Leaving the Dream
Trauma on Disaster Coverage: It will continue to linger.
It is not only hard to comprehend when told that you have seen dead bodies piled up in streets, soaked by the thickness of blood and air due to screams on a daily basis; facing the on-ground casualties brought upon by its government incompetencies, but also hard to digest that this is the living reality of the profession.
As much as we adhere to our very duty as the checks and balances, fourth estate, and watchdogs, the very idea of due diligence in reporting, with its extensive and rigorous process of investigation over a matter, is not worth risking our life for. And disaster coverage tends to become the primary suspect for this.
Three Filipina war women, Marga Ortigas, Patricia Evangelista, and Micaela Papa, serve as prime examples of this.
Marga Ortigas, a “recovering journalist,” who covered the global war zones and disaster areas, from political crises to humanitarian ones, for 25 years, is undoubtedly why she left the profession to become a communications consultant and author. A leap, perhaps, but her experiences encapsulated her in a confined natural calamity that ‘stripped’ her faith in dreams. The coverage of war over ideologies, gunshots from one district to another, listening to stories of survival – is tormenting over time. And it is a magic, she said, that people survive behind all its ugliness (life’s pain and harshness). She now podcasts, writes, and trains others on how to effectively communicate their experiences through tailored communication training, having learned how to get to the heart of a narrative by expressing it with heart.
Differs from what a ‘usual’ disaster coverage would look like, Patricia Evangelista, a former investigative reporter of Rappler, documentary-filmmaker, and a “trauma journalist” – became renowned for her critically acclaimed book: Some People Need Killing. A point-by-point narration of her reportage in War on Drugs where the distinction for journalists who covers EJKs from late night to early morning, “Nightcrawlers,” were uncovered that consist of journalists exposing the deadly crusade of the violent campaign. She may not have yet leaved the profession, as there are no leads to what and where is she doing or working, but her, labeling as a trauma journalist says a lot. It consumed her living-being as to how to recover from a trauma of documenting dead bodies daily, unlike a one-time-big-time piled up dead bodies from Super Haiyan.
Lastly, same like Marga, Micaela Papa, is a former journalist best known for her firsthand coverage of the Super Typhoon Haiyan in 2013. Now, a writing consultant for UNICEF, her nightmare and calvary during the Haiyan was a disastrous for witnessing not just how many were killed but on her mental state of not should have something like this would have happen if people were prepared and informed. Reporting real-time from the calamitous strike as her background, it was with great fear to be able to survive a disaster coverage when all from your community were killed and only you are there to document and wait for the next storm to arrive, perhaps, saving yourself and the team.
And it still resounds today the very title of Howie Severino’s documentary,“May storya nga tayo, Patay naman tayo,” that remains no worth of risking our lives for a very story we wanted to cover. It may have hit like "suicide journalism" [3] due to its notable tracking of the blood-and-sand condition of the profession under pressure, and continuously pressing the press to work behind the shadows of death – we can never blame them for leaving.
In this profession -- we tend to become professionals as listeners of the bangs of gunshot, healers of the wound of others and of ours, bearers of the calamities that might end our life, and consumers of threats we receive from those with power. And some, are not.
They leave and choose to save themselves.