Professional role negotiation after traumatic events: Bahamian journalists’ constructions of duties to others and themselves after Hurricane Dorian

Abstract

This study explores how journalists navigated professional, moral, and personal obligations in narrative recollections of their work during a weather disaster and whether the experience had lasting influences personally or professionally. Research on journalism’s normative roles, role negotiation, and practices of care and self-care provide the theoretical framework to interpret their reflections. The duty to inform the public was central in their narratives, but a moral duty of care for others emerged as a complementary obligation. A third obligation was a duty to self-care, which was comprised of care for their physical safety and emotional wellbeing, which participants believed should be supported by their supervisors. Journalists who struggled to reconcile these three duties in their recollections of the event reported longer-term emotional distress. Others described adopting trauma-informed practices and advocacy roles in reporting, attributing these shifts to their experience covering the disaster. Participants were 11 Bahamian journalists covering Hurricane Dorian’s impact in The Bahamas, including the first author. The first author engaged in autoethnographic reflection during the study design and then conducted semi-structured interviews with other participants as a mutual process of reflection. The study contributes to literature on journalists’ occupational stress, coping, and role negotiation, suggesting unresolved tensions between professional, moral, and personal obligations have emotional costs and supporting the inclusion of trauma-informed journalism and self-care in journalism education. As climate-related disasters increase, understanding how journalists navigate overlapping duties is essential for supporting their wellbeing and sustaining ethical, effective reporting.

Introduction

On September 1, 2019, Hurricane Dorian, a Category 5 storm with a 14-foot surge, struck Grand Bahama and Abaco in The Bahamas and stalled for 3 days. Officially, 74 died, but hundreds remain missing. 12 Bahamian journalists covered the unfolding disaster, including four who were residents of those islands while others came from the capital, Nassau.

Drawing from interviews with 11 journalists 3 years later, we argue that their narratives about covering Hurricane Dorian attempted to integrate professional, moral, and personal obligations during the storm through a process Raemy and Vos (2021) term role negotiation. The most prominent duty emerging in the narratives was a duty to inform the public, which is a core professional commitment of Western journalism to report accurate facts about public happenings. The second was a moral duty to care for others, an obligation rooted in public service professionalism but which expanded and intensified amid ongoing devastation. The third duty to emerge was to self-care, involving a holistic commitment to personal physical safety and emotional well-being, which journalists emphasized should be supported by supervisors. Journalists who struggled to integrate these duties in their narratives reported symptoms of emotional turmoil years later. More auspiciously, some reported their experiences prompted them to incorporate trauma-sensitive journalism practices and advocacy in their work after the storm.

The theoretical foundations for this study are drawn from research on journalists’ experiences of occupational stress and coping and how journalists interpret duties associated with the normative expectations of professionalism. There is a large literature on the prevalence of occupational stress among journalists who cover armed conflict, but a much smaller literature exploring how journalists adapt their performance of professional roles during disaster or crisis coverage (Klemm et al., 2019). This is an important gap. Evidence suggests journalists cope emotionally by framing their work as socially important and may suffer when unable to do so (Hughes et al., 2021) and research on role performance and well-being in the Caribbean—one of the most climate-vulnerable regions—is scarce. Finally, given that some common reporting practices and work assignments may exacerbate trauma, interest is growing in trauma-sensitive approaches emphasizing an ethics of care for sources and journalists themselves, similar to healthcare professions (Healey, 2019; Irvine, 2009, 2014). Thus, understanding how Bahamian journalists negotiated professional, moral and personal obligations in their recollections of the storm, as well as the possible influences longer term, has wider relevance.

Literature review

Many studies examine how journalists construct and perform normative roles in society (Hanitzsch and Örnebring, 2020; Mellado et al., 2016; Raemy and Vos, 2021). These roles are discursively shaped in debates about which duties and practices define professionalism (Hanitzsch and Örnebring, 2020). Hanitzsch and Örnebring (2020) argue that once a role reaches a dominant position in journalistic discourse it crystallizes in institutionalized norms and practices that become key reference points for journalists’ occupational self-perceptions, or identities. However, Raemy and Vos (2021) offer a negotiative theory of role construction that highlights the ways that journalists adapt professional roles to align with personal moral frameworks, the needs of their organizations and story contexts. A journalist’s intrapersonal circumspection about personal values and aspirations, as well as interpersonal communication of organizational priorities, influence how journalists continually interpret, integrate and perform professional obligations.

