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Leona O'Neill - Breaking: Trauma in the Newsroom
118 Plays2 years ago
In this episode, I sit down with the accomplished Leona O'Neill, the head of journalism at Ulster University, to discuss her journey from growing up in Belfast to the co-editor and author of Breaking: Trauma in the Newsroom to her current role as a mentor to the next generation of journalists. Leona shares how witnessing the death of journalist Lyra McKee triggered a trauma response and how ultimately, this led to her personal experience of post-traumatic growth. We delve into her journey of healing, from the adrenaline of chasing stories to being stalked in a coffee shop, and how she found the strength to thrive and turn her experiences into an opportunity for growth. Join us for an inspiring conversation about trauma, resilience, and the power of storytelling.
You can find Leona on Twitter @LeonaONeill1 and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/leona.oneill.
Resources
Book
Breaking: Trauma in the Newsroom
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Breaking-Trauma-Newsroom-Chris-Lindsay/dp/1908518693/ref=sr_1_1?qid=1679691122&refinements=p_27%3ALeona+O%27Neill&s=books&sr=1-1&text=Leona+O%27Neill
Podcast:
ttps://open.spotify.com/show/57OcVIR937679O0tuYcnsa?si=ade5eee1007342a2
https://headlines-network.com/
Ted Talk
https://www.ted.com/tedx/events/49816
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Advocacy
00:00:00
Speaker
So welcome everybody to the next episode of the Troll and Heating Podcast. Today I have the pleasure of talking to journalist, lecturer and author, Leona O'Neill. Leona is a highly respected journalist, is known for her tenacity, her compassion, her ability to tell powerful stories that resonate with her over years.
00:00:19
Speaker
She has a deep commitment to social justice. She has used her platform as a journalist to shed light on the issues that matter most to the people of Northern Ireland over the course of her career. She has covered a wide range of topics, including politics, crime, health and education. She's particularly passionate about issues that affect the vulnerable. She's a tireless advocate for victims of domestic violence, sexual abuse and other forms of trauma.
00:00:46
Speaker
Leona has now become a passionate advocate for promoting safety in journalism and improving mental health within newsrooms. As now
Journey into Journalism
00:00:54
Speaker
head of undergraduates in Ulster University, Leona plays a crucial role in changing the future of journalism by educating and mentoring the next generation of journalists. Welcome, Leona. Thank you so much for coming along today. How are you doing? I'm doing great, Kula. Yeah, it's nearly Friday. Yeah, you're nearly there.
00:01:16
Speaker
It's not Monday and it's nearly Friday, so yeah, I'm doing good, yeah. Good, good. Okay, so for people listening that are interested and wanting to know how did you first get into journalism? What inspired you to pursue it as a career? I always wanted to be a journalist from where I was a little girl. I suppose my dad was very heavily involved in the civil rights movement here in Northern Ireland. He was a history teacher.
00:01:40
Speaker
and he had the funny thing of being in the history books that he was actually teaching from and so he was really involved and loved the news and news was constantly on in our house when we were growing up really heavily involved and you know what was happening always wanted to know what was happening we were growing up obviously in the troubles so the news at that time was on every six o'clock in the evening
00:02:03
Speaker
And it was usually really, really grim, but Dad would have sat in front of it and watched it and just absorbed every political show and all that type of stuff. And just remember watching
Curiosity and Influence
00:02:14
Speaker
it with him, just watching the news when we were growing up.
00:02:17
Speaker
And seeing the likes of Kate Aidy, you know, the reporter, the very famous English reporter, Kate Aidy, opened the bauxite, not that far from where we were, reporting from a war zone. And just thinking, gee, that just looks like a really exciting job. I love that. And a particular woman can do that job as well. Yeah, but you see it.
00:02:37
Speaker
Yeah, you can't be what you can't see, I suppose, is the same. So I really, I just, I just love that side of things, the excitement of it being right in the middle of the action. And that stayed, that hunger stayed with me. I was always very curious, always very nosy person, always wanted to hear what the, you know, what was happening. And I love taking things apart. You know, probably my dad, as I say, taught me, taught me that, you know, getting a set of facts and sort of putting them together and figuring out your own opinion of it, I suppose.
00:03:06
Speaker
And yeah, that stayed with me all through my teen years. And I suppose when you're growing up alongside the troubles and the news is happening on your doorstep every day of the week, and you want to figure out what's happening and who are the players in this situation. And that kind of fed on there as well. And I
Critical Thinking and Career
00:03:24
Speaker
suppose, yeah, that's really what it was. And that never left me. So I just, as soon as I could, I was way off to journalism school in Belfast and just getting out there and doing the job. And I just absolutely loved it. It was a career I absolutely loved.
