As an investigative editor at the Daily Mirror, Sri Lanka’s leading English daily, Piyumi Fonseka has seen it all. So when the COVID-19 pandemic began more than a year ago, Fonseka took the ensuing quarantines, curfews, and lockdowns imposed by the government all in stride. But as the health crisis wore on, she became increasingly uneasy.
“For journalists like us reporting on the COVID-19 crisis and producing articles from our bedrooms, the last year has been very difficult,” Fonseka says. “As a journalist who used to travel almost every other week looking for stories, I felt I was trapped in a pandemic bubble while having to cover depressing stories about the pandemic.”
It’s a feeling apparently shared by other journalists across the world. Indeed, a recent study by researchers from Bournemouth University and the Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma, Europe observes, “(The) COVID-19 pandemic that has dominated global headlines for well over a year has added a further dimension to the mental health risks faced by working journalists.”
The COVID-19 lockdowns that limited journalists’ movements forced many of them to work from their bedrooms.
The study highlights the relentless nature of the business of news, which has been much more so during the pandemic when online connectivity has become indispensable. There has also been no escape from the death and suffering brought by the pandemic, where wave after wave of infections caused economies to collapse and even remote communities to lose members.
In Asia, where the first cases of COVID-19 were recorded, nearly 81 million people have been infected so far by the coronavirus, while more than 1.1 million have died from the disease.
“The constant diet of suffering and death, grief, and loss requires everyone, journalists included, to move in and out of phases of detachment and engagement,” says the Bournemouth and Dart Centre research. “On a personal level, the journalists in this study talk about striving to switch off, as they struggled to deal with the emotional impact of reporting the human stories of the pandemic.”
Looking for the “off” switch
Journalism, however, is notorious for its “always-on” work culture. Clinical psychologist Asha Bedar of the Karachi-based Centre for Excellence in Journalism has also observed this inability to switch off among members of the media. With much of journalism work shifting online because of restrictions, boundaries separating work and personal activities have all but disappeared and the journalist’s workday has literally become 24/7.
“You know, particularly with social media, everything is like there is no end to them being constantly exposed, constantly involved, constantly thinking about what is going on,” says Bedar. She even recalls interviewing a journalist who was linked to 52 work-related online messaging groups.
Clinical psychologist Asha Bedar of the Centre for Excellence in Journalism in Karachi, Pakistan, says some members of the media find it difficult to “switch off.” (Video by Amantha Perera)
“That is not sustainable mentally; it was creating a whole lot of issues around stress and anxiety,” says Bedar. Referring to other journalists in general, she adds, “So, they’re working nonstop, or they are involved with a whole lot of news, (and) what comes out tends to be negative as well.”
A recent study on the impact of the pandemic on journalism by the University of Toronto and the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism notes, “This combined tension of covering a new, complex beat with high and often personal stakes, combined with a dramatic change in working patterns, may well have contributed directly to the high levels of mental distress and anxiety.”
Editor Fonseka also explains that reporting on the current global health crisis cannot be compared to other coverages. For example, she says, while covering wars or racial riots, which have occurred in Sri Lanka, may be intense, these are not perpetual events. By contrast, there is nary a glimpse yet of the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, despite mass vaccinations and the development of medicine to shorten hospital stays due to the disease.
Another article in the BMJ Open medical journal describes journalists as playing a role similar to first responders, “but nothing to date is known of the psychological distress this is potentially causing them.” One main difference between journalists and first responders, however, is that while the latter are directly involved, journalists are supposed to remain observers.
For many, having to keep this role during the pandemic has only added to their distress. Comments Fonseka: “Scrolling through news feeds each day, [coming] across the misinformation going around social media, and watching as things (were) getting really bad in my country while not being able to do much as a responsible journalist was harder than I thought.”
Witnessing distressing scenes that are part of a seemingly endless pandemic has taken a heavy toll on the health of journalists.
The fact that several governments, especially in Asia, have seized the opportunity to tighten their grip on their people and to clamp down on their fundamental rights makes the situation even more difficult to take for journalists. Ordinarily, journalists would have seen their reports on such moves prompting people to protest and forcing authorities to explain themselves. But with restrictions forcing people to stay home and the disease itself a major worry and distraction, journalists have been left frustrated as much of their efforts are ignored or are unable to have an impact.
This persists even as several of their colleagues and family members have been infected with the virus, with some succumbing to COVID-19. State clampdowns have also targeted the media. In India, for instance, journalists have complained of a rising wave of legal and police action targeting critical voices since the start of the pandemic. A similar scenario has unfolded in Cambodia. According to the International Federation of Journalists, at least 72 journalists face harassment cases in the country. In Bangladesh, Reporters Without Borders has recorded several cases of state violence against journalists doing COVID-19-related reports since early 2020.
Time to take stock
Hassan Mohamed, an associate editor at Adhadhu, a news website based in the Maldives, says that the pandemic has forced journalists to stop pretending that mental health is not a vital safety concern. Fonseka, for her part, says that covering the pandemic in isolation has suddenly left her no option but to address her emotional well-being.
She admits, however, that she is risking the stigma of being considered “weak” inside the macho news culture. “Those with mental health issues often don’t feel they can speak out about it openly at work because of the fear of it being regarded as a weakness that will impinge on your career,” Fonseka says. “As we all are aware, there is a huge amount of shame attached to mental illness.”
Luz Rimban, executive director at the Asian Center for Journalism at the Ateneo de Manila University says, “I believe that most journalists still do not consider mental health an issue because there’s the need for journalists to be tough or appear tough to weather the demands of the profession, and the routines of the work do not leave time and space for any meaningful mental health discussion or engagement. Plus the stigma of being treated for mental health is negative.”
She says, though, that the reason why “there is no difference in the amount of attention paid to the mental well-being of journalists since the pandemic broke” is that “newsrooms are preoccupied with existential concerns (like government repression and economic pressures) that take priority over journalists’ mental health.”
Adhadhu’s Mohamed says that, at the very least, creating a balance between work and life outside of work is important. “In my opinion, (we need) the courage to say no,” he says. “Journalists worldwide are overworked and underappreciated. We have to say no to work sometimes. We have to keep that email unread while watching TV with our sons and daughter. But it is not the reality, sadly.”
Fonseka, however, has started to draw the line between work and her personal life. She has also begun going to the gym regularly as part of her efforts to keep physically and mentally fit.
Meanwhile, Bedar’s research and work with Pakistani journalists have shown that, at least at an individual level, journalists are recognizing the importance of mental well-being more frequently than before the pandemic.
“What I’m quite optimistic about is the fact that a lot of journalists access the (counseling) service,” she says. “There is that recognition and I find that really positive because when we started out, we really didn’t know whether people would actually come.” ●
Amantha Perera is a Sri Lankan researcher at the School of Education and the Arts of the Central Queensland University, Australia. He is currently in the final stages of his master’s research project on the impact of online trauma threats on journalism during the COVID-19 lockdowns.