Hanitzsch (2007) placed common roles from Western, democratic contexts along a continuum of interventionism, among other traits. The role of a “neutral disseminator” of information rejects interventionism. It describes journalists who adhere to ritual practices of distance to bracket out personal values. Interventionist role orientations such as “activist” or “participant” provide conceptual support for journalists who intervene in events on behalf of the socially disadvantaged, political parties or others. Another role that emerges in feminist analysis is the journalist performing a caregiving role, which Polit Duenas (2019) observes in the intentional listening and literary writing of journalists producing narratives about victims of social injustice.

Journalists widely embrace the professional duty to inform the public to justify their societal role and reinforce the cultural authority of their work (Hanitzsch and Vos, 2017; Örnebring, 2013). This duty may be enacted through practices such as a neutral disseminator’s reliance on impartial language and institutional expertise or through the factual grounding of an advocate’s call to action. Similarly, the attentive listening and narrative voice of a caregiver can be embedded in an informational role, but like advocacy, it rarely assumes neutrality (Polit Duenas, 2019). Al-Ghazzi’s (2023) study of Syrian media practitioners during intense conflict there deepens this discussion by introducing the notion of affective proximity, which is the absence of imagined distance between a journalist and the event they represent and participate in. Such closeness blurs boundaries between reporting and personal involvement, intensifying emotional labor and challenging norms of neutrality (Al-Ghazzi 2023). In the context of journalism in The Bahamas, which arguably has adopted Anglo-American cultural traits, performing the duty to inform likely involves the neutral, distant role of disseminator while activist or caregiving stances may take a secondary position.

Traumatic events such as those associated with war, violent crime and climate disasters are regularly covered, with journalists sometimes arriving at the same time as first responders, but without the emotional safety training that officially designated first responders receive (Coleman and Wu, 2006; Dworznik and Grubb, 2007; Pantti et al., 2012). This heightens the risk of journalists experiencing trauma themselves, which the American Psychiatric Association (2013) defines as exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence, whether through direct experience, witnessing the event, or learning about it from others.

Research has found that journalists exposed to dangerous or disturbing scenes often carry a mental and emotional burden, ranging from distress to PTSD, which can manifest as sleeplessness, crying spells, malaise, and other symptoms (Feinstein et al., 2015; Reinard, 2011; Richards and Rees, 2011). While PTSD among journalists has been studied more often, moral injury may also be common. Moral injury is defined as harm to a person’s “conscience or moral compass when that person perpetrates, witnesses or fails to prevent acts that transgress their own moral and ethical values or codes of conduct” (Feinstein et al. 2018, p. 1). In one of the few studies of journalism and moral injury, Feinstein, and Storm (2017) documented high levels of moral injury among journalists who covered Europe’s refugee crisis and were also parents. In another study, Watson (2024) identified practices that could mitigate moral injury in journalists who interview family and friends after the death of a loved one, including training, support and the capacity to act with honesty, respect and empathy.

While the duty to disseminate factually based information to the public is widely recognized as a central role in Western journalism (Hanitzsch 2007; Raemy and Vos 2021, Waisbord, 2009), the moral duty of care for others and obligation to practice self-care in dangerous or traumatic reporting situations are likewise recognized and not mutually exclusive. Scholars and practitioners advocating an ethics of care in journalism call for a more relational, empathetic, and context-aware approach, especially when covering stories of trauma or injustice. The ethics of care highlights the journalist’s obligation to understand and nurture the well-being of individuals and communities affected by news coverage (Mathewson, 2021; Steiner and Okrusch 2006).

Framing self-care as an obligation is uncommon in Journalism Studies. This perspective draws on principles from health professions, which assume that professionals cannot perform effectively without safeguarding their own well-being (Irvine 2014). Applying this logic to journalism suggests that emotional resilience and mental health are not optional but integral to ethical practice. In high-stress contexts such as disaster coverage, neglecting self-care can compromise judgment, accuracy, and empathy. Recognizing self-care as a professional duty reframes it from a personal choice to an ethical responsibility, aligning journalism with trauma-informed approaches that prioritize both source and reporter well-being.

