Learn how newsroom managers can protect staff and freelancers from workplace misconduct, trauma, stress, and online abuse with our step-by-step safeguarding guide.
Setting up an effective safeguarding system involves taking a close look at how everyone working in the newsroom is treated and how the job impacts their lives.
Media managers must protect staff – both in the office and in the field – from all forms of internal misconduct, identity-based harm, physical danger, digital abuse, and secondary trauma.
We have put together some practical steps for building, implementing and measuring safeguarding processes. All are based on material already published on MHM in various articles.
Managers need to ensure that staff are kept safe whatever they are doing. Are any members of your team being bullied by colleagues? You probably won’t know, and they will be too afraid to tell you in case they lose their jobs or get picked on for whistleblowing.
Safeguarding is about setting up systems to protect those staff members.
- Perhaps they are self-censoring their work because of pressure from a senior. Would you know?
- They might be under pressure from contacts and other sources. Would you be aware if they were?
- What if they were covering a story that put them under emotional pressure that they were unable to cope with – how would that show?
- If they were being leaned on and manipulated by outside influences, would you pick up on it?
- They might be discriminated against in both the workplace and in the field. If they are, they will need support.
You will need to work with your human resources (HR) team to plan how to protect your staff from all internal and external pressures that could damage their health and their work.
Step 1: Audit your newsgathering risks
Before drafting any policies, take time to understand every point where staff and contributors might encounter harm – both externally and internally.
- Field and frontline dangers: Identify staff covering wars, civil unrest, natural disasters, road accidents, crime scenes, and hostile crowds. As explored in our guide on journalism, trauma and stress, field reporters face direct threats of violence, physical injury, and acute stress from witnessing human suffering first-hand.
- Office-based exposure: Identify teams handling raw user-generated content (UGC), social media feeds, live incoming gallery feeds, and distress calls. As detailed in our guide on secondary trauma in the newsroom, verification teams, video editors, and copy takers face high rates of vicarious trauma due to volume, lack of controls, and audio exposure.
- Identity-based vulnerabilities: Review how field assignments and online abuse disproportionately affect women, LGBTQ+ staff, and ethnic minority journalists. Refer to our article on discrimination trauma to understand how physical intimidation on location, online harassment, community pigeonholing, and conflicting loyalties impact minority staff.
- Contributors and local teams: List every freelance journalist, intern, local fixer, translator, and driver your newsroom relies on. Local staff are frequently sent into the most dangerous locations to secure access, yet are often left behind without support once the main news team departs. See our article on why cultural context matters.
Step 2: Workplace conduct and internal safety
A newsroom must protect its own employees, interns, and freelance contributors from internal harm and abuse of power before sending them out to report.
- Establish zero-tolerance standards on harassment, bullying, and discrimination: Set strict, enforceable rules against sexual harassment, bullying, and discriminatory abuse both inside the office and on location. Address any issues in the relationships between senior editors, junior staff, interns, and freelance contributors.
- Guarantee whistleblowing and non-retaliation: Put confidential feedback channels in place so that staff can report misconduct, safety failures, or unethical editorial pressure safely without fear of career damage or retaliation.
- Provide structured mental health and vicarious trauma support: Ensure staff exposed to graphic imagery, disaster coverage, or distressing investigations have routine access to confidential counselling and structured psychological care.
Step 3: Establish clear newsroom protocols and workflows
Create non-negotiable operational rules that reduce unnecessary exposure to trauma and harassment.
- Introduce rotation systems: Cap the number of hours any single staff member spends reviewing graphic UGC, moderating toxic comment sections, or covering distressing specialisms. Rotate staff onto lighter duties regularly.
- Insist on content warnings: Require explicit warnings in email subject lines, messaging apps, and internal folders before sharing distressing audio or video files.
- Redesign workspaces: Discourage isolated viewing of graphic material. Encourage team viewing sessions in well-lit spaces where staff can remove headphones and speak to colleagues.
- Set clear refusal rights: Establish a formal policy allowing any journalist – including junior staff and freelancers – to step back from a disturbing assignment or graphic feed without penalty to their career progression.
- Implement online abuse protocols: Assign a designated editor or moderator to filter abusive messages and monitor threats directed at staff, rather than leaving targeted journalists to manage hate mail alone.
- Root out bullying and discrimination: Ensure all staff can work free from ridicule, intimidation, exclusion, or marginalisation by colleagues or line managers.
Step 4: Set trauma-informed editorial standards
Safeguarding protects both your staff and the people they report on. Train editors and reporters to apply ethical restraint in the field.
- Enforce informed consent: Make clear to all desks that willingness to speak or be photographed during a crisis does not constitute informed consent. As outlined in our guide on avoiding retraumatisation, editors must be willing to withhold names or faces when publication risks lifelong stigma or danger.
- Standardise trauma-informed interviewing: Ensure field reporters allow survivors to control the pace of conversations, respect silences, and avoid abrupt departures once recording stops. See our advice on interviewing trauma survivors.
- Support exiled and displaced journalists: If working with contributors in exile, establish secure digital communication channels, predictable editorial routines, and sensitivity around legal or immigration pressures. See our guidance on trauma and stress in exile journalism.
Step 5: Spotting early warning signs
A policy is only effective if managers know how to recognise distress and respond constructively. Train them to spot the warning signs.
- Look beyond psychological symptoms: Train managers to recognise both emotional shifts (withdrawal, irritability, hyper-vigilance) and physical complaints. As highlighted in our guide on journalism, trauma and stress, chronic fatigue, headaches, and stomach issues are often physical expressions of unaddressed trauma, particularly in cultures where mental health carries stigma.
- Treat avoidance as a training need, not a failure: When a reporter struggles to file a story or avoids tense environments, use it as an opportunity to offer Hostile Environment Awareness Training (HEAT) or trauma support rather than disciplinary action. See our article on identifying journalist training needs.
- Build inclusive leadership: Ensure hiring and promotion practices actively support diverse voices so that safeguarding policies reflect the lived realities of your entire team. See our article on hiring and developing staff and the piece about diversity in newsgathering.
Step 6: Set safeguarding objectives
Make safeguarding a measurable management responsibility rather than an informal aspiration. Use the framework outlined in our guide on managing people and setting objectives to hold leadership accountable. Use SMART objectives.
- Specific: Define exact rules, such as mandatory post-assignment debriefs and maximum daily limits on UGC verification.
- Measurable: Track rota compliance, training completion rates, and anonymised uptake of counselling services.
- Achievable: Build buffer capacity into newsroom rotas so managers can grant recovery time without missing deadlines.
- Realistic: Allocate ring-fenced budget for external counselling, peer-support training, and freelance therapy grants (such as those provided by the Rory Peck Trust).
- Time-bound: Schedule formal reviews of your safeguarding framework every six months, gathering anonymous staff feedback to identify gaps and update protocols.
Quick-start checklist for managers
- [ ] Appointed a designated senior safeguarding lead in the newsroom.
- [ ] Established zero-tolerance policies for bullying, harassment, and discrimination, addressing power imbalances across all staff and freelancers.
- [ ] Set up confidential whistleblowing channels with strict non-retaliation guarantees.
- [ ] Extended safety briefings and trauma support to freelancers, interns, fixers, and drivers.
- [ ] Implemented mandatory content warnings and shift rotations for all involved in covering difficult stories.
- [ ] Established a clear protocol for handling online harassment aimed at staff.
- [ ] Provided confidential, culturally appropriate counselling pathways with zero career penalty.
- [ ] Added safeguarding performance to staff and management appraisals.