00:03:36
Speaker
I imagine, you know, your description, you know, of your dad's taking in all the news and trying to get all the facts to get his own opinion on what was happening, because I imagine, you know, as it is today, you're told a lot of things, some are truths, some are half truths, some are just complete lies, depending on what your sources are. That I have this image of the conversations going back and forth, and you
00:04:01
Speaker
as this tiny kid, you know, being asked to critically assess things. And what a wonderful base that was then to go into journalism school. Yeah, 100%. I mean, my dad is going now about 12, 12 years, 13 years now. And we would have often even grown up in our house, you know, because my dad was so socially aware and aware of politics and aware of history. And it wasn't just we were not the type of family that could just sort of look away from things and
00:04:30
Speaker
That doesn't bother me or that's not on my doorstep, so I don't care about it. It would always make us think about...
00:04:35
Speaker
how things impacted people, how did this situation here impact on the people around it? Or even
Trauma in Journalism
00:04:41
Speaker
sort of, you know, sometimes when you were seeing stuff in the news as well and you're looking at really horrific kind of things that are happening, perhaps on the six o'clock news and they're just on your doorstep. And that would always say, look at the people who are helping, look at the people who are running towards it, look at the freelance workers and look at the many people that are helping. So critically thinking things, yeah, taking things apart 100% and putting things
00:05:05
Speaker
in their place in history context as well and putting context on things and not just getting one side of the story that always said that as well you know if there's a there's a conflict if there's a conflict even within the family and brothers and sisters fighting when they were kids or whatever get both sides who's nobody's in the right and in the wrong and try and find a resolution to that but yeah it was a really good it was a really good teacher it was a history teacher but he's also a really good teacher of us you know growing up a lot of lessons there that
00:05:34
Speaker
You know, I was still keep with me. It sounds like it was precious when you think about it now. Yeah. So, okay. So that stands to you then. So I wanted to ask you, so you've written a book in 2022, you co-edited a book breaking trauma in the newsroom, which featured accounts from some of the most respected journalists in the UK and Ireland. And in the book, you gave your own account as a journalist and your experiences of trauma in the industry.
00:06:00
Speaker
Now I've read the book and it really opened my eyes, actually you opened my eyes to, I didn't see journalism through the eyes of the journalist. I just saw it through the events that I was being told, if that makes sense. So can you tell me what has witnessing the news, how has it affected you?
00:06:22
Speaker
Yeah, so I wrote that book, I put that book together after I witnessed the murder of Blair McKee, so she's a journalist here from Northern Ireland. She was shot dead at a riot in 2019.
00:06:34
Speaker
I was there that night, I was covering the riot beforehand for the Belfast Holograph and I was standing beside her when she was shot dead. A Republican gunman just fired up the street towards us and towards police vehicles and just indiscriminately and I heard the bullets ripping past the air beside my head and I can still sometimes hear the noise that they made now.
00:06:58
Speaker
and she was hit and she fell and we tried to help her and fortunately she died and that was a really traumatic experience, two experience.
00:07:07
Speaker
And it stayed with me for a long time still. I don't think I'll ever, you know, get some of the images out of my head from that night. But afterwards, I was harassed by conspiracy theorists who said it was a false flag and local people who support the people who murdered her. And just it was a really, really horrific experience, the whole thing. And it really broke me. And that's probably why it's called breaking trauma in the newsroom. And yeah, so that
00:07:32
Speaker
But I've been to a lot of counseling since actually, and three and a half years after that incident, I still couldn't talk about it without getting upset. And I realized I went through CBT recently. Actually, it was really, really good. I went through it was there in November of last year.
00:07:50
Speaker
And it made me realise it wasn't just one incident that kind of tipped me over the edge. It was kind of, it was a culmination of, and I think I was talking to you as well, you know, about this sort of like this build up of layer. Allostatic load, it's called. It's what it's called? Allostatic load. It's where those, you know, it's death by a thousand paper cuts. Yeah. So it's a culmination of sort of traumatic stories and tragedies and all the things that I covered over the years that kind of just built up and they were never processed in the newsroom.
