Noa Amouyal has spent the past two years interviewing the families of hostages, speaking with people who lost loved ones on the battlefield, and helping connect full-time reporters to do the same.
“The pain in their eyes—meeting these people face to face—is something I don’t think I’ll ever forget,” Amouyal said.
A Be’er Ya’akov-based journalist and PR professional, Amouyal is one of many who have begun reflecting on the personal toll of covering two years of war in Israel. Now, a team of researchers from Bar-Ilan University has released preliminary findings from a first-of-its-kind study examining post-traumatic stress symptoms among media professionals following the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.
The quantitative study, which compared the psychological impact of Oct. 7 on journalists and therapists, found that reporters who covered the terror attacks and their aftermath exhibited significantly higher rates of post-traumatic stress symptoms than mental health professionals (53% vs. 20%) who treated victims, survivors and bereaved families.
The research, led by Prof. Danny Horesh, head of the Trauma and Stress Research Lab at Bar-Ilan University, and Prof. Ilanit Hasson-Ohayon of the university’s Department of Psychology, is currently undergoing peer review before publication.
Graduate students Noa Perets and Eliya Galina also contributed to the study.
Hasson-Ohayon decided to launch the study after meeting media professionals who, she said, clearly displayed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
She and Horesh were already collecting data on therapists and decided to include journalists in their research. The study ultimately included 86 participants—54 therapists and 32 media professionals—who each completed an online survey measuring post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, general psychological distress and empathy. The researchers then compared levels of distress across the two professions and analyzed demographic, professional and empathy-related predictors.
The team later conducted a second, qualitative phase to deepen their understanding—a series of in-depth interviews with 10 additional media professionals.
“In total, we have 42 media workers for whom we have certain types of data—for 32, quantitative data, and for 10, qualitative, in-depth data,” Horesh clarified. “It’s a very small preliminary study. We don’t want to claim that we have this representative sample. It’s really because it’s a very novel topic. It’s like a proof-of-concept study, but the results are so troubling and dramatic that it should be the basis for larger studies in Israel.”
The researchers explained that while their initial goal was to examine vicarious or secondary trauma, which comes from covering the suffering of others, in the case of media professionals, the line between secondary and primary trauma was often blurred. Many reporters were not only interviewing bereaved families, attending funerals and witnessing grief firsthand, but were themselves under fire.
In Israel, exposure to potentially traumatic events is an almost inevitable part of journalism. The country faces frequent emergencies, yet few reporters receive formal training in trauma management. The study found that media professionals were unprepared to cope with the psychological impact of such large-scale devastation. Despite growing awareness, most media organizations are still not “trauma-informed,” the researchers said. “They rarely offer structured trauma training, mental health consultation or support, even during wartime.”
The researchers’ interviews clearly revealed the exceptional nature of the Oct. 7 attacks and the prolonged war that followed.
“Participants described the profound shock they experienced in the aftermath of Oct. 7,” the researchers wrote in a draft of their paper. “Despite the fact that the events occurred on a Saturday, the national day of rest in Israel, the vast majority of the interviewees were called into work that morning and continued working without pause for extended hours. Whether present in the field, directly exposed to the massacre sites, or working from the newsroom, most highlighted the shock of those first days: the extraordinary and unimaginable numbers of casualties, the uncertainty that enveloped the first 24 hours until details became clearer.”
One participant described the “so much grief” and “shock” of those early days as victims recounted their stories—accounts that still feel, even now, like something that could not possibly have happened in real life.
All those interviewed spoke about the extreme intensity of their work during the first months of the war: the absence of rest, the long hours and the lack of sleep. One journalist said that for two and a half months after the Hamas attack, they worked from Sunday through Saturday, 10 to 12 hours a day. Even when their editor urged them to take a break, the journalist refused, saying they didn’t want to “just sit at home.”
Many of the interviewees described paying a personal price for their work. Several said that the emotional strain of continuous coverage took a toll on their romantic relationships, sometimes even leading to breakups. Others spoke about deep internal conflicts, feeling that their reporting or witnessing clashed with their values and beliefs. As the war dragged on, many said there was no time or space to process what they saw or deal with the emotions it stirred.
Unlike ordinary citizens, who can decide how much news they want to consume, journalists do not have that choice. They create the content, which often means being repeatedly and unavoidably exposed to traumatic material.
One reporter, for instance, recounted a conversation with a ZAKA first responder who described seeing a baby burned alive—an image the journalist said they would never have chosen to see. Still, they could not simply hang up on the interviewee.
The researchers noted that the journalists in the study reported a range of typical psychological distress symptoms: crying spells, irritability, intense stress, anxiety attacks, flashbacks and recurring nightmares. The intensity and combination of these symptoms varied from person to person, but nearly all described feeling emotionally depleted.
