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Your safety and wellbeing
Improved reporting on violence against women is vital to creating change. It also raises important safety and wellbeing concerns for the journalists and editors involved.
Your safety
Some journalists with high-profile roles reporting on violence against women experience backlash, including threats and online trolling, as well as physical violence. This video looks at increasing safety for journalists who report on violence against women.
Vicarious trauma
Journalists who are routinely exposed to stories of violence and abuse may experience vicarious trauma. Vicarious trauma is the cumulative effect of working with trauma, which can affect many aspects of a person’s life. It may consist of short-term reactions, or longer-term effects that continue long after the work has finished.
The video below has advice for dealing with vicarious trauma.
Resources about safety, stress and trauma for journalists
This tip sheet from the Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma provides advice for managing stress and trauma on investigative projects.
GenVic has designed the guide called Don’t Read the Comments: Enhancing Online Safety for Women Working in the Media to assist media companies to protect their journalists, particularly women journalists, from online hate.
Finally, 1800RESPECT offers help to learn how to recognise, prevent and manage work-induced stress and trauma.
Our Watch Award
The Our Watch Award for excellence in reporting on violence against women and children improves the quality of reporting on by building awareness of gender inequality as a key driver of this violence.
Our Watch has been recognising and rewarding excellence in reporting on violence against women and children since 2015, initially through the Our Watch Awards which were administered by the Walkley Foundation. Since 2019 onwards the Our Watch Award has been presented as a part of the Walkley Mid-Year Celebration.
2024 winner
The 2024 Our Watch Award winners are Jessica Lodge, Melissa Downes, and Adam Buncher from Nine Entertainment Co. for Hannah’s Story, an in-depth investigation into the murders of Hannah Clarke and her three children.
Find more information on the winners of the 2024 Mid-Year Celebration of Journalism.
Past winners
2023, Richard Willingham, ABC for a series of stories shining a light on victims of sexual assault being forced to wait for forensic examination due to doctor shortages.
2022, Bethany Atkinson-Quinton and Madison Griffiths for Broadwave, Tender: Roia Atmar published on Broadwave Pods.
2021, Samantha Maiden, news.com.au, for a series focused on allegations of rape in Parliament House.
2020, Nina Funnell for the Let Her Speak series of articles, published in news.com.au.
2019, Sarah Dingle and the Background Briefing Team, Radio National, ABC for Australia On Trial: Carers who kill, Slavery in the suburbs, Murder on Trial.
Find out more
Visit the Walkley Foundation website for more information on the Award, including how to apply and winners from previous years.
Our Watch Fellowship
The Our Watch Fellowship Program is delivered in partnership with the Walkley Foundation. This prestigious leadership opportunity for outstanding journalists offers Fellows the opportunity to learn best-practice reporting on violence against women, sexual harassment and abuse in the workplace and build on their knowledge on gender inequality.
Through a series of retreats, Fellows:
- deepen their knowledge of violence against women and its prevention
- build their capacity to report on and understand sexual harassment and violence against women in the workplace
- engage in conversations with peers, veteran and award-winning journalists, and violence against women experts on the challenges and opportunities for advancing journalism on this topic
- develop skills in understanding and reporting on the complexities of sexual harassment and violence against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, women with disabilities, migrant and refugee women and women who experience multiple forms of discrimination
- discuss trauma-informed approaches to interviewing
- understand common challenges, pitfalls and stumbling blocks to best-practice reporting, and develop practical techniques for producing more nuanced stories
- build skills to support colleagues and newsrooms to engage in best-practice reporting
- support Our Watch to deliver a learning session in their own newsroom on best-practice reporting of violence against women to share the learnings of the Fellowship with colleagues.
Read about previous Our Watch Fellows: Fellows from 2019, Fellows from 2021 or the Fellows from 2022 here.
Training for journalists
Our Watch delivers training to newsrooms to support them to report accurately, safely and respectfully on violence against women.
The ‘Doing Better Journalism: Effective Reporting on Violence Against Women’ packages were developed in consultation with journalists, Dart Centre Asia-Pacific, the Centre for Advancing Journalism at the University of Melbourne and the Domestic Violence Resource Centre Victoria.
The training packages run for one hour or two hours and can be delivered digitally.
How do I access the training?
To access the training, contact Our Watch.
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