Month: March 2020
Saturday sessions shifted to Friday time slots
In the latest update from regarding COVID-19 in New York, CMA leaders announced that sessions planned for Saturday will be moved up to Friday’s time slots. The convention will now end at 5 p.m. Friday.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo banned all events of 500 or more people starting at 5 p.m. Friday, influencing CMA leadership’s decision about the convention. In addition to Cuomo’s event ban announcement, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a state of emergency for New York City.
“We do not have 500 people here, but we decided that we would move our Saturday sessions to Friday and honor the ban,” CMA President, Kenna Griffin said.
As of 4 p.m. Thursday, times for the moved sessions have yet to be decided as CMA leadership waits to hear back from the speakers originally scheduled for Saturday sessions. Due to session cancellations largely caused by university travel bans, space is available for Saturday’s sessions to move up without canceling any Friday sessions to make room.
Saturday’s keynote, Beth Karas, will move up to Friday’s keynote space as well.
“Mario Garcia was set to be our keynote Friday,” Griffin explained. “He has been concerned about his health.”
Garcia had offered to Zoom his session, similar to Sree Sreenivasan’s Thursday keynote session, according to Griffin.
“What we’ve asked him to do is see if he might record it, so that we can share his session and Beth will be here in person at that time,” Griffin said. “We want you to still get to hear from both, but we definitely wanted you to see Beth in person since we had Sree via Zoom today.”
Apple Awards will be announced Friday at 4:30 p.m. A full statement from CMA leadership is available under the “Update on #CMANYC20 and the Coronavirus” tab on the convention webpage.
CMA President Leads First Trauma Reporting Session “Reporting on Traumatic Events”
Danielle Birzer
Traumatic situations are a part of daily life. Be it pandemic, natural disaster, crime cases, mass shootings, etc., journalists are often part of the first responders team there to inform the public about the situation that’s just taken place. The problem? Most journalists never receive appropriate situational training in order to process, report on, and personally manage a traumatic scenario.
CMA President and journalism professor Kenna Griffin is very passionate about trauma in journalism and studying the intersections between the two. It is because of her passion that CMA is offering a Trauma Journalism Certification for the first time.
Taken March 12, 2020.
Photo credit: Danielle Birzer.
“You could be covering sports, business, theatre…you are going to cover traumatic events. It’s an inevitable part of our profession…Journalism is a traumatic profession and it needs to be treated in the same way tha you would treat counseling and emergency management,” says Griffin.
Journalists are on average 80% more likely than other working professionals to be exposed to traumatic situations. Besides the factor of personal exposure, media professionals are required by nature of their job to speak with the victims of said trauma which can necessitate sensitive nuances in order to handle the situation appropriately.
Griffin recommended the following:
- Allow the victims to talk. Talk therapy is very real and necessary, and interviewing opportunities can allow for that.
- If a person says no to being interviewed, let it go. Don’t bully your way into interviewing anyone.
- In cases of interviewing individuals who are victims of sexual assault, allow them to lead the conversation.
- Verify and check victims’ names, facts, spelling, etc. Do your due diligence because the little things matter.
- Don’t judge victims. Individuals respond to trauma in a myriad of ways.
- At the end of the day, be comfortable with what you’ve done and the story you’ve written.
To learn more about Griffin’s research and recently published book, check out her website www.profkrg.com.