“Media workers are, on the one hand, drawn to this kind of content because there’s a constant race to break the news,” Hasson-Ohayon explained. “You want to be in the field, on the battlefield, and be the first to bring the story. At the same time, you feel that you cannot or should not be there. These are contradictory forces.”
According to the researchers, after Oct. 7, many reporters felt a strong drive to capture raw, authentic footage and firsthand stories to share with their audiences—unfiltered and as close to the truth as possible.
Amouyal said she understands that struggle all too well.
“Journalists are in a tough spot because it’s like a push and pull,” she said. “You’re like a detective looking for who the killer is. There’s this predatory aspect of looking for a story. But then, when you get that story, you see these people are humans who’ve been through something horrible. I think then there’s also a sense of guilt. Am I exploiting these people? Am I really doing justice to them? Am I giving them the right platform to share their story?
“For many journalists, it’s navigating that balance and hoping they do justice to what these people have gone through—not making things worse or compounding the grief and trauma that already exists,” Amouyal continued. “That’s something that probably weighs on journalists often.”
The study also highlighted the emotional risk of becoming “too close” to interviewees—the difficulty of maintaining professional distance while covering traumatic stories.
“If I become enmeshed with the subject of my reporting,” Horesh said, “I am bound to have more secondary traumatization.”
Journalists also described feeling like intruders when entering homes or contacting families in moments of acute grief. Some said their presence was met with discomfort or outright rejection, which compounded their emotional burden.
Yet, when the researchers analyzed whether excessive empathy contributed to higher rates of trauma, they found it was not a significant factor for the media workers. Even more surprisingly, they discovered that years of experience in journalism did not appear to protect reporters from psychological distress.
“This is very troubling for us,” Horesh said, noting that experience did serve as a protective factor for therapists. “We did not find any single protective or risk factor for journalists. Not only are they more prone to secondary traumatization, but we also don’t yet know what can buffer against it. It seems that experience alone is not enough.”
Another key challenge highlighted by the researchers was the lack of supervision and peer support in the media industry. Horesh noted that therapists usually work under professional supervision and have colleagues to debrief with, while most journalists operate primarily independently.
“They go out into the field, come back and are pretty much alone,” he said. Few news organizations, he added, have in-house psychologists or support systems to help staff process what they have witnessed.
Hasson-Ohayon said many interviewees also spoke about feeling lonely. Without a space to unload or discuss their experiences, many journalists described bringing their work home—a habit that, over time, could affect their families as well.
“Another difference is that as therapists, when we work with someone, we can see a recovery process,” Hasson-Ohayon explained. “Media workers do not often see the process. They have a one-shot interview or meeting with someone… I think we have a better perspective on the processes that are taking place. Maybe it’s also easier to cope with the distress from this perspective.”
Still, the study found that many journalists developed their own coping methods. Some turned to exercise, music or spending time with friends to manage stress. Others, however, admitted to relying on less healthy habits, including overeating, alcohol or casual sex, to distract themselves from what they had seen and heard.
The researchers found that one of the most significant protective factors was a sense of mission.
“This sense of mission provided meaning to their work and served as a protective factor against the emotional challenges associated with the intensive workload and the distressing content to which they are exposed,” the team wrote in their draft. “Several participants noted that part of this meaning stemmed from a sense of uniqueness in their professional role, the opportunity to express their personal values through reporting and to give voice to those they believed needed it most.”
Despite the troubling findings, the researchers said there is reason for optimism. They believe that with the right policies, support systems for journalists could be implemented quickly, inexpensively and effectively.
Hasson-Ohayon said that even basic psychoeducation, such as teaching reporters to recognize and understand the symptoms of stress and trauma, could make a difference. Once journalists can identify what they’re experiencing, she explained, they may be more likely to seek help.
“They need to be aware that this is happening, that people who work during war are at risk for experiencing PTSD,” she said.
Horesh added that editors and newsroom managers must also learn to identify warning signs among their staff.
“Probably 50 or 60% of the process is noticing it,” he said.
If a reporter returning from the field seems distressed or withdrawn, he said, managers should know how to respond and ensure that help is available.
He suggested several low-cost, easy-to-implement steps, such as inviting a psychologist to the newsroom once a week or organizing group “venting” sessions where staff can openly talk about what they’ve experienced. These small measures, he said, could help create a healthier, more supportive newsroom culture.
“This is something that we would like to translate to policy as soon as possible,” Horesh concluded. “This is not a study that we would like to send to the library, and that’s it. We think that the issue of media workers and stress is really translatable very fast. You can do things right now in Israel to get media workers help.”
This article is written by Maayan Hoffman and reprinted with permission from The Media Line