When the crisis comes home : Emotions, professionalism, and reporting on 22 March in Belgian journalists’ narratives

KOTIŠOVÁ, Johana. When the crisis comes home : Emotions, professionalism, and reporting on 22 March in Belgian journalists’ narratives. Journalism. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, 2020, vol. 21, No 11, p. 1710-1726. ISSN 1464-8849. doi:10.1177/1464884917748519.

Basic information

• Original name: When the crisis comes home : Emotions, professionalism, and reporting on 22 March in Belgian journalists’ narratives
• Authors: KOTIŠOVÁ, Johana (203 Czech Republic, guarantor, belonging to the institution).
• Edition: Journalism, Thousand Oaks, SAGE Publications, 2020, 1464-8849.

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Article in a journal
• Field of Study: 50801 Journalism
• Country of publisher: United States of America
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• WWW: URL
• Impact factor: Impact factor: 4.436
• RIV identification code: RIV/00216224:14230/20:00114987
• Organization unit: Faculty of Social Studies
• Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1464884917748519
• UT WoS: 000578823400007
• Keywords in English: Crisis reporting; emotions; journalists; professionalism; terrorism
• Tags: rivok
• Tags: International impact, Reviewed

Abstract

On the morning of 22 March 2016, three coordinated suicide bombings planned by Daesh occurred in Brussels. Those Belgian reporters who commonly travel to conflict zones and disaster sites had to report on a ‘combat zone event’ that was happening at the place where they, their families, and friends lived. Their subjective experience of witnesses, actors, and even indirect victims merged with their professional tasks. The traditional journalistic commitment to objectivity – that is, detachment, impartiality, fairness, or professional distance – that remains to be a cornerstone of journalists’ professional self-perception and an assumed source of their authority, was challenged. The article seeks to explore the aftermath of the unprecedentedly close terrorist attacks among Belgian journalists. Based on in-depth, narrative interviews with 10 Belgian ‘crisis reporters’, the article addresses the following questions: In which sense did the reporters experience the attacks as different from other crises? How did they deal with the unusually complex relationship between their personal and professional identities? What form(s) of objectivity did they employ and (how) did their work on emotional boundaries interfere with such a norm? The findings show that the radical, ‘surreal’ alteration of the reporters’ lifeworld resulted in a fundamental conflict between personal and professional identities. In turn, their rupture but inseparability helped to shape the objectivity-as-a-practice employed by the journalists on and after 22 March.