Gavin Rees, Senior Advisor for Training and Innovation at the Global Center for Journalism and Trauma (GCJT), will be a mentor at the trauma and resilience retreat organized by GCJT and iMEdD. Here, he explains how visceral images can hijack the body and mind in ways that are hard to track.
Featured image: Evgenios Kalofolias
What happens to you when you view graphic images of violence? You may be a journalist who only occasionally stumbles upon traumatic images online; or perhaps you are an OSINT specialist and this is the main work you do –every day you verify images from battlefields or natural disasters and see traces of the dead and physical ruin.
It can be an unsettling question but one worth examining. Understanding our experiences is key to making them easier to manage. During the GCJT and iMEdD European Journalist Retreat, we will be looking at how taking stock of reactions and personal impact can make for more effective journalism.
What have you noticed yourself? Do you feel a tightening in your chest and a sense of focus that almost sucks you into the picture? Or maybe you don’t feel much of anything, and if so, what does that mean? Some journalists worry that repeated image exposure may be denting their capacity to feel. But the dimming of a response could also indicate that something different is at play. Perhaps it is not indifference to horror but a sign that a journalist has developed methods of building in protective distance, one that helps them continue to care rather than diminish it.
In my experience of having led trainings on working with traumatic imagery since the Arab Spring, I have discovered that the way individuals respond is complex, highly personal and sometimes paradoxical.
I have also learnt that giving experiences their proper names; hearing how other colleagues work with aversive content; and sharing strategies for managing workflows, can bring a sense of clarity and control which helps to safeguard one’s mental health as well as bring new insights to one’s work.
Covering incidents on the scale of mass shootings in the US, the drownings of migrants crossing the Mediterranean, or the destruction in Gaza and Ukraine is bound to feel overwhelming. And this is not just about viewing photographs and video. Sometimes the worst pictures come from listening to direct testimony or reading witness accounts.
And so it is not surprising that journalists often discount their own reactions: it can feel self-indulgent to ask how one is doing when one’s own discomfort is nothing compared to what the people in the images have experienced.
That may be true in one sense, but in another it is a misreading of the situation.
Visceral images have a tendency to hijack body and mind in ways that are hard to track, with knock-on impacts on both health and professional judgement.
Reporting on violence — finding out who did what to whom, and how — is journalism at its most consequential level. It requires colleague-to-colleague support and a willingness to share tools and insight, all things that will feature in discussions at the retreat, along with a willingness to push ever forward with this work.
You can find out more about working with traumatic imagery here and also in this resource on self-care in high-stakes investigations. Gavin Rees will dive deeper into this as a mentor at the trauma and resilience retreat to be held in October 2026 in Vamvakou, Laconia, Greece, by the Global Center for Journalism & Trauma and iMEdD.
