Reporting from the Frontlines: Coping with Guilt, Grief and Danger in Journalism

Transcript of conversation with Crispin Thorold published 25 February 2026

Transcript prepared by JAS Virtual Services.

You can watch this conversation here or listen here.

So joining us this time is Crispin Thorold, a British-Canadian international communications specialist and former BBC foreign correspondent who spent the past 25 years specialising mainly on conflicts, post-conflict situations, and crisis areas. Crispin has worked in more than 40 countries, including 6 war zones and multiple post-conflict regions. As a BBC correspondent, Crispin was based in Northern Ireland, India, Afghanistan, and the Middle East. As a comms leader, he has worked closely with survivors of terrorism, torture, and war. Now retraining as a psychotherapist and psychologist, he plans to build on his previous experience to work with men who’ve been affected by conflict. His interest areas include trauma and addictions, and really looking forward to having this conversation with you, Crispin. Welcome.

Crispin Thorold [00:02:19]:

Likewise, good to see you both.

David Jones [00:02:21]:

Hello, Crispin, very nice to meet you and thanks very much for coming along today. So, how did you end up working as a foreign correspondent?

Crispin Thorold [00:02:31]:

Yeah, it’s a great question and I wish I could say that there was kind of a master plan behind it all, but, like most things in life, one thing led to another, but I guess the starting point was I grew up in a very political household. The news was always around me. I was very aware of what was going on in the world when I was growing up. And I took a real interest in history at school. I had a bit of kind of a heading off towards the sciences at one stage, but basically I found my way back to international relations at university. And I was really lucky to study at St. Andrews, kind of before terrorism was a big area of study. And with Paul Wilkinson and Bruce Hoffman, a couple of the kind of really leading academics in that area.

Crispin Thorold [00:03:19]:

And that really got me interested in political violence, in conflict. And I found myself also being drawn to conflicts and situations that really kind of spoke to my own personal background as well. You know, growing up in the ‘70s and ‘80s, we heard so much about the conflicts in Northern Ireland. And I did a lot of work at St Andrews on Northern Ireland. I have a family background, a colonial family background in India, but I was very interested in kind of what happened after colonialism in, especially in the Middle East and in India, and how that led to some of the conflicts in the region. And I think so one thing led to another, and then I found myself after I’d been to journalism school having to choose a place I wanted to do my work experience. And I was absolutely determined to go to Belfast. It was 1998.

Photo by mali desha on Unsplash

Crispin Thorold [00:04:14]:

Everybody said, don’t go there. You won’t get any experience if you go there because you know, the stories are too complicated. And I landed in March 1998 in Belfast in the middle of my postgrad. And within the month there was the Belfast Agreement, the Good Friday Agreement. And I had this extraordinary experience. I didn’t do much reporting, but I had this extraordinary experience of helping the coverage at BBC Northern Ireland. Around the Good Friday Agreement and being there for that kind of momentous event. And then just one thing led to another.

Crispin Thorold [00:04:48]:

I stayed on in Northern Ireland, worked, there was unfortunately quite a bit of political violence still after the agreement. I covered the Omagh bombing. And yeah, as I say, once you’ve sort of set yourself on a path, often you get known for having those interest areas. And over the years, I covered multiple conflicts for the BBC, and then in my communications career, that was my kind of expertise area and something I was very passionate about. And then it continued into the communications career.

Naomi Murphy [00:05:23]:

What made you want to go to Northern Ireland? I mean, we’re a similar kind of age, and I can’t imagine, I can’t think of many worse places that I’d want to go to, to cover a story as somebody with an English accent?

Crispin Thorold [00:05:36]:

Yeah, I mean, it’s an interesting one. I think partly, my family history, without getting too much into the ins and outs of it, my father’s family, a kind of very old Church of England family, my mother’s a Catholic. I was always aware that there was this kind of familial tension around religion. It didn’t really make much sense to me, on a kind of human level. So that was something that kind of intrigued me, and then it was also, why are people who are just like me fighting? And why are people dying just one island over? You know, we’re very different culturally to the Irish, the English and the Irish. Let’s not get into all the long history and often very painful history, for the Irish especially. But I just sort of, I think I wanted to make sense of it. And I think that one of the things about really good journalists and I think, I hope, psychotherapists and psychologists is that you’re a) fascinated in human beings and b) you have that kind of constant inquiry and that constant trying to understand, well, psychologists and psychotherapists, why people behave, act in certain ways, but as a journalist, why things happen and what are the underlying causes.