Together the literature on occupational stress and professional roles suggests that journalists have incentives to adapt role performance when it conflicts with their moral frameworks. Research on moral injury and coping indicates that maintaining a neutral informational role during coverage of deadly disasters can cause distress, stemming from an inability to act on a perceived moral duty to care for others (Dworznik and Grubb, 2007; 2019; Osofsky et al., 2005: p. 290)., as well as prompt a shift in role performance away from neutrality toward advocacy (Usher 2009).

Raemy and Vos (2021) describe the process journalists engage in to align professional norms, personal morals and the priorities of their news organizations as role negotiation. The suggestion that journalists negotiate role performance to avoid moral injury or other emotional distress has not been directly addressed in the research literature, but in the context of disasters, when danger is prolonged and their own families and communities are at risk, integrating professional, moral and personal obligations may become even more important for journalists’ own wellbeing.

Methods

Research questions and study context

The research questions that guide this empirical study capture the richness of the interviews, providing a stronger basis for interpretation and theory building in line with an inductive method.

RQ1 – How do journalists construct professional performance, values and norms when recalling their experiences during Hurricane Dorian?

RQ2 – What perceived or lasting influences on their professional practices, values or norms, if any, do journalists describe?

Participants were journalists from The Bahamas, an archipelago home to approximately 399,000 people, who covered Hurricane Dorian (Bahamas National Statistical Institute, 2022). While The Bahamas is a high-income country, geographic features such as flat terrain and unequal access to safe infrastructure increase the population’s vulnerability (Baptiste and Rhiney, 2016).

The Bahamas’ media system consists of three private and one state-owned media conglomerates with television and radio stations producing news, two daily newspapers, and a number of other privately-owned radio stations producing news. Bahamians generally get their news from legacy media delivered through digital media platforms. Journalistic culture approximates Anglo-American ideals of neutrality, but political intervention especially in state media is common.

Analytical approach

Following Tandoc and Takahashi (2017), this study uses interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to explore inductively how participants make sense of their lived experiences. IPA is concerned with understanding detailed, first-person accounts of individuals that may later yield more general patterns through comparison. IPA employs smaller sample sizes to explore in detail participants’ experiences and meaning making processes that are contingent on social, cultural and psychological circumstances (Eatough and Smith, 2017). The approach typically uses semi-structured interviews and acknowledges an ongoing interpretation by both the participant and the researcher, considering the interviewer a companion in the recollection and reflection.

IPA expanded beyond its origins in qualitative research in psychology because it helps researchers understand significant experiences that prompt participants to rethink, or “recast,” aspects of their lives related to identity (Eatough and Smith, 2017, 1-3). IPA is suitable for a study of potentially transformative events because it reveals processes of construction of ideological frameworks that define identity. At the same time, the co-construction of narratives about traumatic experiences are thought to help traumatized survivors process their experiences in ways that support healing (Lindgren 2012, 5-6; Shaffer et al., 2018; Stuhlmiller, 2001).

The first author was a journalist who had covered the storm on Grand Bahama. He engaged in autoethnographic techniques to determine the study design. He wrote a reflective essay, engaged in unstructured reflection, drafted the questionnaire, was interviewed by the second author, and helped refine the questionnaire. Thus, autoethnography as a method of qualitative inquiry was the first stage of this research. It aided the study design including the data collection method, analytical decisions and data interpretations. Denejkina further notes that autoethnography gives “voice to those not afforded with a platform” as is typically the case with journalists who are rarely the subject of the story (Denejkina, 2016). The first author’s positionality as researcher and participant additionally created a safe environment for journalists to open up about their experiences during interviews with a trusted work companion.

Participants and data collection

Researchers contacted all journalists from recognized Bahamian news media who covered Hurricane Dorian on Abaco and Grand Bahama. The decision to keep the identities of the participants anonymous was to encourage openness and protect their privacy.

All but one agreed to participate, a high response given a population of 12. Of 11 journalists in the sample, 10 were stationed on Abaco and Grand Bahama and one arrived on the first rescue plane immediately after. Three only had 1 year of experience working in journalism when assigned to cover the storm. One had more than 10 years and the rest had worked between 3 and 7 years in journalism. Six participants identified as female and five as male. Ages during coverage ranged from 19 to 60. Most worked as multimedia journalists during the storm and produced for social media, radio and TV broadcasts. One was solely a still photographer. Four journalists were residents with families on the islands they covered, exemplifying geographic and affective proximity.

