The lightning and brutal attacks on Israeli settlements by Hamas guerrillas on October 7 and the retaliation with overwhelming force into crowded Gaza has been played out in a parallel information war from all sides, and your newsrooms and staff are at risk.

Whether it is long-established rules about the language of terror (such as the BBC and many other organisations history of only using “terrorist” when attributed) or the need to view and verify harrowing still pictures and video, newsrooms are part of the battleground. Even if you don’t have your own staff in physical danger in the region, they may be at psychological — or in some cases physical risk — many miles from the Middle East.

The Ukraine war triggered a parallel information war with disinformation (the deliberate spread of erroneous claims) and misinformation (wrong but circulated claims), but the war between the state of Israel and the terror group Hamas, which governs Gaza, is generating a new level of reputational, physical, personal, and business risks for news organisations and staff.

Newsrooms need to think hard about their responsibilities to staff as well as audiences.

“I’ve been working in news safety since 2010 — covering ethics, safety, and mental health — and more people contacted me in the past couple of weeks concerned about the images and the distressing material they or their staff have been exposed to exposed to than at any time since the Arab uprisings of 2011,” Hannah Storm, co-founder of the journalism mental health group Headlines Network, told me in an interview.

Newsrooms have learned hard lessons over the years about safety in the field in war zones — whether that is providing the best flak jackets and communications gear or sending specialist security staff in with journalistic teams. There is no guarantee staff can be safe in dangerous environments, but most organisations at least train and equip staff to do the best they can.

Safety risks away from the frontline can be harder to pick up, especially in an era of remote working, but are no less real. Journalists and their employers are also under attack — perhaps especially in this conflict, which is so polarised between supporters of Israel’s right to defend itself and those who condemn the containment of Palestinian ambitions for statehood.

It may be possible to hold two ideas in your head at one time: that Hamas is a terror organisation dedicated to Israel’s destruction and that Palestinians have grievances. It seems nearly impossible to do that online or to represent those two ideas in news reports without being accused of bothsidesism by politicians or supporters of one side or the other — or just trolls.

Whether they are on the literal frontline or not, your staff are on the frontline.

“We find that journalists are very tired,” Hannah said. “The news cycle has been relentless and they have the sense that their industry is also precarious. They’re exhausted by the pandemic, and then by Ukraine, and there’s a kind of cumulative tiredness: job cuts, a lack of resources, always being asked to do more with less. Then a crisis like this.”

A former head of the International News Safety Institute (INSI) and the Ethical Journalism Network, Hannah has become a sought after authority on the mental health of journalists, which members of INMA’s Newsroom Initiative have told me is one of the biggest challenges.

Here are a couple of specific areas newsrooms need to watch out for in upholding their duty of care to staff — whether in an office, at home, or literally on the frontline:

• Vicarious trauma: Constant exposure to harrowing images, video, audio, or just constant reports can contribute to stress and trauma comparable to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). It can help to limit the length of work shifts handling risky material, scheduled breaks, not watching images on full screen, turning the sound off, and getting managerial support.

• Online attacks and harassment: The BBC recently disclosed that its misinformation correspondent Marianna Spring is subjected to fully 80% of the total online harassment directed at its staff. In the latest crisis, the BBC and other organisations have been targeted by politicians, campaigners, trolls, and ordinary people for perceived bias. Hannah reckons reporters — and their bosses — have to shield themselves from the volume and tone of attacks.
• Moral injury: It can be difficult to witness — especially day after day — the most transgressive acts and not have a sense of helplessness, which can become a sense of culpability. Newsrooms, Hannah says, need to be open to talking about mental health crises, the challenges of dealing with awful material, and, when necessary, publicly defending their work, their standards, and the importance of “bearing witness” to human tragedies.

• Generational trauma is an academically well-understood but maybe not well-publicised phenomenon that may affect journalists at least as much as it might others. Reporters inside Gaza are often Palestinian or Arab, for example, and many work tirelessly for respected international media organisations with strong ethical policies. The same is true of journalists with Jewish backgrounds where the enduring generational trauma is well known. Staff in each and many other categories with histories of trauma are reporting in real-time on incidents decades in the making and in which they have an unmistakable (even if buried) personal stake.

Newsroom leaders need to be open to conversations around these questions. I know from my own experiences in war zones and, more importantly, supervising people in or assigning them to war zones or other scenes of crisis, that a macho attitude of ignoring the risks or toughing out the potential damage just isn’t good enough today if it ever was.

Here are some online resources that may help:

• The Committee to Protect Journalists has a comprehensive set of materials covering both physical and mental risks for those in the field and inside newsrooms.
• The International News Safety Institute has guides from defending against online harassment to how to try to stay safe in war zones.
• The Headlines Network has video guides and a regular podcast on journalistic mental health.
• Anthony Feinstein is one of the leading academics who has looked at journalistic trauma. A professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto, he is also the author of Journalists Under Fire: The Psychological Hazards of Covering War.
• Professor Julie Posetti has produced many reports for UNESCO and others on threats to journalists, including this report on women journalists and harassment. She is also global director of research at the International Center For Journalists (ICFJ), which has deep resources on all aspects of crisis reporting. 

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