Crispin Thorold [00:06:50]:

I was intellectually drawn to it, and then on a human level, I haven’t been to Belfast for a long time, but I mean, once you go to Belfast, the people from whatever background are just brilliant. They’re so charming, they’re fun, and I just love the place. And I really fell for the place. I fell for the people. And, I think I would say the same about subsequent conflicts, you know, in Afghanistan, in Iraq. I never covered Syria, but I have a real deep affection for the Syrians. I’ve done loads of work in Lebanon. Israel and the Palestinians, you know, the Israelis and the Palestinians, both incredible peoples and the more you get drawn into conflicts, the more you see the commonalities and the humanity that the, I always say like 98, 99% of people everywhere are intrinsically really good people.

Crispin Thorold [00:07:41]:

And again, just trying to understand how these situations arise and then critically, how can they be ended? And what can be done to help. I’m particularly driven by civilians who are caught up, you know, by no fault of their own, who get caught up in these situations. And yeah, that’s where I am now.

David Jones [00:08:03]:

I can understand the excitement of being drawn to Belfast with Clinton and Blair and Momo and, you know, bobbing around and there appearing to be some kind of resolution. And I can see that that could be quite a kind of hook into the field. But I often wonder, you’ve mentioned loads of other places where you would have been, I imagine, in the midst of terrible atrocities, and I’ve often wondered what is the appeal of that?

Crispin Thorold [00:08:37]:

Yeah, I think appeal’s a tricky word. I’m not sure I would use appeal. And yeah, I mean, I have, even in Northern Ireland, 15th of August, 1998. So what are we there? I remember that day so well, like 5 months after I first went to Northern Ireland, it was the Omagh bombing. 29 people were killed. A bomb that kind of just ripped through a market town. To be honest, I’d never even heard of the place before it happened. And just wreaked devastation.

Crispin Thorold [00:09:14]:

I thankfully didn’t go down on the day, but I went down the day after I reported for Radio Ulster. The day after from Omagh, and it was devastating. I mean, it was just horrendous. You feel a real responsibility once you become engaged in a story. And I think it’s particularly, I’m sure it’s true across all specialty areas, but I’ll talk about what I know. For foreign reporters, correspondents, I’m in Northern Ireland, part of the UK, but I felt like very much as though I was an outsider. I absolutely was an outsider. So as an outsider coming in, you feel a responsibility to the people in the place you’re in, and people who are going through such extraordinary suffering to tell their stories and as best you can as an observer, to reflect what’s happening for them.

Crispin Thorold [00:10:12]:

And maybe it’s like any vocation, on some levels it’s quite difficult to explain the vocation to other people. I like a kind of psychological theory, self-determination theory, you know, the kind of splitting intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. And the intrinsic motivation is very much that kind of responsibility to tell the story, that duty to the people that you’re reporting on. Extrinsically, you know, journalists have often quite large egos, and, you know, you like being on the story that gets you if you’re a broadcast journalist, as I was, that gets you to the lead of the bulletin. You know, awards are very attractive to people. People want to be on, lots of friends are print journalists, you know, they want to be on the front page, they want that kind of stand first that’s got their headshot on it. So I think it’s a combination of things. And then it’s also, you get a set of expertise and a reputation within a business, whatever you’re doing.

Crispin Thorold [00:11:10]:

Once you start having success, it’s quite difficult to step away from that kind of work. So I think, does that answer your question? Yeah, appeal, definitely not the word I’d use, but does that kind of capture what you’re looking for?

David Jones [00:11:25]:

Yeah, no, I think you’ve described it very well. But it has left me wondering a bit. So when you’re in the midst of some terrible situation, like you’ve just been alluding to, and then you feel this sense of responsibility that you’ve described and all the other kind of elements that are attached to that, and then what becomes the most challenging part of the work for you?

Crispin Thorold [00:11:51]:

It’s an interesting one. So in a way, two things really stick in my mind on that. One is stopping. You get yourself into the kind of cycle of deadlines, and when I was doing work in the Middle East, you know, often you would be kind of the lead. So I was never based in Iraq, but I went into Iraq quite often and you do a kind of 4 to 6 week stint in the country and all you would do is work. And then at the time I was there and for the years preceding, you were often the kind of the lead ISIM on, well, certainly the international bulletins, but also the domestic bulletins. And so you’re just in this cycle of constantly feeding, you know, we used to call it feeding the beast, and I’m sure it’s, I left before social media, I left journalism before social media really took off, but, it’ll be 50 times worse now with the advent of social media. But you’re really just constantly in that cycle.