The research benefited from narrative construction techniques used in trauma counseling and qualitative research methods. Prior to the interviews, the participants were encouraged to reflect upon their experiences during and after coverage and freely write narratives describing their experiences before, during and after the hurricane. The interview questionnaire was also designed to elicit responses in a chronological fashion as would a narrative, from beginning to end of coverage, with follow ups to probe reflection on roles and perceived changes after the storm. Seven participants chose to write a narrative essay, which ranged from about 600 to 900 words. The 11 semi-structured interviews lasted from 29 to 64 minutes. Eight were conducted via Zoom and three in person on Grand Bahama.

The decisions to request the journalists write a narrative essay prior to the interview and to organize questions guiding their recollection of coverage chronologically were based on evidence of the transformative power of narratives for trauma survivors and their appropriateness as elicitation techniques in multimethod research about trauma. Narrative construction allows participants to reflect on and structure their trauma stories in their own words, enhancing both the emotional safety of data collection and also improving the richness of data by deepening disclosure (Shaffer et al., 2018). Van Zuuren et al. (2010) demonstrate that narrative elicitation can reveal nuanced patterns in how individuals cope with and interpret traumatic experiences, while research on expressive writing shows that writing about traumatic or emotional experiences can lead to significant improvements in both physical and psychological health outcomes (Baikie and Wilhelm, 2005; Siegel-Acevedo, 2021). In sum, Soroko (2010) argues that narrative elicitation is not merely a data collection method, but a psychologically meaningful process that fosters self-reflection, emotional processing, and identity reconstruction.

Analysis and analytical categories

The authors relied upon an inductive interpretation process in steps. Based on the autoethnographic portion of the study and first reading of the interview transcripts, the authors identified three initial categories of professional obligations that emerged from recollections of the storm. They then piloted these codes with other interviews. Finding resonance during the pilots, they applied the categories as pre-set codes all interviews to respond to RQ1. The pre-set codes were first applied broad-brush to each interview transcription. A second process of within-category inductive coding then identified emergent themes.

The first author coded all interviews. The second author read all interviews and conducted separate analysis on a subset of interviews. At that point the authors jointly engaged in a second layer of interpretation that involved comparison across the interviews and discussion of wider patterns. Eatough and Smith (2017, 24) describe this process as dialogic and collaborative interpretation, which is common to IPA, with the innovation that the first author also experienced the phenomenon under study as a participant.

The pre-set codes are named recollections of duties to inform, to care for others and to personal safety including physical safety and emotional self-care. The authors chose the descriptive code “duty” to reflect obligations emerging in journalists’ descriptions of their performance during the storm. These obligations reflect aspects of a normative role to inform that they articulated with moral duties that arose within recollections of their performance during the storm (Hossain and Aucoin 2018). Using these codes illuminated important aspects of role negotiation given personal moral principles, dangerous contexts and editors’ organizational demands, but are not meant to be mutually exclusive because participants intermingled them in their sense-making processes.

Self-care is embedded in approaches to trauma-informed journalism that emphasize the importance of self-care as a duty (Healey 2019). An ethical obligation of self-care is less known in Journalism Studies. It rests on the presumption in health professions that a professional cannot perform adequately if they do not protect their own wellbeing: “Our primary ethical imperative may be to care for others, but this imperative is meaningless, empty, if divorced from the imperative to care for oneself (Irvine 2014, 46).”

The code “duty to inform” aggregated ordinary and extraordinary practices participants undertook to report and disseminate verified information, as well as journalists’ feelings and explanations of why they engaged in those tasks. A “duty to care for others” encompassed thoughts or actions on behalf of the safety or wellbeing of others, from simply worrying about people in jeopardy, to liaising between rescuers and stranded residents or interviewing “humanely” to avoid further traumatization. Finally, a “duty to personal safety” included actions journalists took to remain physically and psychologically safe, such as fleeing rising waters, seeking counselling afterwards or using work as a coping mechanism, as well as narratives where journalists dismissed personal risk. It’s seen as an immediate imperative, compared to self-care, which is a more long-term or sustained wellbeing practice. A duty to personal safety also was used to code traumatizing experiences and symptoms of distress that journalists recounted. The authors decided that journalists’ references to the duty of their supervisors to provide for their safety should be an aspect of the duty to personal safety.