00:08:17
Speaker
And I realized I was just one of doing CBT that sort of, you know, that that that was what it was and it wasn't just the one sort of thing. And I find it fascinating this kind of marion of psychology and journalism together that I have done over the last couple of years, leaning on the, you know, experts like yourself and other people as well, it's really opened my eyes and you said it opened your eyes to kind of
00:08:40
Speaker
journalists kind of go through. It's really opened my eyes to what we did go through and that the newsroom's a really dysfunctional place. It doesn't lend itself very well to good mental health. So that's that's whole process of doing that book and bringing together I think there's 16 or 17 journalists in there, very well-known journalists in there talking about how they broke the news and the news broke them and the different things that are impacted on them and it's not war zones, it's not kind of
00:09:07
Speaker
big dramatic things that have happened. Sometimes it's just like a murder case or an inquest or a child's murder or something that just lands on them and sticks with them and just really just tears at their soul. Because we're only human beings, we're not robots journalists and sometimes I think journalists themselves think that they're robots are somehow superhuman and none of this stuff will land on them. So yeah, set me off on a bit of a path, I suppose. Yeah.
00:09:35
Speaker
So this path at the moment is the healing path, is it? Yeah, it definitely is. It's a healing path for me, I suppose. Excuse me, but I suppose I couldn't sleep for a long time. I had real problems sleeping. I know it was a trauma response. Now I didn't know what it was at the time. I just thought I had insomnia because I suppose when you're coming from a journalistic perspective,
00:09:57
Speaker
You long think there's a historic kind of thing that you think that nothing can touch you. All journals are the same.
Breaking the Silence on Mental Health
00:10:04
Speaker
All of them are the same. Nothing can touch you. It's a culture within the newsroom, it seems. Yeah. It's 100% a culture within newsrooms. Nothing can touch me. And if something does, there's something wrong with me. Or I'm too weak for this job, or I should get out of this job and do something else.
00:10:18
Speaker
And I really thought like that. I genuinely did. Even after seeing someone being murdered, I went to work the next day. I went to work the next day after seeing someone being murdered and I carried on for a year and I worked myself under the ground because I suppose whenever I stopped working and I tried to sleep, I, the images of that night would come back and haunt me, you know, and
00:10:41
Speaker
But I thought that's what you're supposed to do as a journalist. You're not supposed to let anything touch you. You're not supposed to let anything bother you. You're supposed to just keep going and keep going and keep going. And yeah, so I am on this journey now. And I suppose when you're in a newsroom, you can't sort of admit a lot of people find fear and admitting that there's something wrong with them. They think that if I say I was really impacted by this story, then someone will take me off that job and put me on to somewhere, you know, maybe sport or something else. See me as less.
00:11:10
Speaker
yeah seems less kind of traumatic and if that's your your job and what you're good at and stuff like that you don't want to be taken away from that so there's a there's a sort of multi-layered fear there and I'm out of the newsroom now I'm working in academia and I'm guiding new journalists into the field so I felt in a safe place firstly I felt in a safe place that I could actually talk about this without fear of losing my job or fear of being put on somewhere else or but also it's been a really learning curve for me because
00:11:38
Speaker
When I look back at some of the stories that I covered, really horrific stories. I mean, talking about, you know, ones where, you know, some Saturday, a family of five are killed in some kind of accident, children and everything. I'm covering that all
Balancing Empathy and Professionalism
00:11:53
Speaker
day and listening to the horrific details and the heroin reports of the eyewitnesses and the people that tried to save them or whatever. And then coming back to your house and trying to be normal, trying to be a normal,
00:12:05
Speaker
And you have this record telling you you're not supposed to feel anything about what you've just witnessed. It's such a human response to feel empathy, compassion, pain for another human having to go through that. And you're not supposed to feel that. You're supposed to, in one way, you're supposed to feel that because you want to be human and you have to tell a human story.
00:12:27
Speaker
But in other ways, you're not supposed to feel that, but it's such a confusing lesson, isn't it, Wunder? It's almost like you need to have a switch. It's like this bigot needs to be turned off. You've turned it on enough to tell the story and now you need to be able to turn it off. But that's just not how humans work. Not how humans work at all. And I do get the switching it on when you go out. What I used to do, if I left my doorstep and going to do a story, I would put the emotional barriers would go up and they would be protecting me from anything from landing on me. But I would make sure that I was
00:12:56
Speaker
human enough that I was able to tell that story. I let just the just a little bit in that I was able to tell that story but I think it's once over an interesting thing
00:13:05
Speaker
These days there have been certain cases in the news recently where journalists have been criticized for not being, for being cold, cruel, heartless. The headlines are heartless, the stories are heartless, all that kind of stuff. And when I look at it, I look at it from a journalistic perspective. This is the world over, not just here and in Ireland. But I look at it from a journalistic perspective. Those journals have probably shut down emotionally because they don't want any of that stuff.
