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“Journalists [are] leaving the profession. … And really for the first time, high-profile journalists, or let’s just say seasoned journalists, [are] making public statements about why they needed to leave the profession — because of burnout and overwhelm,” Brice said.
If journalists cannot sustain the relentless emotional and physical toll of this career-long marathon, they leave the profession — and an unobserved society is a dangerous one.
The Institute spoke to Brice about the mental strain facing journalists today, and why journalists need to begin to think about mental health as a core safety and press freedom issue.
The myth of the “super-journalist”
The COVID-19 pandemic acted as the ultimate “burning platform” that forced seasoned journalists to publicly speak up about burnout. But the underlying issues have been festering for over a decade, Brice said.
Brice noted that financial cutbacks over the last decade across the media sector have created an unsustainable math problem, where “fewer people are being asked to produce the same amount of work” as the more well-staffed newsrooms of the past. This shrinking workforce has collided directly with an unyielding, instantaneous digital landscape.
“I’ll never forget coaching two high-level investigative journalists and how heartbroken they were because they really did not know how they could continue on the job,” Brice recalled. “And while some of it had to do with certain tendencies that they had in coping with the pressures of the work, it also had very much to do with systemic issues within the media sector and the work culture.”
Journalists often feel like they have to be always on, partly because of personal drive and partly because managers often communicate without acknowledging boundaries, she said. Messages are sometimes sent at all hours of the night with zero regard for shifts, treating the individual’s life as a permanent, uninterrupted extension of the newsroom.
“Of course there’s a 24-hour news cycle,” Brice said. “But does that mean that one has to be on 24/7?”
In her work with media professionals, Brice observed that journalists are driven by a deep sense of mission. She compared them with societal first responders like emergency room workers or firefighters.
However, Brice warned, this deep passion can also blind reporters to their physical and mental limits. “Journalists join this profession because, for whatever reason, they love to be in the thick of things, on the edge of breaking important stories that affect our society or their country. They are frontline people. So there’s this attraction to that and the adrenaline.”
Journalists are traditionally expected to be supermen and superwomen, Brice continued, and many actively reject the “victim” label that can come with acknowledging mental health challenges. Because journalists are trained to interview and validate the suffering of others, they consequently invalidate their own distress.
“Getting ill in some way or your body or mind being in distress is seen as a weakness, while it’s a given. There is just so much any body and mind can sustain,” she said.
The continuous processing of traumatic material, reviewing graphic video, and writing copy on systemic tragedies can also expose desk-bound journalists to vicarious trauma, further impacting their mental health.
Reversing the pyramid: Management’s responsibility
When The Self-Investigation trains journalists working in dangerous environments, including war zones, countries with little rule of law, and regions of active political persecution, the patterns of distress don’t look the way most people expect.
“You’d think the biggest challenge would be the stories they’re covering, the conditions in the field,” she said. “But most often, it’s not. It has to do with a poor manager who doesn’t know how to manage or with uncertainty in the profession.”
Brice was empathetic toward managers because, in her words, middle managers are trapped in a “high-stress sandwich” – facing corporate directives from executives above and acute emotional needs from staff below.
But in her experience, when managers are forced to choose between prioritizing breaking content and people management, content almost always wins.
To address this, Brice insists on a top-down structural shift where media executives treat mental health as an active operational pillar. She advocates for simple, low-cost interventions that fundamentally preserve human infrastructure, such as implementing regular, non-punitive one-on-one check-ins, training managers to recognize symptoms of distress, and establishing clear off-hour communication boundaries.
Ensuring journalist safety requires shifting from what Brice identifies as a culture of perpetual self-sacrifice to a culture of sustainable self-investigation – respecting the human beings behind the work before there are no journalists left to tell the stories.
When journalists leave the profession because their institutions failed to protect their psychological well-being, the public loses the reporters whose job it is to inform them.
“Without the role that the media plays in terms of being a check and balance in our system, any country — including this one — would reach a very dangerous place where there’s no observer analyzing from a factual perspective,” Brice said.
Key mental health advice for journalists:
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Listen to trusted external cues: When you reach the point of severe denial, the most accurate warning sign comes from the people who care about you. If loved ones point out that you are not okay, it is time to seek a primary doctor, therapist, or specialized coach.
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De-escalate the “superperson” myth: Recognize that your body and mind have biological limits for processing highly charged stimuli. Individuals should deliberately practice self-awareness by listening to physical signals such as mental fatigue.
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Lean on peer support networks: Actively maintain connections with trusted colleagues. Sharing when you are not okay can help break feelings of isolation and reduce professional stigma around mental health. Formalize peer-to-peer setups within newsrooms to provide safe, confidential spaces where journalists can speak openly about their struggles.
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Move beyond just “taking time off”: Vacations alone rarely fix deep depletion; journalists often spend their time off stressing about their return. True recovery requires a deeper “reset” – a hard self-reflection to align how you work and live with your core personal values.
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