To respond to RQ2, the authors thematically coded respondents’ recollections of perceived influences and behavior change that occurred after the coverage. These included responses connecting potentially traumatic experiences or symptoms associated with lasting trauma to perceived changes in job satisfaction or sentiment, practices or values.

Findings

RQ1 – How do journalists construct professional performance, values and norms when recalling their experiences during Hurricane Dorian?

Commitments to inform, to care for others and to personal safety permeated the constructions of professionalism in journalists’ recollections of their work during Hurricane Dorian. However, the three duties were not equally emphasized. The duty of a professional journalist to inform was the driving force in their narratives, providing a versatile frame through which to interpret and articulate all three of the professional duties, as in this narrative response from a female journalist on Grand Bahama.

We went live to provide that information to the public and I remember standing in water, because it was so bad that water began to come through the walls, and I was standing in water with the chords, with the mic, and the public would never have known … I just had to do it. My love for the job took over at that point in time.

A male journalist on Abaco similarly entwined professional commitments to inform, to care for others and to his own personal safety when he described how he set aside his emotional pain to sensitively narrate ongoing trauma in a shelter.

In the government complex alone, people who didn't die from being crushed or washed away were having cardiac arrest… I saw (a woman taken to the clinic). By the time I got there, her son was literally in the back of that government clinic, crying his eyes out, wailing, because his mother died right there. So, I don't think there was a time that I had to think about being objective.... The important part, prior, during and after, was telling the story from a humane perspective, as you know, ‘are you okay’? Then also I realized immediately that I was a part of history. I knew the gravity of this storm. And again, I wasn't taking any account for what my mental health was at that point. I just knew that I had a job to do and the most important thing for me.

In the narratives above, the duty to inform was the frame through which a duty to care for others was exercised while the duty to personal safety took a subordinate position. The following narratives illustrate a related pattern, which reveals the emotional benefits of framing work through a duty to care for others while in the practice of a duty to inform. Being able to set aside personal safety to fulfill a duty to inform was recalled years later as important for mental health.

In the recollection of a male photojournalist on Abaco, focusing upon his duty to inform helped him to weather emotions generated by extreme physical risk.

We were on a second floor and (the water) is just rising and hitting against the railings and hitting against the door… I was like, ‘wow. This is unbelievable,’ while at the same time, again, doing my best to capture everything the best that I could for visuals from a perspective of being a photojournalist, (so) that people would understand what I experienced.

Similarly, a new journalist sent to report on Grand Bahama remembered she tried to cope through traumatic experiences by focusing on her duty to inform. However, she became overcome with emotion because her mother was missing and she overheard terrible stories while stationed at the emergency management call center. She recalled, “I remember sitting there and I literally spent the entire day just sitting there, looking into space and crying…”

The journalist later pulled herself together to continue to report live periodically during the storm. Even though she had pressed on, her inability to remain on the air throughout the storm generated a lasting feeling of inadequacy that she blamed on trauma and what she remembered as her own poor performance.

I shut down for a long time (after Dorian) and even when I found momentum again to do stories it was never the same. Every year after Dorian I tried to leave news, every single year, despite the promotions, despite the opportunities, every single year. I tried to leave because it was traumatic and I didn't want to risk having to do that again. And, then, like I said, it always felt like my skillset was no longer good enough.

The narratives above recount the professional duty to inform through practices that are common in many reporting situations, including photo documentation, narrative storytelling and “going live” during breaking news. The journalists recalled that focusing on these professional practices helped them cope during the storm, while not being able to do so had lasting negative consequences.

In other times, the journalists recalled situations where moral urgency demanded they adapt routine practices so they could act in ways that aligned with deeper moral beliefs and values. Sometimes journalists specifically defined these actions as beyond their roles as journalists, illustrating the primacy of the duty to inform. An illustration comes from an experienced female reporter who lived on Grand Bahama. She recalled how she became a direct conduit of information between listeners who needed rescue and first responders.

