Trauma-informed reporting helped me push back on the existing media narrative on why youth join gangs
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I do not come from a traditional journalist background. I started my career as a bilingual domestic violence victim’s advocate with Arab American Family Services in the south suburbs of Chicago. Working as a trauma-informed advocate shaped my perspective of the world and how I show up in the communities I am a part of.
When I transitioned into journalism, my background influenced me to explore trauma-informed reporting.
Trauma-informed reporting stems from trauma-informed medical practices. I was staunch in adhering to these reporting practices due to the subject matter I planned to cover. Traditionally, gang members in the media are represented in an extremely skewed manner. The media often sensationalizes crimes in a bid to attract more readers and viewers.
The focus is typically on immediate descriptive details of the crime, often with little follow-up and barely any context as to why people may engage in unlawful activities. Additionally, the media tends to repeat many racial stereotypes regarding marginalized ethnic groups in the United States.
In my previous news outlet, Benitolink, we were also susceptible to that same problematic language. For example, in a special report that was released in 2023 “San Benito County high schools see an uptick in school violence,” the newspaper focused on suspension rates and the rise of violence in the school,
But our coverage did not answer the more fundamental question that I focused on: Why do young people in San Benito County join gangs? In surveying youth who had been in gangs, at risk, or formerly incarcerated, I wanted to focus on why youth would be willing to join a gang. Additionally, I wanted to report solutions-based articles that focused on groups in the community already doing work on preventing youth from joining gangs or helping them leave.
That is when I found out that Youth Alliance, a nonprofit in the county, was organizing restorative justice circles with students at alternative education sites within the county. I also looked at nonprofits and programs in other counties that could provide a model for rehabilitation and vocational skills for the youth and found Planting Justice. A nonprofit in Oakland, California, Planting Justice was dedicated to providing jobs, education, and vocational training to communities affected by mass incarceration.
In reflecting on some of the best practices that served me throughout this project, I have shared three that have been the most useful.
Extreme transparency with sources.
Trauma-informed reporting tends to err on the side of overexplaining the journalism process to sources and focusing on informed consent. I leaned heavily into that practice. I first met informally with many of my sources and explained in detail the premise of the project. I walked them through the steps of how the articles will be written and published, and what angles I am interested in covering.
I continuously outlined to each source what my plans were for their quotes. I reminded them that at any point if they felt something was too personal or that they had overshared, I would not publish what they said. I also reminded them that they were free to drop the project at any time.
When I sent the survey to the students, I made sure to make the students as anonymous as possible, and I had continuous reminders throughout the survey to only share what they felt comfortable sharing.
Some of my sources were still on parole, and what I published could hugely impact them if I was not careful about protecting them and their anonymity. It was my duty as an adult who understood the ramifications of their words to do this, and so I made multiple calls to ensure some of the descriptive details were as vague as possible.
This was not always easy, and often required more time out of my schedule than I anticipated, but I believe it was ultimately essential for this project.
Be willing to engage with the community outside of the project.
When working with vulnerable community members, especially from marginalized groups, one thing that journalists need to remember is that no one owes you their story.
It was important to me that the youth, organizations, experts, and advocates I spoke to understood that I was not interested in exploiting them. I wanted to engage in conversation and outline the reasons why youth in the county would want to join a gang in the first place.
To do that, I had to get to know them. I scheduled multiple background calls with sources and had informal conversations about the current situation. I went to community events, graduations, and was continuously in touch with sources throughout the process.
Traditional journalists often consider themselves a “voice for the voiceless,” and quite frankly, I think that is naïve, if not borderline negligent. People are active agents in their lives and in their communities. They are keenly aware of the issues in their communities and have a voice and opinion about them. Often, if you speak with them long enough, they might even share the solution to their problems.
It was through talking to Marisol Palomares, the restorative justice coordinator at Youth Alliance, that I was able to find out about restorative justice circles in the first place. And by speaking to youth, I learned about Hollister Police Department’s social media page and how some young people in the community felt about it. If we truly want to commit to change in the media industry, we need to allow the communities we cover to guide our reporting.
Be willing to engage in hard conversation around language in your newsroom.
One of the harder aspects of the project came towards the end. In my newsroom, there was some older language that was used to describe some of my sources during the editing process that I had to push back against.
For instance, one of my editors used the word “life of crime” to describe a source’s previous gang affiliations and incarceration history, among other examples.
As a journalist, how you represent your sources, and the semantics of the language you use to describe them, matters. It is important to push against older derogatory language, especially when it comes from our own newsrooms. For my reporting during this project, the sources I relied on for justice-focused language guides included the Marshall Project, The Fortune Society, and the Vera Institute of Justice.
This method of thinking might not work for traditional journalists, but I think journalists have an obligation to be truth seekers and hold our institutions accountable. And one of the easiest ways to do that is not to engage in harmful or stereotyping language.
To truly get to know people, you need to know their stories. My hope in sharing these practices is that other journalists reflect on their approach to marginalized and misunderstood communities.