The girl could not have been older than 12. Sitting on a simple plastic chair in a refugee camp near Duhok, she spoke with a calmness that seemed entirely out of place for someone her age. As she described how fighters of the so-called Islamic State had torn her family apart, she never once looked directly at the reporter sitting across from her. Instead, her eyes drifted into the distance, as though a part of her remained trapped in the night when her childhood ended.
The journalist listened carefully and asked his questions with the composure his profession demanded. When the interview was over and the camera was switched off, silence settled between them. The girl returned to her tent. The reporter remained seated. Several minutes passed before he stood up, walked behind a nearby container and broke into tears. It was not a loss of professionalism that brought him to that moment. If anything, it was the emotional cost of maintaining professionalism in the face of overwhelming human suffering.
Such moments never appear in a broadcast. They are not included in newspaper articles, nor do they become part of the public record. Audiences see the story, but rarely the person who must carry it.
Yet it is precisely here that an overlooked truth about journalism begins.
What happened to that reporter in the refugee camp is far from unusual. Researchers have long observed similar experiences among journalists working in conflict zones, disaster areas and regions marked by collective violence. Before turning to science, however, it is worth pausing to consider something that almost everyone can understand.
There is a form of exhaustion that does not arrive with the sound of an explosion or the impact of a bullet. It develops quietly. It emerges when the camera is switched off, when the microphone is put away and when the live report comes to an end. In the silence that follows, everything that had been held at a distance throughout the day begins to return.
The face of a woman standing beside a mass grave. The trembling voice of an elderly man describing the torture prisons of the 1980s. The lingering memory of a house in Halabja where the shadow of the chemical attack still seems present decades later. A mother in Shingal (Sinjar) quietly recites the names of her missing children. A child trapped beneath the rubble calling for his mother.
The public encounters such images for a few moments before moving on to the next story. This is understandable and perhaps even necessary. Human beings cannot absorb endless suffering without some form of emotional protection. Journalists, however, do not have the same luxury. They were there. They listened. They asked questions. They took notes. They transformed suffering into words and images so that others could bear witness.
When public attention shifts elsewhere, they are often left alone with what they have seen and heard.
This is not a marginal issue within journalism. It is one of the profession's least acknowledged realities.
We see the correspondent standing calmly in front of the camera. We see the reporter wearing a helmet and protective vest while speaking from a war zone. We see the photographer moving through the ruins of a destroyed city, taking one image after another because history is unfolding before their eyes. Professionalism is visible. Vulnerability rarely is.
What remains hidden are the hours that follow. The room where sleep does not come easily. The long night during which the conversation with a Yazidi girl refuses to fade away. The memory of a woman describing captivity and abuse. The image of a mass grave that suddenly returns without warning. There are moments when journalists lose their train of thought during an interview, not because they are unprepared but because the suffering of another human being briefly breaks through the distance that professional reporting requires.
At times, a reporter may find it difficult to speak. Not because words are unavailable, but because they are confronted with a reality that exceeds language itself. In such moments they are no longer merely observers. They are human beings faced with another person's pain.
The tears often come later. Not in front of the camera. Not in the newsroom. But alone.
Across Kurdistan, Syria, Iraq and Turkey, generations of journalists, photographers and camera crews have documented some of the darkest chapters of recent history. They reported on the Anfal campaign against the Kurds, the chemical attack on Halabja, the systematic torture that followed the military coup in Turkey in 1980, the destruction of thousands of Kurdish villages, the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, the genocide against the Yazidis, the crimes of the Islamic State, the siege of Kobane and the devastating wars that reshaped Syria and Iraq or in Iran.
Many of these journalists were not standing at the margins of history. They were living inside it.
They listened to survivors of torture. They interviewed women who had endured sexual violence. They accompanied families fleeing conflict. They documented mass graves and entered villages that had disappeared from maps. They spoke with children who had lost their parents and with elderly men and women whose memories carried the scars of decades of persecution. In many ways, they were recording history while it was unfolding around them.
Some paid for that commitment with their lives.
Among them was Shifa Gardi, a young reporter for Rudaw who was killed in 2017 near Mosul while covering military operations against the Islamic State. Her cameraman, Younis Mustafa, was seriously injured in the same explosion. Shifa Gardi was not searching for danger. She was searching for the truth. Today her name stands for many journalists whose work remains largely unknown beyond their own communities despite the fact that they are among the most important witnesses of our time.
Yet the story of risk does not begin with bullets and rockets, nor does it end when journalists return home.
The human brain does not always distinguish clearly between trauma that is directly experienced and trauma that is repeatedly witnessed through close contact with the suffering of others. Both leave traces. Both shape memory. And both can overwhelm a person.