Crispin Thorold [00:12:52]:

And so stopping both to do the job well, to reflect on what you’re seeing and to really kind of do thoughtful reporting and analysis, but then also for your own health. Especially your own mental health, just stopping and the self-care elements, looking after yourself, presenting your best self to the story and to the situation. So I think that’s extremely challenging. And the other thing I think that’s really difficult is it was less the case in Northern Ireland, but certainly in Afghanistan, Iraq, to a certain extent in Israel, in the Palestinian territories, you’re working with local journalists there. Often described as fixers, but they’re essentially journalists, especially if you don’t have the language expertise, that they’re operating as kind of interpreters, fixing things up for you. And these are people who have their own lives and who are often treading real tightropes to support, especially with international news agencies, to support international news agencies who are probably not always reporting things that the local authorities like. An organisation like the BBC still has a lot of influence, but in those, I mean, you know, even a decade and a half ago, I think, had much more influence than it does now. And so, everything I reported in Afghanistan was immediately known to the authorities.

Crispin Thorold [00:14:10]:

It was translated into the Pashtu and Persian services. Hamid Karzai listens, like all Afghans, I grew up kind of listening to those services. And your local colleagues don’t have the luxury of being able to leave. And that became very acute in Afghanistan when the West left, a few years ago in such kind of in a dramatic fashion, and so many fixers, I mean, not just the journalism fixers, but also kind of the military interpreters and people like that were left behind, and there was a real scramble to try and get people out. I think that’s something that really played on my mind after I left these situations, and lots of my former colleagues feel exactly the same, you know, that we have this luxury. Yeah, okay, we’re taking risks, and, you know, something could go wrong, and that’s just part of the job. But yeah, our whole families are not there, our whole lives are not there, and, that’s something that really played on my mind for a long time.

David Jones [00:15:16]:

So you must be left with profound feelings of guilt and sadness and regret, particularly the situation in Afghanistan that you’ve just been talking about. I was going to ask you if the work was dangerous, but clearly it is. When I watch reports from Ukraine, for example, where nobody can be sure they’re not going to be blown out of this world by something hovering over them. Did you ever feel frightened?

Crispin Thorold [00:15:52]:

Yeah, I mean, I’m not a great one for kind of war stories and talking about my own experiences, I think mainly because I think my experiences are so limited compared to the people who are born and live in these war zones. And I have always had that luxury so far to come back to a safe country. You know, we’re in a funny time right now and sitting in Toronto, Canada is just like, it doesn’t feel as safe as it once did. But yeah, anyway, that’s a whole other conversation. So yeah, I mean, there were moments of risk. I’d also say that, you know, I covered several wars, but there are people who do this for decades and cover far more wars than I do, who experience much more risk. And it is a numbers game. Get lucky, and then one day, you know, some people aren’t lucky.

Crispin Thorold [00:16:42]:

In a way, for me, the thing that stays on is less the physical risk of the actual reporting, which is an aspect, but it’s more the mental scars that it can leave on you. And, you know, when I think back, so one anecdote, I guess, I remember in 2003, I was a producer at the time. I was a field producer for the World Service. And a team of us were in, we were just after the invasion of Iraq and we were able to travel all over the country. It was kind of a little window where you could travel all over the country. And we were in Kirkuk and at the Olympic stadium in Kirkuk, there were a number of Kurdish refugees who’d fled from other parts of the country. And there was this woman, I don’t know whether her husband was dead or, I don’t know, I’m not quite sure what the story was with her husband, or I’ve forgotten. But she had 6, 8 children, and I mean, they were starving to death.

Crispin Thorold [00:17:40]:

And her baby was dying in her arms. I mean, we were able to tell the UN and somebody we knew at UNICEF, and I think they went in, but I’d never quite been able to shake that scene from my head. And now I was thinking about it just in the preparation of this, you know, that was 2003. So the baby got through, and I really like to think they survived because I know that there were a group of Kurds who actually lived at that stadium for 5 to 6 years. So hopefully the UN got in and helped them. But you know, that baby would now be 22, and I was like what happened to that girl or boy? And what has their life been like? And that’s the kind of thing that just, I think more so than the bangs and the gunfire and the bombs and the this and the that, the mortars and all that sort of thing. That’s the thing that stays for me. I mean, for my personal experience, stays with you a lot longer.

