It has been nearly two decades since I wrote about Binna. But her story stays with me. I wonder if she’s doing okay. I question if I did everything right.
It was 2006, on a weekend shift at the Los Angeles Times, when I first learned about a murder-suicide. Another reporter had written up details based on police reports: A father had shot his entire family in Koreatown before killing himself. Only his teenage daughter survived, a bullet to her head. In the news story, she had not been named.
But I had sources who knew the family, and within weeks I found myself standing inside of Binna’s hospital room, where she lay bandaged. I introduced myself, then handed over a manila envelope full of my clips, along with my business card. I did not try to interview her. Instead, I told her if she ever wanted to tell her story in the Times, I would be ready to listen.
Four months later, she called.
Interviews for the 6,000-word piece, which would become a cover story for the Los Angeles Times Sunday magazine, took place over several weeks. But what I want to talk to you about today is trauma and journalism, and the power dynamic between reporters and subjects.
Before the story went to print, I remember showing up to Binna’s best friend’s apartment, which she had recently moved into after being released from the hospital. Nervous, I sat on a chair facing both of them, holding the printed-out story draft.
I was in my 20s, and it was my first in-depth story of this kind. My hands and voice shook as I read it to her aloud. When I came to the most horrible parts, I looked up and saw her crying. The journalistic professionalism drained out of me, and I felt my own tears rising. I swallowed to regain composure. I worried: Was I hurting her more?
She nodded for me to keep going.
Instinct told me to prepare her for publication. No surprises. But we did not have lessons on trauma-informed journalism back then, not in my journalism school classes, not in my newsroom. In fact, we were instructed to never share a draft of your story with your subject. As I understood it: The people you write about are not your editors. The journalist has the control. But I broke those rules anyway.
I now know that practicing trauma-informed journalism involves its own special set of guidelines. Here is one: Let survivors review your work.
It was refreshing in recent years to hear an interview with Andrea Elliott, who won the Pulitzer Prize—once for her series of articles about a homeless child, Dasani, and again for her book, Invisible Child, which traced eight years of Dasani’s life. Elliott also sat down with her main subject before the book went to print. She read Dasani the entire manuscript.
Journalism can involve taking or capturing other people’s stories. Practicing trauma-informed journalism, as I now understand it, involves a set of considerations that can give power back to a trauma survivor.
You can learn more about reporting on survivors ethically and responsibility through The Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma, which offers fellowships, and a Trauma Aware Journalism (TAJ): A News Industry Toolkit with free “micro-learning” videos, guides and resources.
You can also take a free course on Journalism and Trauma from Poynter.
Here are a few tips I’ve highlighted.