00:13:29
Speaker
You have to, and particularly if they're covering a story that maybe lasts for 10 days, 20 days, three weeks, a month or whatever, and they're engrossed in that and they're consumed by that every single day in the details. It's very real. It's not
Coping with Trauma
00:13:43
Speaker
an abstract concept. I'm just thinking, you know, when you watch this movie or you read that book and it's really intense and it's
00:13:50
Speaker
you know, maybe psychologically messing with you. You get to put it down and it's a story, as in somebody has written a fiction or anything like that. But a journalist has to go through that process in a very real way, facing the very real people that have been hurt by it. Exactly. And then they have to leave that and go home and try and be a normal human being or go back into a newsroom, which is not supportive, which is not comforting environment, which is not, listen, that was an awful story you covered. Are you OK?
00:14:20
Speaker
It's on to the next story, on to the next one. The deadline for that one is two hours time you need to get on it. So it's a really, really damaging kind of dysfunctional
00:14:31
Speaker
world I suppose and I don't think people understand as you say you know you're leaning under these stories if journalists walk into these really harrowing incidents and they're absorbing all this grief from the bereaved and the bereft and and and they're also absorbing perhaps like abuse online or maybe there's hostility in person. And they have their own personal life by the way yeah anything that's happening in their life. And they're expected to just be these absolute
00:15:01
Speaker
immune from anything, superhuman machines, they are. And the people who are the worst at thinking that are journalists themselves. I thought that, I thought that myself. A week after seeing someone being murdered, I was at the funeral of the person that I saw murdered. And, you know, a month later, I was flat out at work. I didn't take, I didn't even take a day off. I couldn't sleep, couldn't sleep for a full year and I got up and went to work and I was the worst person at disregarding my own wellbeing.
00:15:32
Speaker
Because everybody, I suppose, in newsrooms disregards it in a way we're not worth something, we're not worth caring for. That's the way that it... One of the things that stuck out when I was reading your story in the book was you sitting in the car, you had come home and you were unable to get out of the car and go into the house. I find that, I don't know why, that was the heartbreaking moment for me because that's where had somebody been able to meet you, had
00:15:57
Speaker
not been able to get, you know, cracked through going, this is what just happened to you. It's okay to not go in the house or it's okay to not want to go into the house or feeling what you're feeling. You know, putting the context, as you say, around the story of what happened to you as the witness of what just happened. Not the journalist telling the story because in writing it, that's what you were doing. You were doing the phone interviews, I think it was.
00:16:23
Speaker
Yeah, I was sitting outside doing phone interviews, and that was the thing we were talking about there, the emotional barrier. I thought that emotional barrier would save me. It doesn't completely disintegrate it, but I thought I, you know, I was not only witnessing someone being murdered, as I said, I heard the bullets wasn't past my head. They were so close. I heard like, you know, whooshing past my head. I could have been happy with one of those as well. I could have, during my, doing my job, not come back to my children,
00:16:51
Speaker
And that really, and then going in and seeing them sleeping on their beds, knowing that maybe an hour or two beforehand, their lives could have just been completely destroyed because some idiot fired a gun up the street at a riot. And that really, I couldn't get out of the car. I didn't want to get out of reporter mode. In reporter mode? Yes.
00:17:12
Speaker
you're safe, nothing touches you. You're kind of just almost distant from the story. It doesn't, nothing lands on you. But in a case like that, I mean, I remember a story.
00:17:24
Speaker
Yeah, you're part of it, I suppose. But I remember I was filming bits and pieces of the riot and stuff like that. And before Lear was hit, I went out of reporter mode. I had my phone when I was filming an ambulance. I was talking to the ambulance. I had no thought of, I need to video this. I need to record this. I need to interview people. I went from reporter to human being. And if that was someone
Healing and Advocacy
00:17:46
Speaker
that I loved, I would want them to be helped. And it was that kind of confusing sort of thing. And in fact, afterwards,
00:17:54
Speaker
In the weeks afterwards, there was one very well-known reporter, a veteran reporter, I suppose, asked me, why didn't he film that? That was the best bit. That was news. And you really let the side down when I filmed that. And I just thought, oh, gosh. It was such a confusing time. But I remember being really hurt by that. I was just a human being helping another human being who was in bad shape.
00:18:21
Speaker
And of course I'm not going to film it. Of course I'm going to phone an ambulance and get them help. The story's not the most important thing there. The story's not the most important thing ever. Helping someone who's hurt is, you know, top priority. Yeah, it shows the protection there of I have to be that far removed from what's happening even in front of me.