We ended up turning into the help center and, like I said, at that point in time, we all were in survival mode. I think we, instead of journalists, we just wanted to save lives now. That was our home.

Another journalist at the government emergency center recounted similar calls from people whose loved ones had been washed away or who were stuck on an upper floor of their homes. Like those who focused on providing information while witnessing trauma, his reconstruction of the experience connecting survivors to rescuers revealed that shifting his role conception from distanced informer to first responder supported his mental wellbeing during the crisis.

Colleagues, family members, friends, acquaintances, people that I didn't even know, were messaging me, knowing that I was at the Call Center, and saying, ‘Hi. Can you tell them (rescuers) to go to this place? Can you tell them to go to that place? This is their circumstance right now…So, it was like I was a mini call center for them and it also helped me to beat the burden, because I kind of had my hands tied here. There's not much I can do.

The second and a common theme was that journalists described their supervisors as placing a commitment to inform during the storm above their duty to care for their employees in the field. This involved sending reporters into potential danger without proper training or support, as well as pressuring for continued coverage in one case. The young reporter who lost her confidence and love of the job after Hurricane Dorian said her editor became angry during the storm when she was too distraught to report live, and wished she was offered guidance.

To be able to have that type of sound advice or to just be a human and [say], ‘hey, it's okay; we're going to be fine. It's all going to work out.’ As little as it sounds, things like that, having somebody right there, it goes a long way to help you. After that I kind of felt like my news director was really disappointed in my coverage.

Poor operational preparation, equipment and support were common complaints. Correspondents sent from Nassau were left on their own in a devastated landscape to find food, shelter and transport home once the storm passed. One recounted trading his boots for a ride to the airport and flying back in the aisle of an overloaded plane. The male journalist stranded at the flooding hotel on Abaco said his editors only cared about “getting the story” and blamed them for trauma that prompted him to seek therapy later. “They could have done better, man…Prioritize your staff’s safety during a time like this. It should have been important.”

After the storm some news organizations offered breaks and therapy, but offering and receiving this support was inconsistent. Instead of self-care and therapy, journalists described focusing on their duty to inform after the storm to help them cope. An experienced reporter on Grand Bahama described her editor’s performance of care immediately after the storm had passed.

After the ‘all clear’ was given we were on air four days, my general manager at the time, she said, ‘listen. You lost your home. You lost your family (member)…I need you to take a mental break.’ So, I took about a week off to go and get myself together and, you know, to start rebuilding. But while I was away all I thought about was the stories I needed to do when I got back.

In contrast, an interview with a male journalist illustrates how editors’ focus on information overrode concerns for journalists’ emotional safety and healing. Recalling a colleague who reported from Abaco, the worst hit island, he explained, “We lost contact with her for days.”

The first thing our editor did at the time was put her in front of the camera to get her experience. And this was after she saw bodies. This is when we were hearing Abaco is under siege, it's every man for himself, and people are literally taking this island for themselves. This was a scary and dangerous situation and we were live at the time. Remember now, we were up for 72 hours straight through. We didn't break, we didn't sleep. We were live for the entire thing ... and of course like natural she broke down on live television.

The journalist said he went straight to his family home seeking their comfort, but “walked straight past them and went into the living room and just broke down.”

And I could remember my aunt coming to me, saying ‘he needs to be alone. Y'all leave him,’ because they knew what I was dealing with, and they just closed the door and left me for about an hour to cry. I screamed, I shouted, because I don't even think I ate that entire time. I didn't eat anything. And that was my therapy - just being in a room alone and crying and shouting.

For others, processing the experience was delayed. The inexperienced young journalist whose editor pressured her to stay on the air said she had not been ready to confront what she had experienced until years later.

It was still pretty fresh even a year later because I never really dealt with it. So, funny enough, I think that probably the first real intentional reflection I've had is while I'm doing this interview, and the essay itself.

Being able to integrate professional performance, values and norms with deeper moral frameworks was recalled as important for mental and emotional wellbeing. When a clash between their professional and moral values could not be resolved through a versatile interpretation of a duty to inform, the journalists described performances as outside of journalism, but akin to being a first responder. The role of being “a first responder,” which is widely mentioned in the literature on disaster coverage, was then a circumstantial result of the need to act in congruence with their human moral compass. In short, the duty to inform through danger and traumatic witnessing was perceived as a way to cope with trauma during an unfolding disaster, while not being able to inform as was expected by their organizations or their own professional identity compounded distress.

