“A Rolodex of terrible stories”:
The effects of covering traumatic stories on local TV news producers
By Lisa Thalhamer
By Lisa Thalhamer
Research about the effects of exposure to traumatic stories in television news has mostly focused on journalists whose work is in the field, including reporters and videographers. However, the impact on another group is seldom studied. Back in the newsroom and largely behind the scenes, TV newscast producers are exposed to similar trauma, listening to interviews, watching news video, reading court documents, and participating in a range of other work tasks. This study looked at more than a dozen producers in the Boston-Manchester, NH television market to understand which parts of their work most frequently expose them to potentially traumatic material and how that exposure affects them. It found that many producers feel emotionally disconnected from the impact of the stories they cover. It also found that there is no industry standard for mental wellbeing resources in newsrooms, with some communicating regularly about resources available through health insurance and others saying nothing. Despite this, the producers see the need for access to a mental health professional to discuss the psychological impacts of the stories they cover.
"I have a Rolodex of terrible stories in my head from the 20 years of my career," said TV news producer Patricia. She's worked in newsrooms across the East Coast, spending the last 10 years in New England. Since the early days of her career, she's been aware that journalists who work within the confines of a newsroom can still feel the traumatic impact of this work.
A few years after the September 11 terrorist attacks, she was working on coverage of the anniversary. "The master control operators said that [they were] just watching carnage all day, and it was the worst day of their lives," she said. "Ever since then, I've realized that we're all interacting with it, not just the people who go out to the scene."
The majority of the research about the effects of exposure to traumatic stories in television news has focused on journalists whose work makes them first-hand witnesses to disturbing situations, particularly reporters and photographers. However, the impact on another group is seldom studied. Back in the newsroom and largely behind the scenes, TV newscast producers (also called line producers) are exposed to similar trauma, listening to interviews, reading court documents, watching news video, and participating in a range of other work tasks.
This study aims to document the experiences of TV news producers in the Boston/Manchester, NH, television market as a way to begin filling a gap in journalist trauma research: what are the experiences of television journalists and news employees whose work exposes them to traumatic material while in newsrooms and control rooms and how do newsroom practices support their mental health?
This study contacted producers in the Boston/Manchester, NH television market, at the time ranked #10 on Nielsen's designated market area listings. We used a modified version of the Journalist Trauma Exposure Scale, developed by Pyevich, Newman, and Daleidan (2003) to ask the producers about the number of potentially traumatic stories they're exposed to. We also interviewed about 75% of the producers more broadly about their work and the stories they cover.
Their responses show that even though newscast producers spend the vast majority of their work time in their newsroom, they still experience emotional reactions to their work and the people who are featured in the stories in their newscasts. "Even though I'm in an air-conditioned, climate-controlled station miles away from wherever it's happening," said one producer, "it's still a real situation that is affecting me."
It's important for leaders within news organizations, journalism educators, and news workers themselves to understand the effects of repeated contact with traumatic material. For journalists, this knowledge could help them develop self-care plans to mitigate these harms as much as possible. For educators, this research bolsters the argument that college journalism programs should be teaching students about the realities of covering trauma (Dworznik & Garvey, 2019; Newman et al., 2023). For leadership, this adds to the ongoing industry conversations about struggles to recruit and retain producers (Brown, 2023; Heyward, 2021).
(In progress, including establishing where the research stands within journalism and establishing relevant concepts in trauma/mental health research)
Posttraumatic stress disorder is a mental health condition that some people may develop after experiencing a traumatic event.
Symptoms include relieving the event, avoiding situations that remind them of the trauma, an increase in negative thoughts and feelings, and hyperarousal (feeling on edge or on alert) (National Center for PTSD, 2025).
"Secondary traumatic stress, or STS, involves the development of symptoms similar to those in people who are suffering from PTSD. However, the trauma is considered secondary because one does not experience the trauma oneself. Instead, one is repeatedly exposed to the details of traumatic incidents that happened to others." (Dworznik, 2018, p. 642).
