UNESCO is the lead UN Agency for promoting freedom of expression and safety of journalists as part of its mandate to “promote the free flow of ideas by word and image”.
Ethical dilemmas, work-related guilt, and posttraumatic stress reactions of news journalists covering the terror attack in Norway in 2011
Klas Backholm
,
and
Trond Idås
Journal Article
published in 2015
News journalists working on crisis-related assignments may experience dilemmas with regard to how to conduct their work without causing additional harm to first-hand victims. In this study, we investigated how exposure to journalistic ethical dilemmas during the Oslo/Utøya terror attack in 2011 and subsequent work-related guilt were related to the development of posttraumatic stress (PTS) reactions.
Sample
Norwegian journalists (N = 371) covering the terror attack participated in a web-based survey 8–9 months after the incident.Main Findings
We found that females reported more ethical dilemmas during the assignment than males (n = 356, d = 0.51). We also found that being on the scene was not related to more exposure to dilemmas (n = 311, d = 0.01). Moreover, we discovered that work-related guilt had a significant indirect effect on the relationship between exposure to ethical dilemmas and severity of PTS reactions (n = 344, completely standardized indirect effect size = .11, 95% CI [.04, .19]. The results showed that exposure to ethical dilemmas may affect the development of long-term psychological impairment.Policy recommendations/implications
We concluded that media organizations can prevent postcrisis impairment by preparing employees for possible exposure to dilemmas during crisis-related assignments.- Research focuses:
- Psychological
- Methods used in research:
- Surveys
- Countries of research focus:
- Norway