Gathering emotion: examining newspaper journalists' engagement in emotional labor

Abstract

This study explores the process of emotional labor in a profession in need of examination – that of journalism. During one-on-one interviews, newspaper/online journalists reflected upon their experiences while gathering the news and agreed they do indeed engage in emotional labor, suppressing impulses of sympathy, pity and guilt to achieve ‘objectivity’ and to avoid being overwhelmed by their feelings. However, our findings show that with little or no training in this practice and with the majority of journalists achieving not suppression but merely a deferment of upsetting emotions, emotional labor can have serious implications for those reporters who engage in it.

Notes on contributors

K. Megan Hopper (Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Missouri-Columbia) is an assistant professor of Journalism at the School of Communication, Illinois State University, Normal, IL, USA. She is a former print journalist and continues to engage in freelance reporting.

John E. Huxford (Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Pennsylvania) is a former journalist from Britain and currently an associate professor of Journalism at the School of Communication, Illinois State University, Normal, IL, USA. His research interests include the visual and textual construction of news.

Notes

1. A good deal has been written on the significance of the suppression of emotion, feelings, empathy and other related concepts in terms of the creation of journalistic objectivity and the potential effects on the news product, as well as on the ethics and implications of interviewing traumatized victims in emotionally charged circumstances. However, there has been surprisingly little attention paid to the repercussions such practices may have on the journalists engaged in this emotional labor.