Consider some of the most common top news stories.

Your local hockey team makes it to the Stanley Cup Finals. A high-profile businessperson throws their hat into a political race. A grieving parent breaks down at the scene where their child was just murdered.

Now consider how the media interacts with the people in these stories.

The hockey stars have received some media training and are only interviewed in controlled news conferences or locker room scrums by accredited sports reporters. The aspiring politician has undergone hours of media training, has a list of key messages they’ve practiced in a series of mock interviews, and has a handler who decides which reporters they will talk to and for how long.

The parent of the murdered child, meanwhile, stands alone, fielding a steady stream of requests for media interviews about things their brain hasn’t even had an opportunity to process. All the while, they are making funeral arrangements, speaking with investigators, and caring for their other children. They’ve never been approached for a media interview before this. But here they are, answering phone call after phone call, doorbell after doorbell. They are sad, afraid, and extremely vulnerable.

David Guarino, a former journalist-turned-communications adviser, noticed the disparity in how trauma survivors interacted with the media, and the lack of services for those who are forced to suffer on the public stage. He decided to do something about it.

“How could there not be an organization that does this? And how could government not do it? It just didn’t make sense to me,” David tells Tamara.

David is the founder and president of Survivors Say, a Boston-based non-profit with a team of volunteers who support trauma survivors with the media.

Resources:

survivorssay.org

As per trauma-informed practice, each guest in The Trauma Beat podcast is afforded the opportunity to review and veto a list of anticipated questions before the recorded conversation. Ongoing, informed consent is sought throughout the production process.

This conversation was recorded in March 2024.

For more trauma-informed storytelling resources, visit pickupcommunications.com.

When Dr. Jessica Beard began working as a trauma surgeon in Philadelphia, she turned to local news to understand why there were so many firearm-injured patients arriving at her hospital. What she found was not helpful.

Very little mention of root causes. Very little mention of possible solutions. The way gun violence was framed in the media made it all seem so, well, inevitable. She wanted to change that.

Enter Jim MacMillan, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Philly photographer on a mission to change the way gun violence was reported in his city. Jim is the founder of the Philadelphia Center for Gun Violence Reporting (PCGVR), a non-profit that is educating journalists about better ways to report gun violence, with much of its work drawing on the research of Dr. Beard, who is now PCGVR’s director of research.

PCGVR works closely with victims and survivors of gun violence in an effort to change the narrative from “gun violence is inevitable” to “gun violence is preventable.”

Resources:

pcgvr.org

Better Gun Violence Reporting Toolkit

PCGVR weekly newsletter

Systemic disparities in reporting on community firearm violence on local television news in Philadelphia, PA, USA

Public health framing of firearm violence on local television news in Philadelphia, PA, USA: a quantitative content analysis

“Like I’m a nobody:” firearm-injured peoples’ perspectives on news media reporting about firearm violence

More about Jim MacMillan

More about Dr. Jessica Beard

As per trauma-informed practice, each guest in The Trauma Beat podcast is afforded the opportunity to review and veto a list of anticipated questions before the recorded conversation. Ongoing, informed consent is sought throughout the production process.

This conversation was recorded in March 2024.

For more trauma-informed storytelling resources, visit pickupcommunications.com.

For more than three decades, Michèle Anderson worked on the front lines of sex trafficking in Toronto, supporting victims and survivors through her role at a local non-profit organization.

Michèle speaks with Tamara about her experiences supporting survivors in their interactions with the media, her own interactions with the media, and the impact she saw the media have on survivors throughout the years. While Michèle speaks mostly about the harm that she has experienced and witnessed from the media, she also talks about the potential benefit that can come from survivors sharing their stories publicly.

“I think there are ways and pathways forward where it can be done in a very thoughtful, mindful, meaningful, supportive way,” Michèle says.

Though retired, Michèle remains a fierce advocate for sex trafficking survivors, including for their “right to be forgotten,” which she speaks about in this episode. She discusses the importance of consent when writing about the trauma of others and providing agency in the ways in which their stories are collected and shared.

As per trauma-informed practice, each guest in The Trauma Beat podcast is afforded the opportunity to review and veto a list of anticipated questions before the recorded conversation. Ongoing, informed consent is sought throughout the production process.

This conversation was recorded in March 2024.

For more trauma-informed storytelling resources, visit pickupcommunications.com.