David Jones [00:18:45]:

Yes, I mean, that’s clearly left a very powerful place in your memory. And of course the thing about memories, they tend to stay more or less as you experienced them in the first place, whereas the life of the individual has gone on its own direction that you probably know very little about. So were you able to write about that story at the time?

Crispin Thorold [00:19:11]:

Um, so I wasn’t, I had a period in between reporting where I was a field producer, so I was producing, but we definitely reported that for sure. It was a radio, but that was an element of the reporting that we did. And that was an amazing trip into Iraq because we were able to go to Mosul, Kirkuk, all these different places that just, you know, within a few months became very, not impossible, but very difficult to get to. But I didn’t personally write about that. Yeah.

David Jones [00:19:49]:

Thank you very much.

Naomi Murphy [00:19:50]:

How easy is it, Crispin, to tell the news and focus on, I mean, I was interested in you highlighting that need for a pause to think, and I wondered how easy it is to tell the news when you’re in a, you know, you’ve been exposed to material that’s upsetting or frightening or causing these very strong emotions. You can hear the emotion in you now talking about it 23 years on, you know, it’s very painful to listen to, you know, how easy is it to focus on getting a job done and conveying those stories in a compassionate way to that people can listen to?

Crispin Thorold [00:20:29]:

Yeah, so there’s different levels when you’re in it. So in Iraq, a bit later when I was going into Iraq as a correspondent I remember that being 2007, ‘08. It was really kind of the period of rooftop journalism, you know, and so we would go in and as I think I’ve always said, you know, you do a 4 to 6 week rotation through Iraq and the BBC office wasn’t in the green zone, it was outside the green zone, but it was a street where the New York Times was there, the French embassy was there, it was kind of a little secure street, but you didn’t get out much. And then when you did want to get out, it was an exercise you planned for a week and you either had to do a kind of an embed with Western forces, there were all sorts of protocols that you had to go through. So, most of the time you were sitting in an office, you could hear the bombs and they were going off very regularly at that time. You could kind of hear the bombs going off and then you would scurry around trying to get information, making calls. Again, your Iraqi colleagues would make calls to their contacts, we would phone our contacts, and then before you know what’s what, you’re up on the roof and you’re on TV. And then you’re in this kind of cycle where you’re flipping between the roof for TV and the radio studio.

Crispin Thorold [00:22:00]:

I mean, in that situation, you just keep going because the adrenaline keeps you going. And I think nearly all, that’s a horrible generalisation, but nearly all reporters are probably, you know, at least ADHD traits if they’re not fully neurodiverse. And so, you know, you kind of get caught up in that, yeah, I mean, the adrenaline of the moment, and you just have to get on with it. The more difficult aspects, again, for me, is when it can become very weak when you’re just talking about you know, a bomb has gone, 86 people have been killed, 255 have been injured. And then the same thing happens either later in the day or the next morning. And you just sort of end up talking about numbers and you lose the humanity and the real incredibly talented, Lyse Doucet, just a superstar, just such a wonderful reporter, but she brings real kind of humanity to her reporting and she does that by telling the human stories. And I think the times where that becomes very difficult as a reporter is, I’ll use that exact Iraq example, when you go out and you actually get a chance to talk to people, and then that’s hard because you’re hearing like, it’s not numbers anymore, it’s people, and it’s what’s happening in their lives. And yeah, that’s much more challenging.

Crispin Thorold [00:23:24]:

And again, that’s the kind of way as journalists, you’re storytellers, and you wouldn’t be doing it if you didn’t love stories and you didn’t love telling stories and reading stories and hearing stories. But also as humans, we kind of respond to the human experience, and that’s the really challenging, I think that was the most challenging piece of it. And again, coming back to my point, you know, when you stop, that’s when that stuff starts kind of coming up into your mind and where it can catch up with you.

Naomi Murphy [00:24:01]:

Yeah, I think you’re highlighting there the kind of like the toll that it takes on someone when your nervous system is constantly having to be hypervigilant to the threat within the environment. If you’re living for weeks in a dangerous situation and there’s not really anywhere for that adrenaline to go. But I wondered I mean, this wouldn’t be a fair question if you’d only ever worked as a journalist, but you are also training as a psychologist and psychotherapist. And I wondered how susceptible to dissociation correspondents might be when they’re in these conflict zones, or any other sort of trauma reactions.