"Vicarious traumatization is a negative reaction to trauma exposure and includes a range of psychosocial symptoms." It is often work-related trauma exposure "for people working and volunteering in the fields of victim services, law enforcement, emergency medical services, fire services, and other allied professions, due to their continuous exposure to victims of trauma and violence" (Office for Victims of Crime, n.d.).
"In traumatic or unusually stressful circumstances, people may perpetrate, fail to prevent, or witness events that contradict deeply held moral beliefs and expectations… A moral injury can occur in response to acting or witnessing behaviors that go against an individual's values and moral beliefs." (Norman & Maguen, 2025\)
"Compassion fatigue is a form of secondary trauma that results from repeated exposure to the details and emotions associated with someone else's traumatic experience (Adams, Boscarino, and Figley 2006). It is the strain and exhaustion that results from interacting with people in distress, and is most often studied in counselors, first-responders, and medical professionals whose job involves repeated exposure to people who are suffering the effects of trauma (Kapoulitsas and Corcoran 2014; Evces 2015). Anyone who works with those who have been traumatized can experience compassion fatigue, which often involves a complete loss of empathy for victims of trauma (Knight 2013)." (Dworznik, 2018, p. 641-642)
"Research on burnout was pioneered by Christina Maslach. It is characterized by three components: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization or cynicism, and feelings of reduced personal accomplishment. It is a prolonged response to chronic emotional and interpersonal stressors experienced on the job (Maslach, Schaufeli, and Leiter 2001; Adams, Boscarino, and Figley 2006). Cynical reactions such as hostility, lack of empathy toward others, and detachment can develop with burnout (Maslach, Schaufeli, and Leiter 2001; Evces 2015)." (Dworznik, 2018, p. 642\)
In the first portion of this study, working TV producers were asked to complete an online survey. It gathered some demographic information and also asked about their exposure to potentially traumatic news stories.
13 producers completed the survey. Six were women, and seven were men. Their ages ranged from 25 to 42. They had a range of lengths of employment in the industry: Years of experience as a TV producer:
Responses were received from producers from five of the six English-language television stations in the Boston-Manchester, NH Nielsen designated market area.
The producers also completed a version of the Journalist Traumatic Exposure Scale, or JTES (Pyevich, Newman, & Daleidan, 2003). This version retained the 14 items that measure the frequency of exposure to specific types of stories. It did not include the nine questions about specific trauma experience for the journalist (example: Did you ever cover any of the events listed above "at the scene?") because the majority of the questions address experiences outside of the newsroom. This study looked at producers whose work keeps them within their newsroom.
Car crashes and murders were the stories that producers said they covered the most with nearly every respondent (92.3%) saying they covered stories about both of those subjects every week.
A majority said they covered stories involving war zones (61.5%) and other types of events in which people are hurt or killed (53.8%) every week.
Producers had covered stories involving every topic on the list at least one or twice in the past year. No one responded "never" for any of the story subjects.
The researchers interviewed eight of the survey respondents and asked them about their experiences covering stories containing traumatic themes, the support resources provided in their newsroom, and the resources that would be valuable. Some of the following responders are named with a single initial to preserve anonymity.
A few major themes emerged about how producers interact with potentially traumatic stories, including which work tasks cause the most exposure, ways that producers are distanced from stories, and disconnecting from work when off the clock.
Questions about resources currently available and those that would be desired show that there's no industry standard for mental wellbeing resources.
Half of the producers said that reviewing interviews to select soundbites or confirm information is the work task that causes them the most exposure to potentially traumatic material.
Anonymous producer S said, "you listen to these people who are grieving, who are hurt. People that I'm 99% sure I'm never going to meet ever in my life. Yet I'm still part of their story in some way because I'm one of the people who has to tell this."
