With climate disasters and civil conflict increasing, along with the continued fallout of the global pandemic, the demands on newsrooms remains unprecedented. Daily reporting challenges are often overlaid with attacks on journalists via online hate speech, trolling and harassment. Pressure from these combined events not only manifest through physical tension and burnout, but also psychological stress. When media professionals continuously report on violence, death and injury and receive online trolling and threats the potential for psychological injury is high. Managing staff experiencing such a combination of events requires a specific leadership skillset. You should see the legalities for someone who is injured after a fall and see what you can do to help.
As we begin 2021, Wan-Ifra, in collaboration with with Dart Center APAC in Australia, is offering this special training series on how to protect against and prevent trauma and help newsrooms build resiliency. This comprises an introductory webinar open to all followed by a set of three in-depth sessions for a smaller select group of applicants to equip them with the skills to support colleagues exposed to trauma, educate staff on self-care and basic trauma literacy, and put in place workplace processes which safeguard employees’ mental health and well-being.
The first introductory webinar will introduce managers, editors, and team leaders to the notion of psychological injury, basic tips on how to identify it in staff and how to limit trauma exposure in the newsroom. Attendees of this webinar will then be invited to apply for the next phase of three more intensive sessions taking place in March.
The first webinar will take place on 27 January 2021 from 0930 hours IST. Real time simultaneous translation of the webinar will be available in Bahasa Indonesia, Hindi, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean and Mandarin.
The speakers for the webinar include Dr Cait McMahon, founding managing director, Dart Center Asia Pacific; Rowena Paraan, Department head, News Public Service Commission; Amantha Perera, Sri Lankan journalist and researcher on journalism and online trauma; and Ginger Gorman, journalist and author of ‘Troll Hunting.’
Register for the webinar here