Crispin Thorold [00:24:39]:

Yeah, it’s interesting coming at the trauma now from I mean, I’m not practicing like at this stage yet because I’m still training. So I mean, it’s interesting being a bit more exposed to some of the theoretical things around trauma and thinking about my own experiences. And I suspect it’s very common. You know, maybe I could tell you in a decade we could talk again and I will have heard many more stories in a therapeutic setting. But, you know, I can again, I’ve got a good example from Iraq. That same trip when that first one after the invasion, we drove up in a day from Kuwait all the way up the country. Quite a nervy drive. And we arrived in Baghdad just as it was getting dark.

Crispin Thorold [00:25:29]:

And there were no authorities in power there. It was like when the looting was happening. It was extremely lawless. And I remember just being in the car. There was a kind of smell of, just ordnance or something in the air. And I just remember just feeling separate from my body and feeling like I was in, I don’t know, Apocalypse Now or, you know, some sort of movie. And like, I completely separated my actual experience. And at the time I had no knowledge of what was happening.

Crispin Thorold [00:26:02]:

But, now learning some of the theory and really thinking about some of my experiences, for sure. I mean, I think dissociation, I think lots of trauma reactions. When I was in Afghanistan before Iraq, and I remember coming back and I had a stint in, the BBC liked to bring people back to London to reprogram them. And like, as a reporter, it’s always incredibly frustrating. But I remember being just like near Bush House in the centre of London and going to one of the lovely parks around the back of the Law College, couldn’t have been a more peaceful environment. And I wouldn’t step on grass because I was worried it was mined. And you know, that’s obviously not a normal reaction, but I’ve become so programmed in the time that I’ve been living in Afghanistan to think that anything that wasn’t concrete was potentially a minefield.

Crispin Thorold [00:26:53]:

I still to this day, I’m not happy around fireworks, I don’t like bangs and whistles, especially anything that sounds like mortifiers, I’m really unsettled around. And, you know, I haven’t been in a war zone since 2008, and I’ve done a huge amount of work on my own, you know, my personal therapy, as any responsible psychotherapist and psychologist does. And these things last, and I think there’s a lot more awareness now. I think it’s a lot less of a macho business. And I think people are more prepared to talk about these things than they used to be. But the system’s also built that even though there is support now, it’s not always good to show that kind of vulnerability.

Naomi Murphy [00:27:40]:

Really powerful, evocative experiences that you’re sharing with us, Crispin. I suppose I wonder how you dealt with it at the time. Were you just literally keeping your head down and working? But what would happen when you came back to safe territory? How would you cope once you were home?

Crispin Thorold [00:28:01]:

I mean, not very well, frankly. I did start having my own personal therapy, and again, I would say I think that one of the big changes there’s been in the past two, two and a half decades is news organisations are now really aware. And it’s not just the war zones, you know, I mean, journalists go to, you know, cover domestic fires where an entire family’s been killed, road traffic accidents, you know, all the stuff that we know around first responders could just as easily apply to journalists. And I think there is a lot more awareness within newsrooms that this kind of work takes a big personal toll. And there’s certainly insurance policies in place that didn’t used to be to help people get access to psychological support and wellbeing supports. And, you know, the endless HR trainings, which, again, journalists tend to roll their eyes at, but which are really important. And so I think, it has changed a lot.

Crispin Thorold [00:29:01]:

For me, really, the healing only came after I left journalism. I don’t think I realised, and I’d had some childhood trauma as well. And so again, I think that’s quite common for people who are drawn to these conflicts that, you know, they have experienced, difficult situations in their lives before they get into these conflicts. I had work to do and, I did it over several years and it was tough, but it was really necessary. And I’m very lucky that I have lots of supports around me, great family and, you know, so all those things that really help one kind of get beyond the experience of, a personal experience of PTSD, there’s some really interesting writing around post-traumatic growth. And, there is this wonderful place you can reach if you have been through trauma, whatever kind of type of trauma, whatever the setting, where if you do heal, really quite magical things can happen, and you’re a very different person at the other side, and you can bring a lot to the world that perhaps you wouldn’t have been able to bring if you hadn’t been on that journey.

Naomi Murphy [00:30:23]:

Yeah, thank you. What did you do when you left working as a correspondent? What followed afterwards for you?