Anonymous producer A also said reviewing sound interviews was where he had the most exposure to traumatic material. "I always find that's the toughest because that is the raw, and it's something that you are not always going to see unless you're the one that's working on it." he said.
Two producers said that gathering the information to select and write the stories that are in their newscasts causes the most exposure. Producer Patricia said, "just being an informed producer is how I get most of the terrible details in my job."
Anonymous producer R noted that part of this process requires producers to filter out details that are too graphic for broadcast: "it's reading press releases or court documents. Just sometimes the details. One example, the Lindsey Clancy story [about a mother killing her children] from a couple of years ago, just terrible details. And that again is stuff that we tried to leave out of the reporting, just said the children were killed, not how they were killed."
Producers also said that watching video led to exposure to traumatic material, including ensuring that video being used in their newscast didn't include graphic images, such as bodies.
Every producer described feeling distanced from the difficult stories they covered. Sometimes it was framed as a professional necessity, while other times it was framed as a consequence of being exposed to so many difficult stories.
Producers frequently referenced the need to prioritize their work above their feelings when dealing with potentially traumatic news stories. While discussing listening to news conferences or interviews, producer Patrick said: As the news producer, you're only listening for the stuff to confirm it. It's not really registering, 'oh my gosh, a young girl was killed or whatever." It's strictly business… You're not really processing it the way a normal human does. You're processing it as a news person. And you're worrying strictly about what it can do for your product.
Similarly, anonymous producer A said that potentially traumatic stories are frequently the ones that require newsrooms to work harder: Just because of the nature of the business, I don't think there tends to be a time to acknowledge it. Because most of the time when the heaviest stuff is happening, it's also like, "we got to get this on TV, we got to prepare to get this on the shows" type of thing. And I think almost in a way, if there is a silver lining to that because of the work is that it sometimes gets so busy that you're not really processing all of it.
Multiple producers expressed feeling troubled by their initial reaction to stories involving death or injuries. They described thinking about the consequences and impacts on their work day first, rather than thinking about the people involved. When talking about constantly covering potentially traumatic stories, producer Conner said: [It's] numbing to just my sense of the world, I guess. My perception of violence, my perception of death and destruction and all of it has just become very, "oh, this is something I have to worry about at work." It is not something that I'm like, "oh, there are people that were affected by this. Their lives have been changed forever by this experience." That thought process is secondary rather than where it should be, which is first. I feel like I'm a very empathetic person. And yet, on a story… empathy was not my first thought, which is insanity to me.
Patrick said, "covering the news has definitely affected the way I process things emotionally. I've gotten pretty sanitized to a lot of violence and violent stories."
All of the producers discussed ways they disconnected from work, and nearly all of them said they actively avoid news in their time off the clock.
Multiple people referenced avoiding work and thoughts related to work during their downtime. Conner said, "once I leave work I kind of shut off my news brain."
Anonymous producer A said, "you have these sort of two poles of your brain… This isn't one of those jobs that you bring home from a work standpoint… You talk about all this stuff [news stories] and then you kind of almost leave it at the door, or at least you try to."
Patricia said, "At the end of the day, my brain will move on. It's like, 'oh no, I don't remember what I did at work today,' which I think is common in a lot of jobs but it's helpful in the news."
Anonymous producer L said, "I turn off my work mindset."
Patrick said, "on my weekend, I try to tune out from the news as much as possible just to give myself a break from it."
Producers also talked about their behavior around TV newscasts, social media, and push alerts to their phone. Most said they had removed apps from their phones or configured their phone settings to limit how much news they see in their off time.
Anonymous producer S said: When it gets to a certain time, all right, no more news alerts… I have a time where after so many hours, I'm not going to check my email. I don't want to be immersed in this work, because it's still going to be there when I get ready and go back to work for the next day. So why do I want to torture myself, for lack of a better word, for just constantly being on this [phone]? Because that doesn't benefit me in a healthy way, I would say personally.
