Every journalist deserves care and support, and a strong, healthy press has never been more essential.

Leona O’Neill is the founder of MediaStrong 

I didn’t really know Spongebob Squarepants was a coping mechanism for me in dealing with the trauma journalism dealt me, but he rescued me many times.

Like all journalists I covered all kinds of human suffering from morning to night. I’ve stood at security cordons, at the side of a road after tragic incidents, in court hearing the most awful details of how a man murdered his baby, at inquests or crime scenes where human beings howled like animals over the loss of their person.

And then I’d go home like I hadn’t just watched someone’s world implode.

Once home the emotional barrier I’d put up to stop the horrors landing on me would fall and I’d need something – anything – to allow my mind to find comfort, to rest, to process what I had just seen or heard, to allow the surging adrenaline and cortisol to settle. I don’t know the science behind it, but Spongebob was my saviour, because nothing bad happened in his world. There was no murder, death, violence, hate or destruction. There were no children accidentally killed by curtain cords or fathers shot dead outside school gates or mothers taken from their children by cruel cancer or people hating and attacking one another. It allowed me to decompress, recharge, recalibrate and gear up for another day of mostly the same thing – reporting on the awfulness of people.

I never thought that the news could be impacting on me in a negative, insidious way because I was in the newsroom bubble and nothing mattered more than the story. No one ever spoke of struggle. A bottle of wine at the end of the day was the answer if a story was tough and you couldn’t sleep. Mental health wasn’t even a consideration for me and for many in newsrooms.
Like many, I thought I was invincible, like my brain was somehow capable of blocking normal human responses to traumatic incidents or information.

Then six years ago I was covering a riot in Derry’s Creggan Estate. A dissident republican gunman fired up the street towards a crowd of us and poor Lyra McKee was killed. There are times I can still smell the sulphur from the fireworks rioters had thrown and hear the screams of those who loved her as she lay on the cold ground. My frequent nightmares remind me vividly of the horrific scene and the screams and the chaos.

I went to work the day after seeing someone being murdered – because that is what journalists do. I was threatened and harassed by conspiracy theorists and other malicious individuals, but I kept going because journalists are tough and hard-nosed.

But on that dark April night, my newsroom bubble burst, and I saw in stark, savage technicolour the distinct lack of support or care for journalists and indeed the toxic mindset that still exists in our newsroom that screams journalists should be unfeeling robots and not have normal human responses to traumatic events.

In the years since, I have had so many whispered conversations with journalists, here and around the world, on the trauma they experienced. The things they can’t shake off, the stories they carry with them, the incidents that haunt their dreams. And the fear of speaking out about this in case they are thought less of or taken off jobs because they have gone ‘soft’.

I spoke out because I didn’t want any journalist to feel they had to feel untouched by the horrors they witness – to enter the worst situations imaginable, see humanity at its lowest, and walk away unshaken, as if they were superhuman or robots. And think there was something wrong with them if they were impacted.

I founded MediaStrong to improve mental wellbeing in newsrooms. At our annual conference, I brought together journalists, editors, and mental health professionals to tackle a long-ignored problem. By encouraging leading figures to share their own experiences, I hoped to break the silence, inspire openness, and help others feel less alone.

I joined forces with Safely Held Spaces, Sky News and Public Media Alliance to take this worldwide. We got the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen to speak at the MediaStrong conference, CNN’s Clarissa Ward, Sky News’ Managing Director Jonathan Levy, leaders from Reuters, BBC, CNN, Reach, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Al Jazeera and many more.

In the audience were representatives from major newsrooms all over the world from Ireland to Canada to Australia to New York and back to Dublin, all hoping to find a road to healthier newsrooms.

I developed the MediaStrong Newsroom Wellbeing Charter, which asks newsrooms to normalise the conversation around newsroom wellbeing and provide support to trauma-facing journalists.

As ever, wanting to raise the volume on this issue, I launched it to much fanfare at Stormont, Leinster House and will be heading for Westminster soon. Newsrooms all around the world have signed it.

Plans are afoot to create MediaStrong Leadership Councils worldwide and newsroom wellbeing training is being rolled out globally.

Change won’t happen overnight – shifting entrenched newsroom culture is like turning a tanker. But I’m ready for the challenge. Every journalist deserves care and support, and a strong, healthy press has never been more essential.

For more information on MediaStrong, visit here 

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