Crispin Thorold [00:30:30]:

Yeah, you know I’d love to say I then went and worked in, I don’t know, promoting artists, music artists or something fun like that. But no, I went from journalism to I led communications for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. So it’s the internet, first international terrorism tribunal that investigated and then prosecuted those, I believe, accused of the assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and a number of other related terrorist cases in Lebanon. And I did that for 5 years based out of The Hague, but leading a team that was both in The Hague, but also in Beirut and in and out of Beirut a bit. I then tried to get away from this world. I felt like I needed a break. And I worked in the education sector for 7 years, again in communications, but for a global education charity. And then for University of Toronto here, but then I found myself when I was at U of T, when I was working on their crisis comms and I was again being kind of drawn into, well, getting into all the ins and outs of it, but you know, a lot of their work around equity, diversity, and inclusion, accusations of racism, accusations of sexual assault.

Crispin Thorold [00:31:45]:

And so I kind of kept on getting kind of pulled back into the difficult territory, partly because of my experience. And then I reached the point where I decided, okay, well, there’s a reason why I keep coming back to these very traumatised populations. And I love Viktor Frankl, and, you know, this is kind of like this idea that, we shouldn’t search for happiness in life, but we should search for meaning, and it’s through meaning that happiness comes. And I guess, I kind of realised that the meaning for me comes from working with these populations. And then I got in my world, very lucky. With other people, it doesn’t sound lucky at all, but a wonderful job for 2 and a half years supporting the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, independent human rights expert for the UN who raised incidents of torture and systemic torture with different governments, trying to bring about change. And so they’re working with clearly very traumatised populations, but then also more on the kind of the policy side and trying to affect change in that area. So I guess I’ve, despite the attempt to kind of drag myself away from these kind of populations, I’ve kind of come back.

Crispin Thorold [00:33:00]:

And now that came to an end in the summer, and I’ve since then been kind of working full-time on the retraining. Yeah, and looking ahead to the new career.

Naomi Murphy [00:33:11]:

How did the work that you’ve done since reporting differ in terms of the experience for you? And obviously you weren’t in a dangerous environment every day for 6 weeks at a time, but you’re still seeing material that’s quite painful, aren’t you?

Crispin Thorold [00:33:29]:

Yeah. I guess, if you’re looking at the trauma risk, you’re going from kind of the primary trauma to the secondary trauma. That’s more the risk because you’re dealing with materials. Dr. Edwards, the special rapporteur, did a lot of work around October 7th, very bravely, I think, because it was very difficult to do that work for a number of reasons. And I found reading some of the materials around the events of October the 7th incredibly difficult. I mean, thankfully I’ve now been on quite a journey myself that, I could identify when I was finding it difficult and tap into my own kind of resources to manage that for myself. So I think I was still engaging with extremely difficult, difficult materials, and there was less bang bang, no immediate threat really.

Crispin Thorold [00:34:35]:

But, you’re still engaging with some of those human stories, which I think, again, coming back to some of my earlier points, is really challenging. What I did like about it, not to wildly generalise about journalists, but they do tend to operate in the kind of the black and the white. And both in The Hague I was at the special tribunal and then with Dr. Edwards, you know, seeing that life is quite grey, that there’s lots of light and shade and bringing about change is not always this is right and this is wrong. It’s much more complicated than that. And that was a real eye-opener for me. Very frustrating because when things are black and white, the world is much simpler. But yeah, it was a very different experience, but in many ways, even more rewarding, a lot less of the kind of, I guess, the coming back to my types of motivation, less of the extrinsic motivation and more of the kind of the intrinsic, really trying to bring about, yeah.

David Jones [00:35:35]:

Crispin, do you think any of the organisations you worked for acknowledged and recognised the risk of psychological harm, particularly to you and other members of their staff?

Crispin Thorold [00:35:50]:

So, I think I’ve touched a bit on this in terms of the journey that news organisations have been on. And, you know, I have a few friends who are very senior in news organisations now, and they genuinely take it seriously. And there are supports available that previously just weren’t available. So on an organisational level in terms of news, I think that’s better. I mean, one thing I would say is I remember, I told an editor after I came back from Afghanistan that I was struggling a bit. And yeah, when Hurricane Katrina happened, I was included on the kind of the list of people to go out to it. And she kind of vetoed it because she wasn’t confident of my psychological robustness at the time. I mean, probably a really good call for me in the long run, but at the time I remember being really frustrated.

Crispin Thorold [00:36:45]:

And so the incorrect lesson I took in that moment was don’t tell your editors if you’re not doing well. So that however good an organisation is, the nature of the business isn’t necessarily set up for people to be open about these things. In terms of the UN, related organisations I worked for. I think, again, it’s fine if you’re in the system. I more recently have been a consultant, and then you’re really on your own. And I think that’s something that’s really tough in terms of freelance journalists. Organisations like the Rory Peck Trust in the UK. There’s an incredible psychiatrist based very close to where I live here in Toronto, actually a doctor at Professor Anthony Feinstein, who’s done a lot of research on journalists and trauma.

