Source: cjr.org

Markus Beckedahl, the editor-in-chief and founder of Netzpolitik,org, working at a computer at the website’s office in Berlin, Germany, after an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday, August 5, 2015. (Photo: AP)

Most people in the United States have probably never heard of the popular German news site Netzpolitik.org until this month. But it has been in the news for a reason it wish it wasn’t: the German government is threatening two of its reporters with treason. Their supposed offense? Reporting on leaked information about Germany’s mass surveillance capabilities.

These leaks did not come from Edward Snowden, but the content was eerily similar: they exposed the German government’s secret plans to step up internet surveillance.

The public reaction was swift. The investigation made world headlines and thousands of people marched in the streets to protest the clear violation of press freedom. Dozens of journalists and free speech advocates signed a letter challenging the government’s aggressive tactics. By Tuesday, the German Justice Minister had fired the country’s top prosecutor who brought the case. (On Monday, after some question about whether the inquiry would continue, Germany formally dropped the investigation despite the fact that some powerful members of the government wanted it to proceed).

While the story may be headed towards a just ending, it is one piece in a much larger story that has western government increasingly cracking down on journalism that dares report on mass electronic spying.

Journalism legend Duncan Campbell penned an incredible piece for the Intercept last week about his 40-year quest to report on the British government’s mass surveillance capabilities, despite Britain’s notorious penchant for harsh clampdowns when investigative reporting casts them in a bad light. He wrote:

“In my 40 years of reporting on mass surveillance, I have been raided three times; jailed once; had television programs I made or assisted making banned from airing under government pressure five times; seen tapes seized; faced being shoved out of a helicopter; had my phone tapped for at least a decade; and — with this arrest — been lined up to face up to 30 years imprisonment for alleged violations of secrecy laws.”

Campbell ended his retrospective on a high note, saying that “thanks to Edward Snowden and those who courageously came before, the need for public accountability and review has become unassailable.” However, the UK, which arguably has the most authoritarian approach to the press in the western world, has still refused to give an inch on the Snowden revelations—even as the GCHQ, Britain’s NSA equivalent, has been found to have broken the law over and over again by British courts.

Just two weeks prior to Campbell’s epoch, Intercept journalist Ryan Gallagher confirmed that the UK government continues to criminallyinvestigate the journalists at the Guardian who were involved in the Snowden story more than two years later. (This is on top of their deplorable detainment of Glenn Greenwald’s partner David Mirandaunder their “terrorism” law merely for traveling through the UK with encrypted Snowden documents on his person.)

In Australia, their government in the past year has passed a series of disturbing measures, not only dramatically expanding their surveillance capabilities, but criminalizing reporting on them as well. Their data retention law, which forces service providers to hold onto metadata, was passed, in part, “for the express purpose of determining the identity of a journalist’s sources.” Another national security law, passed at the end of 2014, expressly outlaws journalism on “special intelligence operations,” which, defined broadly could mean just about anything related to national security the government didn’t like.

Australia’s neighbor New Zealand raided the house and seized the computers of famed investigative reporter Nicky Hager (along with his children’s computers). Hager had recently written a popular book critical of Prime Minister John Key that was based on a leak, and was busy working on another major story based on the Snowden documents. (Disclosure: The organization I work for, Freedom of the Press Foundation, raised money for Hager’s legal defense.)

These crackdowns are not limited to the US’s main “Five-Eyes” spying partners, however. Japan is currently fuming over documentspublished by WikiLeaks showing the US has been spying on them, a fact they would not know if it wasn’t for another leak. Yet they too passed a draconian secrecy law in the post-Snowden era. In December 2013, after strenuous objections from the minority party and the Japanese public, the ruling Liberal Democratic party pushed through a law clamping down on the government’s supposed secrets, which could potentially criminalize their publication if they were obtained “illegally.” The US government had been pushing for the law and hailed its passage.

As NPR reported at the time, “The penalties for violators are harsh: 10 years in prison for civil servants who leak classified information; five years for citizens convicted of abetting leaks. The law covers defense, diplomacy, counterterrorism and counterintelligence.”

“Abetting leaks.” Don’t forget that’s what Glenn Greenwald was once accused of in the press, and what Fox News reporter James Rosen was accused of in court documents. It’s also known to many reporters as simply doing their jobs. (If only the prosecutor in that case was fired like his or her counterpart in Germany.)