Patricia said, "I don't have any alerts on my phone. I don't even have my work app on my phone. If I want to check a story… I have to go to a browser and go to the website."
Producers did note that they need to balance this desire to get away from their work with an expectation that they stay informed about what's going on.
The producers who participated in these interviews represented five of the six English-language television stations in the Boston/Manchester DMA. Those five stations operate with a range of ownership models: WBZ (CBS) and WBTS (NBC) are owned and operated by their network affiliates. WHDH is an independent TV station with no network affiliation, owned by a small family-run company. Boston 25 is owned by private equity group Apollo Global Management. WMUR is owned by broadcasting company Hearst Television. These stations represent a majority of the ownership structures that currently exist within local TV news.
Interviews with the producers in this study show that there is no standard practice across the local TV news industry for providing mental wellbeing resources to newsroom employees, including producers. Respondents reported a range of situations at their stations, from no resources being offered to services provided through health insurance/telehealth to occasional on-site offerings.
One producer said he sees a therapist through his insurance, which is provided by his union. As a result, he's not sure what resources his newsroom offers.
Two producers said they weren't aware of any resources offered by their employer and also didn't receive any messaging about available resources via email or conversations with managers. One producer said their employer no longer had a human resources employee on site.
Three producers mentioned on-site resources, such as grief counselors or therapy dogs. All noted that the services were provided in the wake of particularly challenging stories. One producer said that a single visit from a group of therapy dogs was the only resource her employer had ever offered around mental wellbeing. The other two producers said that the on-site resources were offered alongside semi-regular email communication about mental health benefits available through their health insurance.
One producer said her newsroom sends out emails with details about mental health benefits from their health care and how to use them after particularly high-profile traumatic stories. She noted that this has developed more recently and doesn't remember these kinds of messages from the earlier part of her career 15 to 20 years ago.
Three producers mentioned telehealth services or apps that were provided to staff, including free access to the Calm app and telehealth therapy services through Spring Health.
Multiple producers remarked that if resources were available, they weren't easy to find.
Nearly every producer said they would like a mental health professional to talk to about the potentially traumatic stories they cover at work. Multiple producers said in an ideal world, this person would be in the same building as their newsroom and available for walk-in conversations at the end of a producer's shift.
Anonymous producer A said that he would want this person to already be informed about what's happening in the day's news so that he didn't have to do the work of explaining the stories the newsroom is covering.
One producer mentioned that when on-site resources are offered, organizers need to take staff schedules into account: "they might have people from some mental health thing that maybe is included in our insurance plan [on site]... but they come at 1 p.m. to 5, which is when we're putting the shows on."
A few producers also said they'd also like the ability to take time off after difficult stories. Anonymous producer S said: Just being given a dedicated time, a dedicated space to decompress, to process that, I think would be super helpful. Because I think for a lot of these stories, a lot of these traumatic situations, you know, just because of the grind of the business of the news cycle, we're not necessarily given the time we probably should to process what we've just been exposed to.
This study didn't use any methods to specifically identify or measure symptoms of various trauma-related mental health conditions. However, some of the themes that surfaced in the semi-structured interviews are reminiscent of concepts that have been examined in prior research about journalist trauma.
Dworznik (2018) surveyed television reporters and found "almost half (41.4 percent) of journalists in this survey indicated that they experienced symptoms of compassion fatigue sometimes to very often" (p. 650). Compassion fatigue frequently "involves a complete loss of empathy for victims of trauma" (Dworznik 2018, p. 642). Multiple producers described experiences that sound like compassion fatigue, including Conner who said, "some days I feel like I'm watching my TV shows and I feel more empathy towards characters than I do towards real people."
As Dworznik notes, "symptoms of compassion fatigue, from anxiety to depersonalization of victims, can all affect objectivity and the ability of a reporter to tell a story and do his or her job under the stress of fast-paced deadlines" (Dworznik 2018, 652). Unlike TV reporters, who typically focus on one to two stories per day, TV producers interact with nearly every story in their newscast. This means any objectivity or quality consequences related to symptoms of compassion fatigue have the potential to be multiplied across many stories when producers are affected.
