The impact and ethical responsibilities journalists face when covering domestic violence.
Journalists have a responsibility to bring people’s stories out of the shadows – to shed light on issues that would otherwise remain in the dark. In the COVID-19 era, however, they are tasked with a particularly consequential challenge: How to amplify a voice that may feel safer in its silence.
There has been an increase in reported instances of domestic violence due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the National Domestic Violence Hotline reporting its contact volume increased by 15% between April 2019 and April 2020. With this in mind, it is more essential than ever that journalists amplify survivors’ voices and properly cover incidents involving domestic violence while also remembering their duty to minimize harm.
“It’s journalism’s responsibility to be proactive and to initiate these stories without having to wait for victims to do the leg work for them by coming forward,” Jeffrey Kluger, editor at large for TIME, said.
As with any sensitive topic, journalists must be diligent in how they cover domestic violence. Done ethically, a story has the ability to empower survivors; done carelessly, they might shatter their source.
Rachel Snyder, a professor at American University and author of “No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us,” echoed this responsibility in an interview over Zoom.
“You have to think about your source’s safety almost more than they do because they don’t understand the scope of what might happen when you publish in a place like The New Yorker or The New York Times - you might really open them up to danger,” she said.
A Hidden Pandemic
Domestic violence, as defined by the National Network to End Domestic Violence, is a pattern of coercive and controlling behavior, consisting of physical, financial, emotional and sexual abuse. Abusers try to create an environment for their partners built on stress, isolation or financial strain. In the era of COVID-19, however, a global pandemic is able to generate all three.
The pandemic has uniquely impacted intimate partner violence survivors. As detailed by The Hotline, abusive partners may withhold necessary items, such as hand sanitizer and disinfectants, share misinformation to frighten and control survivors, prevent survivors from seeking medical care and feel more empowered to escalate their isolation tactics.
Jeffrey Kluger wrote a piece about this increase of incidents earlier in the pandemic for TIME. He said his sources for the article felt domestic violence was a hidden pandemic within the pandemic and emphasized the importance of bringing the problem out of the shadows. Journalists, he explained, do not want to be passively complicit in this escalating problem by not covering it.
Kluger reflected that everyone has coped with and experienced the pandemic differently – certainly, he said, people were vocal about the tedium of quarantine or how families could get on each other’s nerves during the lockdowns.
“But there wasn’t the same amount of open discussion of the danger that spouses – abused spouses – faced when they could not get out from under the eye of their abuser,” he said via Zoom.
Survivors have been thrust into an environment that appears to be more stifling than ever and it is the duty of journalists to create safe spaces for women to share their stories and expose the systemic issues at the root of domestic violence.
Covering this kind of trauma is not without its challenges, however. As asked by freelance journalist Christa Hillstrom: “How do you responsibly steward other people’s stories when it involves pretty deep trauma?”
It’s All About Purpose
It is essential that journalists remember the core purpose of a piece when covering domestic violence. Who might see the piece? What might come of it? Is it a story about empowerment - or is it a story about pity? Such are the questions journalists must ask themselves before interacting with trauma survivors.
Toshira Monroe is deputy director at My Sister’s Place, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that aims to shelter, support and empower survivors of domestic violence. She discussed being wary of journalists’ interactions with the organization's clients. Though sharing their stories can offer survivors a sense of control, she emphasized that journalists must be purposeful when asking women about their traumatic experiences.
“It’s really retraumatizing for survivors to read their stories over and over again. Sometimes they don’t even realize it, and it feels therapeutic at the time,” she said.
Monroe advised that journalists should start with an idea of what they’re trying to do. They should give survivors and clients a background as to why they are asking certain questions. This is important for domestic violence survivors in particular due to the complexity of their traumatic situation. They are already asked countless questions about their experiences from police, shelter staff members and hospital officials, so it can be hard for them to filter responses for journalists, said Monroe.
If they are overwhelmed by probing questions, they are forced to relive their traumatic experiences. When journalists fixate on meeting a deadline or dramatically uncovering a story, they often lose their purpose, fail to provide context and forget compassion. This can cause survivors to be set back in their journey to recovery.
“Dig deeper about the purpose,” Monroe advised, “and that’ll give you the answer.”
Value in Anonymity
Journalists often confront the issue of publicizing their source’s identity when reporting on domestic violence. They must carefully balance their duty to the reader – telling the truth – and their duty to their source – protecting them from harm.
Despite the potential for danger or retaliation from abusers, many organizations highly discourage source anonymity. At The New York Times, for example, sources can never be completely anonymous, but must at least be referred to by a nickname or identifying feature rooted in fact – something with an actual connection to the person.
Christa Hillstrom’s piece for The New York Times Magazine followed the story of a woman, Becky, who suffered from head trauma after surviving domestic abuse. Though Becky was in a safe enough place to be partially identified by her nickname and willingly shared intimate details of her experience, Hillstrom had to completely remove the details of another source from her story who was in more immediate danger of identification and retaliation from her ex-partner.
Sensing her source was overwhelmed, Hillstrom executed her discretion and decided it would be too risky to fully identify her in the article. For her, sharing the details of Becky’s story was enough to shed light on the experiences of countless survivors with brain injuries.
Jeffrey Kluger reflected a similar sentiment and recommended journalists think like a reader. When he reads a piece with an anonymous or partially identified source, Kluger said he doesn’t feel like he is being cheated of anything. As a reader, his need for information does not outweigh the needs of an individual experiencing a crisis.
“I feel my need as a journalist…does not trump my source’s need as an individual for privacy, anonymity and, much more important, safety,” said Kluger.
Impact
When journalists are able to stick to their purpose and respect the traumatic experiences of their sources, their coverage is able to impact individuals in a profound way. It is able to shed light on the issue of domestic violence and empower survivors to come forward.
Kluger, Hillstrom and Snyder, who have all covered domestic violence during the COVID-19 era, find value in the impact of amplifying survivors’ voices.
When reflecting on stories about domestic violence in general, Hillstrom noted that more coverage can expose how inexcusable the reality of a situation is. Just because this kind of violence is happening in the home instead of in front of strangers doesn’t normalize it, she said.
The purpose of her reporting is to question and understand the bigger context that perpetuates this reality for survivors in order to help break up misconceptions. Similarly, Snyder hopes covering this issue will help the average reader to recognize domestic violence as a collective problem, not an individual problem.
“In the real world, if there were any help that I could give, I would hope that a victim would read this story and have the courage to come forward. Or a bystander or a family member who knows that his sister or her aunt or her niece is being abused would step forward,” said Kluger.
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