2022.Jun.07

REPORTS

Report on the Trauma Reporting Study Group for 2021

The Trauma Reporting Study Group held eight reading sessions in FY2021.

The book that we’ve been reading is Trauma Reporting: A Journalist’s Guide to Covering Sensitive Stories (Jo Healey, 2019). The book provides detailed and concrete recommendations based on the experiences and narratives of both those who have been interviewed after they or their families have suffered traumatic events and veteran reporters in the UK and other English-speaking countries. It covers a wide range of occurrences, including not only incidents, accidents, and disasters, but also civil wars and conflicts, acid attacks, female genital mutilation, and becoming a refugee.

In FY2021, the participants read up to Chapter 5 and learned about topics such as preparing for interviews, building relationships with interviewees, and when interviewing children, as well as gaining basic knowledge about trauma. The participants also shared their experiences of interviewing and discussed the differences and similarities compared to when medical personnel provide support and listen to the victims’ stories. Interviews that touch on the others’ pain are conducted by both reporters and researchers, and we also discussed where we have learned or where we should learn how to handle such situations. The importance of self-control for those conducting interviews as well as the importance of aftercare for the interviewee were also deeply discussed.

Moreover, we often talked about the difference in the culture of journalism, the difference in the perception of discourse, the difference in the sense of human rights, and other cultural differences. For example, it was pointed out that despite no objection to the slogan “respect the rights and wishes of the child,” there is a tendency to give priority to the wishes of the parents in Japan.

We have repeatedly referred to the difference in nuance between “empathy,” one of the key words in this book, and the Japanese word “Kyōkan (sympathy).” The Japanese word Kyōkan (sympathy) means “to have the same feelings (thoughts) as another person” (Shinmeikai Kokugo Jiten, 7th edition) and emphasizes “being the same,” but the other person is a different person and has different experiences. This book describes “empathy” as the ability to try to understand the emotional state of another person without judgement, and to try to understand that person, which is different from sympathy or pity. The author also warns that the interviewer should not say, “I know what you have been through.”

There were also questions raised about whether “care” in English is the same as “kēa (care)” in Japanese, and what it means to be a “professional” interviewer. We will continue to consider these issues as we read the latter part of the book.