When individuals spend years listening to stories of torture, rape, displacement, murder and genocide, those stories leave marks that extend far beyond memory. They affect the body, perception, relationships and the way the world itself is experienced.
Researchers describe this phenomenon as secondary trauma or vicarious trauma. It refers to psychological injury that develops not through direct victimisation but through repeated and intense exposure to the suffering of others. The consequences often resemble those associated with post-traumatic stress disorder. Images return unexpectedly. Sleep becomes disturbed. Joy fades. The world appears less predictable and less safe. Some people become irritable. Others withdraw. Still others continue functioning for years before eventually reaching a point of exhaustion.
Studies in trauma and journalism research have consistently shown that war correspondents belong to the professional groups at highest risk of developing trauma related symptoms. Yet many newsrooms continue to operate within a culture of silence. Fear is rarely discussed. Nightmares are rarely discussed. Psychological exhaustion is rarely discussed. Those who speak openly about such experiences are often viewed as insufficiently resilient or not fully suited for the profession.
This attitude is not only misguided. It is dangerous.
Journalism depends on people who are willing to look where others look away. If those individuals are left alone with the consequences of what they witness, the damage extends beyond personal suffering. It affects the quality of reporting, the ability to remain emotionally present and, ultimately, the integrity of journalism itself.
For decades, journalism has been shaped by the belief that professionalism means invulnerability. Experience was expected to provide protection. Difficult experiences were assumed to be manageable through discipline and distance. Yet memory does not disappear simply because a person is trained to remain calm. Empathy cannot be switched off at the end of an assignment. Professionalism may help journalists perform their work under difficult circumstances, but it does not make them immune to the emotional consequences of what they witness.
For this reason, trauma awareness must become an integral part of journalistic professionalism.
Journalists who work with survivors of war, torture, displacement or genocide need to understand how trauma affects memory, behavior and communication. They need to recognise signs of psychological distress not only in those they interview but also in themselves. Trauma informed reporting should be regarded as a core professional competence, no less important than ethics, investigative methods or source protection.
Equally important is the recognition that journalists returning from highly distressing assignments should have access to professional counselling and psychological support. Seeking such support should never be interpreted as weakness. On the contrary, it reflects professional responsibility and self-awareness. No one would expect firefighters, emergency physicians or rescue workers to process severe traumatic experiences entirely on their own. There is little reason why journalists should be expected to do so.
Publishers, broadcasters and media organisations therefore have a responsibility that extends beyond providing physical safety equipment and security training. They must create institutional structures in which prevention, support and follow up care become a normal part of professional life. Trauma competence should not be an optional workshop attended by a few interested individuals. Psychological support should not be available only after a crisis has occurred. Both must become embedded within the culture and structure of media organisations.
Few regions of the world have experienced as many overlapping layers of collective trauma as Kurdistan and its neighbouring regions. Journalists have borne witness to all of it. They preserved memories that might otherwise have disappeared. They documented what perpetrators wanted hidden. Without their work, we would know far less about the mass graves of Shingal, the survivors of Halabja, the women who escaped captivity under the Islamic State and countless other stories that might have vanished into silence.
Yet those who preserve memory often carry its weight.
Society owes these journalists more than admiration for their courage. It owes them protection. It owes them recognition. Above all, it owes them the assurance that their own wounds will be acknowledged before they become too deep.
Perhaps, at this very moment, a journalist is sitting alone in a room somewhere in the world after returning from a refugee camp, a destroyed village or a place where families have just buried their loved ones. The report has been filed. The photographs have been published. Public attention has already moved elsewhere.
Yet inside that journalist, the story continues.
A child's voice may still echo in memory. The face of a grieving mother may return unexpectedly. Questions linger about what was seen, what was understood and whether justice was done to those who entrusted their stories to a stranger carrying a notebook or a camera.
For the world, the event may already belong to yesterday's news. For the journalist who witnessed it, however, the process of understanding and living with what happened may only just be beginning.
As societies, we rightly remember the victims of war, genocide, torture and displacement. But we should also remember those who ensure that such suffering is neither denied nor forgotten. Journalists carry these stories across borders and generations. In doing so, they often carry something else as well: wounds that remain invisible to the public eye, yet continue to shape their lives long after the headlines have faded.
Those invisible wounds deserve recognition, protection and care. Not only for the sake of journalists themselves, but for the integrity of journalism and for the societies that depend upon it.
Truth requires witnesses. And witnesses, too, need protection.
Dr. Jan Ilhan Kizilhan is a psychologist, author and publisher, an expert in psychotraumatology, trauma, terror and war, transcultural psychiatry, psychotherapy and migration.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.
