Kaitlin C. Miller

This article explores the effects that covering Black Lives Matter protests had on Black TV journalists. Using in-depth semi-structured interviews with 14 Black journalists across the U.S., this study investigates their experiences covering BLM protests, as well as how supported they felt by their organizations/supervisors. Through qualitative interviews, research shows that Black journalists felt torn between their identities as both journalists and Black—navigating objective reporting with a deep emotional empathy for protestors. Moreover, they did not feel supported by their news organizations, who did not prioritize their well-being, and who tailored news coverage for a White audience. The intersectional implications of this are discussed as well as concerns about emotional labor.

Hostility toward the press is on the rise, leading to increased attacks online and offline. This hostility is taking a significant toll on individual journalists, and places a disproportionate burden on non-male journalists and journalists of color. This chapter provides a brief historical overview of hostility toward journalists, and goes on to describe the current sources and channels of hostility toward journalists from actors outside the newsroom. In so doing, the chapter highlights the insidious nature of hostility and the dangers of normalizing the issue.

This mixed-methods study introduces the concept of journalistic visibility and examines its implications. Drawing on diverse approaches for understanding the challenges of visibility labor and personal branding, and applying them to assessing the impact of routinized practices that can make journalists “local celebrities” in their communities, we explore how visibility may be connected to growing levels of abuse from hostile publics. Using data from 32 in-depth interviews and a survey of US journalists (N = 509), we find that the more time a journalist spends on social media platforms, regardless of the number of followers they have, the more likely they are to experience harassment. Furthermore, the more visible that journalists are—online and offline—the more harassment they experience. This is particularly challenging for women, who not only share more personal information on social media but also experience more harassment. Additionally, we find initial evidence that the frequency of abuse appears to be higher for journalists of color, those who wear religious garb, or those who may be transgender or gender non-binary—altogether pointing to a research agenda for the future study of journalists and safety, particularly in light of the intersectional nature of harassment.

Since 2017, 518 journalists have been attacked while covering protests (U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, 2021) which is one of the most dangerous places to be as a journalist in the United States (Sterne & Peters, 2017). Despite the volatile climate around journalists as they cover increasingly dangerous protests (Luqiu, 2020), there is minimal understanding as to the effect of these events on them (Talabi, et al., 2021). Furthermore, there is a gap in the hostility literature examining harassment that journalists face in the field. Through a survey of U.S. journalists, this study finds that covering protests causes journalists mental and emotional health concerns, which influences how they view their journalistic roles. Furthermore, the effects of positive and negative encounters at protests affected journalists personally, depending on who the perpetrator was (protestor or law enforcement)—influencing everything from PTSD and anxiety to intentions to leave journalism. The paper ultimately underscores the need for news organizations to make sure journalists not only are safe, but also feel safe, when reporting in the field.

Social media platforms have become an integral part of journalistic work. These tools allow journalists to pursue stronger, more intimate connections with their audiences, to cultivate their own professional identities or “brands,” and to advocate for improved working conditions within their organizations. Yet, social media platforms have also created new risks and challenges for journalists, most notably in the form of dark participation, which refers to negative, selfish or even deeply sinister forms of online audience engagement. Although scholars have devoted considerable effort to exploring how this harassment unfolds and how it impacts journalists who face it, there is less research investigating the implications of this harassment for the future of journalism and its relationship with the public. To address this, this research uses interviews with a diverse group of 37 US journalists to propose larger structural changes to newsroom leadership and social media policy creation. The interview data suggest that newsroom leadership must become more diverse so that newsroom policy is assembled by a group of people that is representative of its staff—as well as the public at large. The authors conclude by observing that “dark participation” is not unique to journalism alone, and by discussing the implications of our findings for communication stakeholders invested in overcoming the current, global climate of populism that frequently results in hate, harassment, and hostility within social media.

Often trivialized within the broader journalistic field, lifestyle journalists would seem to have the dream job: the opportunity to get paid to do what they love. The present study explores an under-discussed but material aspect of the job; namely, how lifestyle journalists undertake issues of hostility. Through the lens of the theory of hostility towards the press and in-depth interviews with lifestyle journalists (n = 24), this study argues that journalists tend to cover issues of hate against their audience members but seek to ignore harassment when directed at them.

Reciprocal journalism is a daily practice for American journalists. Previous studies show it benefits journalists, newsrooms, and audiences (e.g. Coddington, Lewis & Holton, 2018). Conversely, journalists also experience harassment when interacting with audiences online, causing them to view audiences less favorably (Lewis, Zamith, & Coddington, 2020). Through in-depth interviews with 24 professional and former journalists, this study finds journalists experience cognitive dissonance after experiencing harassment during reciprocal journalism, but they are not likely to stop the practice due to organizational and individual benefits perceived as greater than the negatives. The study finds journalists feel personally responsible for resolving dissonance and often use unhealthy resolution techniques like normalization, victim blaming, or perspective-taking to deal with online abuse. The end result could mean dangerous consequences for individuals and the industry long-term. Results suggest a cultural shift in the industry would be necessary to significantly ease dissonant cognitions among individual journalists.