Crispin Thorold [00:37:36]:

And he, with an organisation called Myriad, provides short-term therapy for journalists based in war zones or covering war zones. Rory Peck also do that. But I mean, both of them, probably because of funding issues, are short-term. And, as you know, if you are exposed to some of these traumatic incidents over an extended period, it can take a long time to work through it. And then as a consultant, I’m a member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, and they do have a mental health helpline. And again, they support you. But I was lucky that I’ve always, my wife has had medical insurance, and that’s been able to kind of support me when I’ve needed to access it. But a lot of people don’t have that privilege.

Crispin Thorold [00:38:23]:

And so, you know, they are getting better, but as fewer people have staff jobs, as these industries are really struggling, then there’s just fewer resources. Psychologists and psychotherapists cost a lot of money. I mean, they have to do a lot of training. There’s a reason they cost a lot of money, but they do cost a lot of money. And one of the things I’m looking at as I think ahead to my future practice is, you know, how can I build a practice where maybe some of my clients are subsidising other clients who can’t afford it. And I know there are a lot of psychologists who think like that, but it’s a structural problem. It’s much easier to get access to these resources if you have money. Simple, you know.

David Jones [00:39:05]:

I can see that. I suppose one of the things you’ll be doing and indeed talking about during your training is supervision, which of course is built into the practice, the work practice for psychologists and psychotherapists. And I suppose what you’re saying is there isn’t that kind of recognition of a need, generally speaking, in the field because the money issue, which is quite often raised, because you could argue, well, that need just needs to be met.

Crispin Thorold [00:39:36]:

Yeah, absolutely. No, I mean, I completely agree with that. And certainly an evangelist for everyone. I personally even feel, all of us in life have challenges, sometimes extraordinary, sometimes small. And even the strongest people, I think, can benefit from having the outlet. It doesn’t have to be every week. It doesn’t have to be every month. You know, it might even just be every quarter, but having an outlet of someone who is neutral, who’s trained, who you can just go to and check in with and say, well, this is really bothering me.

Crispin Thorold [00:40:14]:

We’ve all got room for growth and we’re all going to face challenges, whether it’s illness or family bereavement or financial issues or whatever it is, you know, we all face those challenges in life. And so I’m a real believer that if you can, why not have that outlet? It’s a bit like I was going to get visual, I always think of a pressure cooker, you know, the pressure is just building up within us and we all need a release and exercise and all these other kind of wellness things you can do, that help give you that release will give your brain a bit of a release too.

Naomi Murphy [00:40:51]:

I was thinking as you were talking, Crispin, I was reminded of working in a prison and making supervision a compulsory part of being a prison officer in the service that we ran, because that took away the need to highlight vulnerability in going for supervision because there was an expectation that everyone had to have it, which I think can make it a lot easier then for people to accept it as a normal part of practice. And really, it does seem like a cost that ought to be a non-cost for a journalist, really, if you’re touching on quite tragic events.

Crispin Thorold [00:41:22]:

Yeah, I mean, how journalists would respond to that’s a whole other question, because, there’s still definitely a degree of bravado to the business. And again, I’m not just talking about the foreign correspondence unit. You name it, whatever, like, from the local reporter across to completely, you know, people covering really traumatic stories in different contexts. And I wouldn’t be against that, you know, in any shape or form. I mean, I think one of the really interesting things I found with my training at the moment is everybody does as they’re training to do this work. It’s throwing up things for me that I’m sort of like, oh, hello, old friend. I didn’t know you were still around. And I’m very grateful that the supervision is, I mean, I think it’s essential, but you know, that supervision is built into being a therapist and a psychologist and that you have that opportunity community to both look at your own transference, the countertransference, and also to almost like kind of a mentor, you know, someone who can just say, well, this has come up in a therapeutic setting, what does it mean, how do I deal with this, just someone you can kind of lean into.

Crispin Thorold [00:42:29]:

So yeah, I’d be in favour, whether, you know, some of my former colleagues and my friends who are still in the business would agree or not, you’d have to ask them, but yeah, I’m a convert.

