Becoming Trauma Informed

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.

Learn About Trauma

As a journalist, one of the best tools I have to find out more about a topic is to write a story about it. This gives me an excuse to speak to experts who have spent their careers studying and conducting research in a specific area. To become trauma informed, take time to learn about the science and psychology of trauma.

In 2021 for Wired, I wrote about Margaret McKinnon, who survived a terrifying midair catastrophe (she and other passengers ended up trapped on a plane as its engine went out).

From the story: “To believe that you are about to die for half an hour—to jostle inside a metal tube as you imagine yourself careening into the ocean, killed by either the impact or by drowning—is to endure at least a few eternities.”

Margaret went on to become a major researcher of memory and trauma. She also went back to other survivors from the same flight to study their memories and brains. 

Writing about her helped me understand how the brain of a survivor can get stuck in a constant state of fight-or-flight—creating chronic stress that makes someone more vulnerable to health problems.

One big takeaway for me: Margaret explained how she can now tell her own traumatic story without going into a state of panic, anxiety, or PTSD. She helps patients also try to reach the same point, where they can hover outside of a traumatic memory, confidently and fearlessly, like an omniscient narrator.

Scar vs. Wound

In the spring, Bethel Habte, a former producer for This American Life, Zoomed into my journalism class. A student asked how she approached trauma reporting. She answered with advice she had received before: “Interview a person when they are able to talk about their scar, not their wound.” 

It makes sense. If the experience is still too raw, is the person really ready? Can they detach from the story and not be triggered by it? Here is another trauma-informed journalism principle: Don’t push. Instead, give them a chance to speak to you when ready.

In journalism, some subjects feel called to tell their stories. I’m glad I waited until Binna called me. She also had a reason. She wanted to tell people about her dad, whom she felt had been smeared in the local Korean press. This leads to another trauma-informed tip: Find out what survivors want to achieve by telling their story, why they believe it is meaningful to themselves and the larger world.

I think as journalists, we have to ask ourselves this too. Is there a wider purpose? For example, when interviewing a trauma survivor, is the goal to also help people understand the toll a climate disaster can take on a place’s most vulnerable population? Or to spread awareness about mental health challenges after a traumatic event? Or to show how the failures or flaws within a system caused harm?

If we don’t identify this social dimension (and looking back, I don’t think I adequately did this when reporting on what happened to Binna) we might need to reconsider why we are telling the story in the first place. 

There is, of course, also the human condition dimension. What does this story tell us about what it means to survive, endure, suffer, love, live? This matters too. Stories shed light on the human experience and connect us.

In the reporter-subject relationship, the person you interview might make clear that they are in this process with you, as hard as it is. They go through the many interviews, the painful parts, the fact-checking. They can let you know if something bothers them. You’ve informed them and remained transparent.

Safe Places

My interviews with Binna also took place with her best friend alongside her, or her trusted teacher. Trauma-informed reporting can also involve finding a liaison: A family member or friend, or supportive connection, and creating safe environments for the interview.

Seyward Darby, the editor of The Atavist, has discussed reporting her profound and powerful piece, “Fault Lines,” about a culture of abuse at a Los Angeles area high school. It involved interviewing victims. She made sure these talks took place in spaces where survivors felt comfortable, including on a beach in Malibu.

Seyward was kind enough to share with me other trauma-informed approaches she used to report the story:

—Offered to speak to each woman off the record first, so that they could get to know me, ask questions about the reporting process, etc.

—Offered for them to choose whatever venue they preferred for an interview. Three wanted to do it in person. One wanted to keep it on the phone. One requested that she be able to do it on the beach and bring a friend—I told her that was absolutely fine.

—I asked them to tell me if there was anything absolutely off limits in the interviews, and they all indicated they were uncomfortable with questions about the precise sex abuse acts they endured. So in the interviews, I avoided direct questions about that; if they felt like offering up some details, they could (and some did). I should also note that these details were already included in their depositions, so there was no reason for me to re-traumatize them when the information was available for me to read. 

—I made sure I was as available for them after the fact as I could be. They were free to call or text or email to talk about their feelings about the interviews; those exchanges were off the record unless otherwise specified.

—I assured them that there would be no surprises in the final story. Meaning, as part of the fact-checking process, they would be aware of every detail in the story that pertained to their specific stories/cases. Even things we didn't have to run by them for factual accuracy, the fact checker and I shared with them so that they were at least aware of all the info pertaining to them personally. I didn't want them to read anything about themselves for the first time when the article came out.

The Aftermath

One mistake I have made is forgetting to walk subjects through what might happen after publication.

How will they manage if other commenters online or reviewers begin to weigh in with their own opinions, criticisms, or thoughts? What if their stories are taken out of context or skewed by other people? 

Recently, when I wrote about another Maui fire victim, Edralina Diezon, I was careful to prepare her family in the Philippines for its publication in The New York Times. We discussed photos, and went over fact-checks. I sent them a PDF of the story as soon as it ran, since they did not have a subscription. 

I was not prepared for The Daily Mail to re-write my story in its own sensationalized style, without conducting its own interviews. That piece also got picked up in a tabloid in the Philippines. Those tabloids also scraped the family Facebook pages, ripping photos of Edralina and her family, and publishing them without permission.

The family reached out to me distraught: “Why did these reporters not call us, like you did? Why didn’t they talk to us and tell us they were going to print a story, like you did? Why didn’t they ask to use our photos?”

I found myself apologizing for the shoddy work of others. But I also felt guilty because my story brought this added stress upon them.

My brilliant former UC Irvine Literary Journalism student, Carly Lanning, now runs Voices Editorial, a storytelling consultancy providing trauma-informed and survivor-centered communication services to organizations, non-profits, and individuals working with trauma-impacted communities. I spoke with Carly recently, who told me she devises a “safety plan” for when a story a survivor has shared goes public.

It might include considering: Are there any social media sites that you want to make private before this story goes out? It could involve connecting them with mental health resources before publishing, or advising that they might not want to check the comments on a story, or preparing for potentially troubling public reactions or follow-up stories.

“A lot of it comes down to having compassion, trust, and thoughtfulness,” Carly told me. But when a trauma survivor feels empowered in telling their story, “It can be so rewarding.”

Self Care

When you write nonfiction narrative, you can find yourself living, for a period, inside of someone else’s life and pain. When you delve into the specific details of their memories, you may internalize the scenes of their lives. The people you get to know, like Binna, never leave your own memories. You carry their stories with you forever. They become part of your own. 

This can also take a toll on your own mental health. In No Visible Bruises, Rachel Louise Snyder breaks the fourth wall and discusses the challenges of reporting on domestic abuse, particularly in preparing herself to watch home videos taken before a father killed his wife and kids:

“There was a period of time when it took a force of will for me to not look at every man I met as a possible abuser and every woman as a possible victim. This is not the way one wants to walk through life. I knew that. I know that. So before I watched the videos, I took an entire year off from anything having to do with violence. I worked out, and I read, and I painted, and I went to therapy, and I avoided abuse and homicide and police reports. And finally, after that year, I returned to it all on a summer day not long ago.”

Which brings us to a closing trauma-informed reporting tip: Learn to take care of yourself (I actually think this deserves its own separate post later).

Binna graduated from college, started her own career journey. She has granted other interviews since ours. I know her life has not been easy. She is still the strong young woman I remember, who finds joy in fashion, loved ones, and self-expression. She has no idea how much she taught me. But I hope her wounds have turned to scars, and I hope she has become the omniscient narrator of her own story.