If there was ever a doubt, journalism that surfaces the propensity of governments for mass surveillance remains a dangerous game.

Source:poynter.org

I recently spent three days with a collection of media professionals who had come together to focus on the topic of ‘restorative narrative’. The gathering was sponsored by Images and Voices of Hope an organization promoting the concept of restorative narrative as a more complete way for journalists and others in the storytelling business to tell the tales of individuals and communities impacted by tragedy.

The group consisted of newspaper, magazine, television and radio reporters, filmmakers, photojournalists, video game designers, and artists. As a psychologist who has specialized in trauma for 25 years, my entire professional career, I was intrigued to find that such an organization existed and welcomed the opportunity to speak with this group which is so often scorned by trauma victims. Knowing the untapped potential for healing that journalists can play in the lives of victims, I was eager to attend.

Restorative narrative stories are those that not only tell the facts about the tragedy and outline the struggles inherent in the recovery process, but they go beyond that to highlight the less often described characteristics of resilience unique to the individual victim/survivor or victimized community. Telling a story from a restorative narrative perspective means not sugar-coating the pain and tragedy in a Pollyanna type fashion but instead emphasizing the resilience triggered by the extreme tragedy.

Given the negative experiences many victims and communities have had with journalists around the world, it was uplifting to meet so many at the summit who truly were interested in telling a more complete and restorative narrative.

But as the weekend unfolded I realized I was most impressed by something entirely different. Throughout the summit, professionals told the stories of a wide range of tragedies they had covered. Whether it was via film, video, painting, the written word or some combination of these, person after person described in exquisite detail a story of awful tragedy interwoven with themes of strength and resilience. They clearly knew how to tell restorative narratives.

But what was most impressive to me was the sheer amount of tragedy that had been absorbed and shouldered by those in that room. These journalists and artists carried stories of virtually every type of tragedy… war, natural disaster, mass killing, deadly diseases, and horrific human abuse and suffering. I was stunned to feel the weight of the world in that gathering. It was palpable.

Naturally, I’ve been to conferences on a wide variety of trauma related topics in my professional career. But those traditional gatherings typically bring together mental health researchers, academics, clinicians and others whose careers are dedicated to understanding and treating the impact of traumatic events. Like me, those individuals study trauma.

The folks at the IVOH summit tell the stories of trauma. And they immerse themselves in it to do so. However, journalists must begin to truly appreciate the toll all that exposure to trauma takes on one’s self.

Mental health practitioners have known it for years and have regularly built in strategies to our professional lives in order to minimize the impacts of the ever present wave of tragedy that washes over those of us in the trauma business. Whether you know it as ‘vicarious trauma’, ‘compassion fatigue’ or ‘secondary trauma’ the effects of repeatedly dousing one’s self in the tragedy of others is real and it is corrosively dangerous. Not recognizing or ignoring the impact of these ongoing assaults decreases one’s professional life span and undermines multiple aspects of daily functioning and personal relationships.

And the effects can appear rather rapidly. I am reminded of the seasoned reporter I met years ago who arrived on scene at a massive earthquake, with thousands killed, and in a brief couple of hours was suddenly experiencing many of the symptoms of PTSD.

The contributing factors which determine the impact are vast and range from personal characteristics, to event details, to nature and length of exposure, and recovery environment. There is no way to predict with certainty just when and how anyone will feel the effects. Therefore preventative steps should be taken and response and recovery mechanisms should be easily accessible. When taking steps to assure safety on the job, media organizations and professionals need to make psychological safety a high priority.

The dozens of personal conversations I had during the three day meeting made clearer to me how the impact of trauma was living on in the storytellers, long after the fact checking was complete. As a storyteller dealing with traumatic events, it is virtually impossible to not be affected by the material you are immersed in.

In order to tell a restorative narrative, or any semblance of accurate narrative, understanding the psychological weight of the material is imperative. When the storyteller acknowledges the magnitude of the traumatic material, s/he can use that acknowledgement as both additional information in understanding the story they are telling and as the first step in preventing the deleterious effects of exposure to trauma on themselves.

The author is a clinical psychologist and principle partner at Organizational Resilience International
(ORIConsulting.com) a crisis consulting firm.