However, a hyper-focus on a duty to inform – whether imposed by editors or themselves – postponed journalists’ ability to process and heal. Focusing on their duty to inform momentarily helped them cope in the moment, but was sometimes recalled as overshadowing the duty to care for themselves and their editors’ duty to care for their reporters in the field.

RQ2 – What perceived or lasting influences on their professional practices, values or norms, if any, do journalists describe?

Journalists were asked directly whether they believed their professional beliefs, values and practices had changed after Dorian. Participants additionally brought up perceived changes after coverage at other times as well. Coding all of these reflections identified three overarching themes. The most widespread theme moved the duty to care for others from a subordinate position it maintains in the literature on journalists’ role conceptions in the West to the center of reconstructions of professional practice through narratives explaining their commitments and applications.

A television reporter who had 11 years of experience when he covered Hurricane Dorian on Grand Bahama said the experience had changed how he approached coverage of traumatic events. He described new interviewing practices that were more sensitive to trauma, including sitting with people before the camera rolled.

I’m more sensitive to the facts of the situation, meaning that if I understand the kind of story I’m going on, I understand that these are now real people, not objects of a story… Now these are human beings who are going through real life situations, and before I was just conducting interviews.

A second theme involved descriptions of how they included the duty to care for others as part of their work practices. A reporter stationed on Abaco did this by explicitly connecting deeper reporting and truth-telling to his desire to advocate for vulnerable communities:

I've always been about telling the story of the community and the average man, but I think that I go a little deeper with that now, to really tell the truth of it all. Because it goes back to what you asked before, right? I feel I have to be an advocate now. And I think that that's one thing that the storm has taught me, that, you know, you have to tell the truth of the matter at all times, even, even if it's an ugly picture.

Another journalist who was stationed on Abaco said she now considers the dignity of the people involved in a tragedy when considering what stories to report.

I went in as a journalist thinking that, you know, everything you do has to give you a story. And during (the coverage) I realized that, I'm not sure other journalists would agree, but I realized that sometimes you could be in a moment and not necessarily report on it if you think personally, it crosses the line, ethical or moral lines, you know. I saw things in Abaco that I decided not to report on, just out of respect for people in their circumstances.

A third overarching theme that emerged in narratives about changes they perceived after Hurricane Dorian involved a more critical assessment of journalism as a job. These involved aspects of the duty to care for themselves, such as work-life balance and giving less to the job, as well as developing a critical understanding of what limits professional autonomy.

One of the female journalists who reported from the emergency center on Grand Bahama linked the traumatic experience of being in danger to placing more value on her duty to care for her own wellbeing, and wishing for others to support her, too.

That was a very traumatic experience. And as a journalist, it just showed me that I'm really dedicated to what it is that I do. But it also showed me to that I still have a heart and I still have my personal life and I still, I'm human ... We’re usually taught to just keep going.

The female journalist whose editor pushed her after an emotional breakdown kept her off the air during part of the storm said she gives less to the job.

After Dorian, you did stories, but you never gave it the same effort. You never gave it the same energy. You never stayed anymore to make sure your story was perfect or to watch the production itself of news, to go the extra mile, to put in the practice and the effort.

The male journalist on Abaco who learned to focus more on reporting as advocacy for the vulnerable became more critically aware of the structural limits to his professional autonomy, such as what he perceived as his news organization’s reticence to criticize the government. His editors didn’t allow him to tell follow-up stories from Abaco for very long and the stories he suggested that made the government look bad were censored.

I wish I could have spent a month in Abaco driving around, talking to these people, telling the truth of their story, because the truth of the matter is, as much as government doesn’t want to hear it, and as much as we don't want to admit it, these are news organizations have some government affiliation, right? And so, to a greater extent, yes, as a news organization, we want you as a reporter to tell the story, but only to the extent where it doesn't make our political affiliation look bad.... As a reporter, for me, my perspective has changed because I see you don't want me to tell a balanced story as much as I may want to...

