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The Dart Center-Europe also has a very useful two-page tip sheet for journalists reporting on sexual violence, reproduced here.
Five Ideas on Meaningful Consent in Trauma Journalism
1. Meaningful consent comes from the survivor. If your fixer says, “Sure, you can write about her, she said it’s fine,” that's not enough. You have to look at the person whose trauma story you want to expose to the world and say to her directly in whatever language you speak, “Here’s who I am. Here’s what I’m doing. I would like to interview you/ride along with you/etc. and write about that for an American audience in a national magazine/American listeners to national radio/etc.” We work through translators all the time. But translators do not have the power of consent: It is not their story.
Five Ideas on Meaningful Consent in Trauma Journalism
Not everything in these suggestions is practical for breaking news reporters, or in all reporting situations. But for long-form or feature work of the type that sparked the current debate, I think these are important things to think about.
Many of these ideas -- along with examples of best practices -- are developed in my piece, "The Pornography Trap: How Not to Write About Rape," which was published in January in the Columbia Journalism Review.The Dart Center-Europe also has a very useful two-page tip sheet for journalists reporting on sexual violence, reproduced here.
Five Ideas on Meaningful Consent in Trauma Journalism
1. Meaningful consent comes from the survivor. If your fixer says, “Sure, you can write about her, she said it’s fine,” that's not enough. You have to look at the person whose trauma story you want to expose to the world and say to her directly in whatever language you speak, “Here’s who I am. Here’s what I’m doing. I would like to interview you/ride along with you/etc. and write about that for an American audience in a national magazine/American listeners to national radio/etc.” We work through translators all the time. But translators do not have the power of consent: It is not their story.
