Could combat stress affect journalists' news reporting? A psychophysiological response

Covering war conflicts may compromise the psychological and physical health of journalists because chronic exposure to these environments has been related to depression, memory dissociative processes, and post-traumatic stress disorder; however, acute effects have not been studied yet. Thus, a combat simulation was carried out replicating actual warfare scenarios, including personnel and equipment. Psychophysiological response, memory, and information-processing were analysed of 40 professional soldiers (21 males and 19 females) and 19 journalists (12 males and 7 females) with international experience in current conflict areas such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo, in relation to their experience of a combat intervention. A significant increase (p < 0.05) in metabolic, muscular, cardiovascular, and cortical and psychological anxiety response, as well as a decrease in memory accuracy directly after and 24 h and 72 h post-combat were found; these modifications were modulated by the nature of the stimulus. Journalists presented higher cognitive and memory impairment than soldiers, resulting in a press reporting of real events accuracy of only 27%.

• Autores: Tornero-Aguilera, José Francisco; Robles-Pérez, José Juan; Clemente-Suárez, Vicente Javier
• Tipo de recurso: Article of journal
• Fecha de publicación: 2020
• Institución: Corporación Universidad de la Costa
• Repositorio: REDICUC - Repositorio CUC
• Idioma: eng
• OAI Identifier: oai:repositorio.cuc.edu.co:11323/7805
• Acceso en línea: https://hdl.handle.net/11323/7805; https://repositorio.cuc.edu.co/
• Palabra clave: Anxiety; Cortical arousal; Embedded journalism; Soldiers; Stress
• Rights: openAccess
• License: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International