In summary, journalists’ narrative constructions of perceived change after covering Hurricane Dorian described the experience as prompting deeper commitments to care for others. They did this by using truth-telling to advocate for marginalized communities and employing trauma-informed interviewing techniques and news judgment to protect sources’ emotional wellbeing. Others described a greater awareness of the need to safeguard their emotional wellbeing as full human beings with lives outside of work.

The struggle to negotiate role conceptions, moral frameworks and workplace expectations also fostered critical reflection upon political pressures and financial incentives that limit their ability to care for themselves and work with professional autonomy. These narratives suggest that while coverage of traumatic events opens the potential for longer-term change, organizational and external structures must also be negotiated for change to be more than evolutionary or the source of frustration, Sjøvaag (2013), Reese (2007), Raemy and Vos (2021) point out. More broadly, discussions of change suggest the duality of structure and agency, which speaks to cultural change taking place through discursive reconstruction and, perhaps, slower reform of political-economic structure. However, journalists’ sense-making narratives of professionalism included statements that there had been individual change, involving a greater emphasis on the duty to care for others and themselves in their work, because of what they went through. At the same time, some participants recognized that the expectations of editors and dependent financial structures of companies did not change, which ultimately limited their ability to fully transform professional practice.

Discussion and conclusion

This study contributes to journalism research on disaster coverage and trauma by demonstrating how exposure to Hurricane Dorian’s devastation compelled journalists to renegotiate professional and humanitarian values, advancing role theory and moral injury scholarship. By revealing the interdependence of role performance, moral imperatives, and well-being, the study offers a framework for understanding how trauma shapes journalistic identity and ethical obligations. Practically, these insights underscore the need for newsroom policies and support systems that address occupational stress, facilitate coping strategies, and safeguard journalists’ mental health as climate-related disasters intensify.

Journalists’ recollections of their experiences during and after disaster coverage emphasized a professional duty to inform the public—a foundational value in Western journalism. However, this duty was frequently enacted in ways that also fulfilled a moral obligation to care for others. A third, obligation emerging across narratives was the recognition of a duty toward their own wellbeing. Journalists expressed that this responsibility should be shared with supervisors who provided emotional support, recommended rest periods, and improved their training and equipment.

The integration of professional, moral, and personal duties manifested in diverse ways. One journalist reframed the norm of neutrality by likening their role to that of a first responder, facilitating communication between rescuers and stranded individuals. More commonly, participants described adopting advocacy-oriented roles, incorporating trauma-informed practices, and managing trauma symptoms through therapy and self-care.

These findings thus support Raemy and Vos’ (2021) theoretical framework on journalists’ negotiation of normative roles amid competing professional, personal, and organizational demands, but advances it by integrating exposure to traumatic coverage situations. Those unable to reconcile conflicting obligations during coverage reported emotional distress years later, including feelings of inadequacy and malaise. These findings suggest that occupational stress, coping strategies, and role negotiation are interrelated, with implications for both journalists’ wellbeing and their ability to perform a public service as climate-related disasters intensify.

Ultimately, the study reveals how traumatic coverage prompted journalists to integrate professional, moral, and personal obligations, elevating the relevance of care and self-0care within the broader duty to inform. The ability to reconcile professional and humanitarian values may have mitigated moral injury and some symptoms of PTSD. Nonetheless, healing remained incomplete for these journalists. While this study advances journalism scholarship by showing how traumatic disaster coverage reshapes role negotiation and moral imperatives, it also strongly underscores the need for newsroom policies and mental health support to mitigate occupational stress and sustain journalists’ well-being amid escalating climate-related crises.

This study has several limitations, however. Its focus on a single disaster event may constrain the transferability of findings to other contexts (Drisko, 2025), although similar role performances documented in studies of journalists covering other devastating hurricanes suggest broader applicability. While the interpretive design and analytical approach yielded valuable insights into how journalists negotiate competing duties during crises, additional research using complementary methods is needed to test and expand upon these propositions. Furthermore, although self-disclosure in interviews may be viewed as a limitation within post-positivist qualitative paradigms (Creswell et al., 2006), we argue that IPA addresses this concern by emphasizing the co-construction of meaning through the mutual interpretation of lived experience (Eatough and Smith, 2017; Msughter, 2022). In this sense, we believe the positionality of the first author was a benefit rather than limitation as long as a second author was able to question interpretations as an outsider; his insider status supported trust and gave him insights others might have missed.