay\nheartfelt tribute to a loved one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a tough situation to navigate and it is rarely the\nkind of work that can actually be left in the office. You invariably bring it\nhome with you; it can pop back into your head without any sort of warming. Some\nmight see it as PTSD, others might avoid it, but no situation is less\nimpactful. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I\u2019m describing is nothing new. You\u2019ve heard\ngenerations of editors, reporters, and other media personnel speak about it.\nYou\u2019ve probably picked up snippets from academic studies looking at the same.\nMaybe you too have experienced it, but what I hadn\u2019t considered until very\nrecently was the impact these stories have on consumers \u2013 readers, viewers, and\nlisteners. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, I should have considered this much earlier because\nwe\u2019re all victims of this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m sure I\u2019m not alone in feeling compelled to tune out\nfor a little bit during the heat of the 2016 United States Presidential\nElection when vitriol was at its zenith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a time hallmarked on childish name-calling,\noutlandish conspiracy theories being somehow legitimized simply by who was\nspouting them, racial slurs and dog-whistles being thrown out with as much care\nas one would throw away a Kleenex, and people ignoring the world metaphorically\nburning down around them with a singular focus on an email server \u2013 all\namplified by the 24-hour news cycle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the sake of my own mental health, I instituted an\nall-too-brief moratorium on American television news, and it was glorious \u2013 but\nI hadn\u2019t considered this was a \u201cthing\u201d until a story published late last month\nby a reporter from Yahoo! Canada News.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In her story, \u201cHow to cope with this week\u2019s tragic news\nstories,\u201d Megan DeLaire wrote about the multiple emotional gut punches we\nreceived as a nation in mid-February, including the tragic fire in Nova Scotia\nwhich killed eight refugee children planning new roots in their new home, and the\ndeath in Brampton of Riya Rajkumar, who was the subject of an Amber Alert the\nprevious evening. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOften, when a tragedy like a violent crime or deadly\nfire occurs, the people closest to the epicentre of that tragedy have access to\nsupports like grief and trauma counselling,\u201d wrote DeLaire. \u201cBut distressing\nevents can also affect the people who follow them in the news and become\npersonally invested.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She cites work carried out by grief and trauma expert\nKaren Letofsky, who has looked into the impact of repetition and shocking\nimagery in our news cycles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat can have an impact with respect to inducing an\nemotional reaction,\u201d said Letofsky in the article. \u201cIt is going to be on a\ncontinuum from somebody that\u2019s severely affected to somebody that\u2019s momentarily\ndistressed. If you have been traumatized before, if you are in an emotionally\nvulnerable place in your own life, I think these triggers and what it takes to\nhave an emotional impact on you might be less intense than if you are in a\nplace in your life where you\u2019re not as vulnerable. If you\u2019re constantly hearing\nthese stories and they\u2019re reported in a matter-of-fact way\u2026it can numb you and\ndeaden you so that you don\u2019t have an appropriate emotional reaction, so that\u2019s\nthe flipside.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She goes on to recommend moderating news consumption to\nrevisiting a particular story just once or twice before taking a break, but it\nis also important to have keen self-awareness and a sense of self-care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moderation is a great tool, as are self-awareness and\nself-care, but in addition to having supports like counselling readily\navailable, I, as a reader was left to wonder about the value of knowing where\nto turn for opportunities to channel the feelings left by what you\u2019ve read \u2013\nor, in the case of some of us, what you\u2019ve written \u2013 and channel that into\npositive change. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just a couple of weeks ago, Judy and Dennis Shepard, the\nparents of Matthew Shepard, who was murdered in an anti-Gay hate crime in\nWyoming in 1998 touched upon this issue when speaking to a group of students,\nparents and community members. When asked how they had the ability to get past\nthe pain and have the strength to do something positive with their grief, they\nadmitted it was an overwhelming process, but something they had to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe felt we owed that to Matt and his community,\u201d said\nJudy. \u201cIt became the reason I got out of bed in the morning. It gave me\npurpose. The idea of closure just doesn\u2019t exist. You just learn to build your\nlife around the tragedy and to accept that sometimes you just cry for no\nreason\u2026and you just figure out how to make it work. We just felt it was really\nimportant. We felt that we had maybe two years at most to tell Matt\u2019s story and\npeople would just move on to the next tragedy, but, for some reason, Matt\u2019s\nstory has resonated for much longer. It was a conscious choice and it gave us\npurpose. It was our survival.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to know how you cope with difficult news in\nthe papers, on television, and in online platforms. Please send your thoughts\nto brock@auroran.com.<\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir In this line of work, you sometimes have to cover events and stories that are naturally outside your comfort zone. To pick just one example from my time coming up through Carleton University\u2019s journalism program, one hardened-before-her-time CBC reporter told us that the most dreaded job when she was first starting out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[29,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns","category-opinion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-63c","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-15 11:33:50","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23262\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}