Naomi Murphy [00:42:40]:

Yeah, I’m conscious of the time, Crispin, and we’ve just got a couple of questions I think feel really topical to put to you actually is that a lot of people have been switching off the news. You know, I think there was a reduction in people watching the news when the pandemic began in 2020, but especially in the last 2 years since October 7th, it seems as though it’s become harder and harder for people to watch the news. Can you relate this?

Crispin Thorold [00:43:05]:

Yeah, definitely. We’ve talked about this previously Naomi. During the pandemic, I discovered this guy called Rolf Dobelli. I bought his book because I was wanting to give him a shout out. So Stop Reading the News. And he’s interesting. I mean, it’s a really, I won’t go on about it for too long, but it’s a really kind of interesting backstory that he was called into The Guardian in 2013, but I think it was by Alan Rusbridger, then the editor of The Guardian, to give journalists a talk there. And he was meant to be talking about some of his former research.

Crispin Thorold [00:43:40]:

And then he decided that he wanted to talk to them about his passion about what was wrong with the news. And within a few hours of him giving that talk to all these kind of leading lights at The Guardian, an extract of his speech was up on the website. Still, I checked this morning, actually, it’s still up on the website. So if you look up ‘stop reading the news,’ The Guardian, Rolf Dobelli, you can read it. But essentially, his argument is and I don’t buy all of it. I just like want to put that out there, but there’s elements of it that I think are very powerful, but that news is to the brain what sugar is to the body and that it’s a form of entertainment and it is built to give us hits. And, actually an awful lot of what we get from the news is not information that we necessarily need. And there’s a kind of societal pressure that we should be completely on top of every single development that’s going on, and that we have a kind of duty to understand what’s going on in the world.

Crispin Thorold [00:44:42]:

But actually, structurally, news isn’t necessarily setting us up for success. I mean, he talks, I think, quite compellingly about confirmation bias and the fact that, very well-established bias that we all seek out information that confirms our own view. I mean, since he first came out with his theory or his arguments, there’s been the development of these algorithms and we’ve seen like in real time what impact they’re having on our societies. I mean, here, like especially in the States, in North America, but you know, just as much in the UK at the moment. Yeah, we’re seeking out, these algorithms are feeding us material that we agree with ever more. Extreme materials to kind of again set off that process within our brain and it’s massively unhealthy.

Crispin Thorold [00:45:38]:

And his argument is, well, he argues that you completely abstain from the news. If you find that too difficult, then perhaps you try and get yourself out of the daily news cycle and maybe read a weekly publication. I tried this for a while and I read The Economist for a while. I tried to completely abstain. I have to say, since I worked for the special rapporteur, I had to engage with the news again. So my very good practices of 2, 3 years kind of fell apart a bit. And at the moment, I’m trying again to reduce my news intake. And it’s not about not being engaged with the world, but rather engaging in it in a more thoughtful way that’s less about what’s the immediate development that there’s been and instead thinking, well, I should know about this, or I want to know about this.

Crispin Thorold [00:46:32]:

How can I read more deeply? You know, kind of examples of things I did was to read things like the international, I was still interested in conflicts. I would read an International Crisis Group report, or I’m a member of Chatham House, I would read kind of papers about, political situations which were much more reflective, much more analytical. But actually gave me a lot more information than the latest kind of thing that happens. Give up the rest is politics and start listening to the rest is history or the rest is science. I think more carefully about how we give up our time to the information ecosystem and what do we want to take from it. Doing that over a period of time, what I noticed was that I felt a lot better informed. The reality is if there’s something major happening, you’re going to find it out. I felt much better informed.

Crispin Thorold [00:47:30]:

I felt a lot less anxious. I was able to understand that there’s actually very little I can do about a lot of the things that are in the news. Yes, I have a duty to, as a good citizen, to understand what’s going on, but actually there are other ways of getting that understanding. So yeah, I would recommend, check this out. It’s a really short little book. There’s also kind of podcast versions of it around. If anything, even if you keep up with your same news practices, it will make you think about the way the news is packaged and the information you’re receiving and why you receive it and the way you receive it. And then at least you can come at it as a more critical consumer, especially as our kind of media ecosystem gets like more and more fragmented and more and more complicated.

Naomi Murphy [00:48:24]:

That’s such good timing to have you on this podcast, actually, Crispin, given the release of some of the Epstein files a couple of weeks ago. So actually some really good advice there to follow, and certainly I’m planning to read that book, stop reading the news myself after your recommendation. So really appreciate you coming on and sharing your experiences with us. Thank you so much.