Listening to trauma: Journalistic challenges of interviewing and telling stories of asbestos (original) (raw)

2012, Australian Journalism Review 34(2)

This article explores the issue of listening to, and reporting of, trauma as part of the production process in the making of a radio documentary, Deadly Dust (broadcast on ABC Radio National), about asbestos-related disease. Specifically, it considers the impact of interviewing traumatised people on the interviewer, the interviewee and society more broadly. It presents an autoethnographic account of the author’s often-challenging interviewing experience; questioning the impact, ethics and meaning of undertaking such interviews. Most analyses of the impact of trauma reporting focus on situations such as war zones and disasters, and not on the impact of reporting traumas of everyday life, such as living with terminal illness. The paper draws on critical discussions of the issue of listening to, and telling of, stories of trauma from other disciplines such as narrative studies and oral history. The paper concludes by arguing that critically informed reflexive journalistic practice can benefit all of those involved.