Producers in this study also described avoidant behavior around their work, especially while off the clock. While avoidance is a normal coping mechanism, researchers have found that it can become problematic. "Journalists who report engaging in more avoidant emotional coping (e.g., denial, behavioural disengagement, and self‐distraction) report greater symptoms of PTSD… Although avoidant coping may serve an adaptive function that maintains objectivity while journalists are actively generating news, avoidant coping post‐coverage may inhibit the processing of traumatic encounters and may serve a maladaptive function in the long term." (Smith et al., 2018, p. 224)
There are limitations to this study. The producer sample size is small, and it's unclear who we failed to reach in our initial recruitment. Local TV news producers can be hard to identify. They're not visible in a newscast or listed publicly on a station website like TV reporters and anchors are. This could be a reason why few studies about journalist trauma have looked specifically at producers.
Producers may have a wider range of experiences with exposure to trauma than is captured in this study. For example, it's possible that some producers didn't respond to recruitment outreach because they aren't affected by the traumatic stories they cover.
There's a lot of opportunity for research about TV producers and other news employees whose work is essential to a newscast but less visible. Among producers, it would be valuable to see whether market size influences experiences with covering traumatic stories. There's also an opportunity to expand and refine the survey method used here to add questions that measure symptoms of various mental health conditions related to trauma exposure. It would also be valuable to measure whether producers have experienced personal trauma and how that affects their reaction to their work.
Beyond producers, TV control room technicians are another group that is exposed to traumatic material but doesn't seem to be represented in research on the topic. Directors, technical directors, studio camera operators, audio technicians, and floor directors spend hours mentally locked-in during TV broadcasts, one wrong button away from on-air disaster and unable to turn away during repeated airings of gruesome stories.
Producers are essential to local television journalism. A newscast cannot go on air without them. Their interaction with nearly every story in their newscast increases their opportunity to be exposed to traumatic content. As established in this exploratory study, producers are affected by the stories they cover. They often describe feeling emotionally distant from the people in those stories, a common symptom of compassion fatigue. They also describe avoidant behaviors regarding their time away from work, actively separating themselves from thoughts about work as well as reminders of it (emails, push alerts, news coverage in general).
While producers expressed a desire for mental wellbeing resources, especially access to a mental health professional, every newsroom/ownership group is operating in its own way. A few producers said their management clearly and semi-frequently communicated about mental health resources that were available through their health insurance. Producers working in other newsrooms said they were unaware of any resources and never remembered receiving information about that topic.
"Journalists who experience trauma at work can suffer from mental health problems, including primary and secondary traumatic stress (STS), posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and burnout… Journalists left untreated can experience a loss of productivity, higher absenteeism, and greater turnover in their careers. (Hill et al., 2020, p. 65)
There's both an ethical and a financial case to be made for caring about the mental wellbeing of journalists. On the financial side, hiring new employees is expensive, and training new employees takes time. When experienced journalists leave, they take institutional knowledge with them. In addition, lack of trauma awareness can affect the journalism that newsrooms produce because "this lack of training can also increase the possibility of a reporter causing harm to a victim if they cannot recognize or do not understand the impact a traumatic event can have on those involved" (Dworznik & Garvey, 2019, p. 379).
On the ethical side, the physical and mental effects of trauma exposure have become well established in the mental health profession. While journalists entering the field likely have at least some awareness of the conditions they'll face, employers certainly know what they're asking journalists to take on. Therefore, shouldn't there be some type of employer-sponsored support? Just as firefighters would never be sent into a burning house without the appropriate equipment, journalists shouldn't be constantly immersed in traumatic content without the appropriate care.
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Produced by candidates for the MS degree in the Media Innovation & Data Communication program at the Northeastern University School of Journalism. © 2025
