The Trauma Beat

Consider some of the most common top news stories. Your local hockey team makes it to the Stanley Cup Finals. A high-profile businessperson throws their hat into a political race. A grieving parent breaks down at the scene where their child was just murdered. Now consider how the media interacts with the people in these stories. The hockey stars have received some media training and are only inter...

When Dr. Jessica Beard began working as a trauma surgeon in Philadelphia, she turned to local news to understand why there were so many firearm-injured patients arriving at her hospital. What she found was not helpful. Very little mention of root causes. Very little mention of possible solutions. The way gun violence was framed in the media made it all seem so, well, inevitable. She wanted to chan...

For more than three decades, Michèle Anderson worked on the front lines of sex trafficking in Toronto, supporting victims and survivors through her role at a local non-profit organization. Michèle speaks with Tamara about her experiences supporting survivors in their interactions with the media, her own interactions with the media, and the impact she saw the media have on survivors throughout the...

It was during the pandemic, and all the stressful stories that came along with it, that Dave Seglins was assigned a story about a historical child murder case. And he couldn’t do it. By this point, Dave knew a thing or two about his mental health. Years earlier, he had been diagnosed with PTSD following his coverage of a trauma-filled court case. And in that moment that he was assigned that histor...

Dr. Anthony Feinstein is a world-renowned psychiatrist who has spent much of his career studying the impact of trauma on journalists who work in war zones and under oppressive regimes. He is also the person who first introduced Tamara to the term “moral injury.” In this episode, Dr. Feinstein discusses the concept of moral injury as it pertains to local news reporters, along with the responsibilit...

In the near quarter century that Michelle Maluske has reported on news as a video journalist with CTV News Windsor in Ontario, she has reported on a wide variety of traumatic events. From shadowing paramedics as they went from call to call several years ago, to a high-profile and trauma-filled murder trial and sentencing hearing in the weeks and months before this conversation was recorded, Michel...

Steph Crosier is a newlywed, aunt, dog mom, athlete, and journalist who for the past decade has covered mostly crime for the Kingston Whig Standard and papers across the Canada’s Postmedia Network. Before settling in Kingston, Ontario, Steph worked for newspapers in Hamilton, Winnipeg and Sault Ste. Marie. In this conversation, Steph reflects on her early days as a cub reporter and how her thought...

Photographer, writer and traveler Fernanda H. Meier has learned many things while documenting stories from around the globe. She speaks with Tamara about the importance of being purposeful in collecting and sharing stories of trauma and ensuring journalism is in the best interest of victims and survivors whose stories are being documented. “It’s great to tell stories, but just make sure you’re tel...

As she prepares to mark 25 years since the mass shooting at her high school that made headlines around the world, Heather Martin speaks with Tamara about the impact the media had on her in the immediate aftermath of the Columbine High School shooting, and for several years that followed. Tamara asks Heather for her reaction to The Washington Post’s decision to publish graphic imagery from the imme...

Elisa Toha’s path to becoming a trauma therapist was not exactly a conventional one. Before she began her career helping people through their trauma, she spent years chasing trauma around the United States as a chase producer, or booker, for major network morning shows and CNN. From her home in New York City, where she was based as an Emmy-award-winning journalist and now works as a therapist, Eli...

Marvin Engelbrecht was walking his dog near his home in Toronto when he was shot and killed on October 29, 2012. But it was nearly a year before then crime reporter Tamara Cherry first heard his name, delivered during at a news conference where police announced Marvin had been killed in a “random act of violence.” The murder of Marvin Engelbrecht — a young Black man killed in a neighbourhood that...

From the author of The Trauma Beat: A Case for Re-Thinking the Business of Bad News comes another season of conversations that are meant to make us think differently about the way bad-news stories are collected and shared.  Unlike Season 1, which included almost exclusively conversations with trauma survivors speaking about the impact of the media coverage of their traumatic events, Season 2 will...

Brett Holzhauer was in the library of Santa Monica College, a journalism student studying for his last exam, when he heard the first bang. For the self-proclaimed gun advocate, that bang and the many bangs that followed were unmistakable: gunfire. His first encounter with the media came just moments after he had a gun pointed in his face, just moments after he crawled and ran to safety, and just m...

For more than three decades, Elynne Greene answered the call to help those who were confronted by the unimaginable. From homicides and traffic fatalities, to sexual violence and human trafficking, to the “One October” mass shooting on the Las Vegas strip, the recently retired manager of Victim Services for Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department has supported countless trauma survivors through th...

Agnes Morgan was a devoted parishioner who headed up not one, but several committees at her church. She was also a mother with gentle lessons. Her resting face was a smile. There were so many delightful things about her. But when she was struck and killed by a drunk driver in 2013, she became, quite simply, “senior citizen.” “My mom didn’t die because she was a 77-year-old lady crossing the street...

Louise (Lou) Godbold is many things. She is a silence breaker, a trauma expert, and a non-profit leader. But the title most often associated with Lou in her conversations with the media — and there have been many — is “Weinstein survivor.” “I speak a lot with survivors of sexual violence, and I speak a lot with those who have that next layer of trauma…where they're exposed to a lot of media intere...

Toronto homicide victim John Wheeler was technically an uncle to Arlene Stuckless, but given their close birthdays, they were always more like siblings. In this conversation with host Tamara Cherry, Arlene discusses her experience with the media in the immediate aftermath of John’s inexplicable homicide, from watching the investigator release John’s name on live television, to an interview with so...

Shauna Brown was the first person on scene after losing her son, Demal, to gun violence outside their home. It was July 23, 2017, and in the days that followed, she and her family members felt like prisoners in their own home, not even able to go outside to have a moment in the spot where Demal died because the media was gathered. Shauna speaks with host Tamara Cherry about how cognizant she was f...

As a psychologist, author, and host of a podcast called Domino Effect of Murder, it goes without saying that Jan Canty knows a thing or two about trauma. But her expertise in the area of surviving traumatic events is also rooted in her own journey: In the 1980s, her husband, Alan Canty, was murdered. Jan’s first contact with the media came when her husband was still considered missing, not murdere...

As a young boy, Boris Cikovic fled war-torn Bosnia with his mother for a safer life in Canada. As a teenager, he was fatally shot while hanging out with friends in a Toronto park. It was October 3, 2008. Boris was an only child. “It’s not just a story,” Vesna Cikovic tells host Tamara Cherry in this conversation about the impact of the media after the death of her son. “I mean, it’s a big question...

In 2017, Illinois high school teacher Angela M. subdued and disarmed a shooter in her school’s cafeteria. In this episode, Angela speaks about the “overwhelming” media attention she received in the immediate aftermath of her traumatic event. She had reporters waiting outside her home, and calling and emailing her repeatedly. “It wasn’t about helping people,” she says in conversation with host Tama...

Rachel Maurice was 16 years old when she survived a mass shooting at her high school in Santee, California. In this episode, Rachel speaks with host Tamara Cherry about her experience with the news media in the hours, days, and years after the shooting that took the lives of two friends and injured several others. As with survivors of many incidents of mass violence, Rachel was confronted by repor...

The Trauma Beat pulls together conversations about the media and trauma and all the (often) ugly ways the two intersect. Host Tamara Cherry is an award-winning journalist, trauma researcher, and the founder of Pickup Communications, a public relations firm that supports trauma survivors and the stakeholders who surround them. She spent the bulk of her career as a crime reporter in some of Canada's...