00:18:40
Speaker
You can't be but, you can't be so far, maybe it's happening right in front of you.
Digital Challenges and Future Journalists
00:18:44
Speaker
It's just your human instincts kick in. For some people, they do. For other people, perhaps they don't, but that's not the type of person that I am. So yeah, it's a very weird world.
00:18:56
Speaker
It's an ongoing process. It's a difficult and ongoing process dealing with any trauma, no matter what happens to us in our lives. Can you share some of the ways that you have coped or what has helped you in processing your experiences?
00:19:11
Speaker
Yeah, to be honest with you, I didn't cope very well for the first year. Not well at all. All I did was I suppose I had PTSD and I didn't realize I had PTSD. But whenever I suppose some of the PTSD responses, when I looked them up, I just turned in their workaholic. I worked day and night, all weekend.
00:19:29
Speaker
any work coming up at all. I took it because I didn't want to sit and think about stuff. So I just didn't want to stop because when you stop, the images will come back. So some people lean on the drugs and alcohol and dangerous behavior, whatever. I just lengthened in my work and I just exhausted myself. I worked to the point of exhaustion because I couldn't sleep as well. And I just was in denial.
00:19:53
Speaker
You know, things can't impact on me. I'm a reporter. I've been a reporter 20 years. Things can't, you know, nothing's going to impact on me. So I kept going and I really was not well. I really had panic attacks every single day. My anxiety was absolutely through the roof to
Opportunities and Future Projects
00:20:09
Speaker
the point where I was hyperventilant in my car at times whenever I was going out to jobs.
00:20:13
Speaker
or I remember one particular time I was sitting in the car and there was something happening up the street and a police land drove past me with the sirens on, the same sirens that they'd heard that night.
00:20:27
Speaker
And I don't know what happened if I just started hyperventilating. It was just a trauma response. It just brought me straight back to that point. So I didn't handle it well at all. And then I suppose lockdown came and everything stopped and everything was quiet. And I had a sit with that. I had a sit with those images and I had awful, awful nightmares for about a year and a half.
00:20:49
Speaker
But I just had a sip of it during lockdown and I think it was that point that I thought this is not normal. This is not a normal thing that a person doesn't sleep for more than two hours a night or that a person wakes up 20 times a night gasping for breath thinking someone's going to kill them or that a person can't go out into even the supermarket without having a panic attack or thinking everybody means some harm. An actual fact that is a normal response.
00:21:13
Speaker
Well, it is a normal response when you've been traumatized, but I mean, I mean, I didn't. It's not an okay response to that. It's true on your own and without context again. Yeah. But then, so I sought help then. I just reached out and I found it very difficult to get help, actually, because obviously we're in the middle of a lockdown. There's more importance than people were doing. So I reached out to some journalism charities and I said, listen, I don't know.
00:21:40
Speaker
Do you deal with people who have dealt or have had these type of experiences? And one particular one got me set up with some counseling with a person who deans a lot with journalists who were in war zones and stuff like that. And she got me through just talking to her online. We're all still in lockdown talking to her, just talking, because I couldn't talk about it. Anybody that even brought it up to me in that year and a half, I couldn't even speak about it. I couldn't even look at that girl's face on the paper.
00:22:07
Speaker
Anything that came on the news, I switched to straight over. I didn't want anything at all. Even the word, even the girl's name, didn't want to see it or see her name or anything. And that's a terrible thing. It just hurt anytime that I saw her face or her name or anything like that.
00:22:24
Speaker
So talking about it, being able to talk about it, and to be honest, I cried an awful lot in those counseling sessions and I got, I suppose, crying as healing. That's the one thing that the people have kind of said. I had to deal with it a lot myself. You know, the doctors were not available, I suppose, for these type of things. It was isolated again. But I just, I leaned into yoga.
00:22:50
Speaker
I mean, I absolutely love yoga and I found that it really centered me. I looked things up, meditation, crystals. I wear crystals around my neck and they ground me. It's probably a lot of woo woo, but I kind of... Whatever works for you. Whatever works, exactly. And I talked to people, I talked to other journalists. And in fact, the book Break and Troll in the Newsroom, that really helped. I found a tribe of people.
00:23:18
Speaker
Yeah, they had a similar experience, not similar, but you know, in different sort of ways, but they had the similar pain and they had the similar kind of fear about talking about it. And they had a similar kind of fear about showing their vulnerabilities. And we all did it together. And I thought that was brilliant. I thought that really helped me in kind of just talking. And I think once I find my voice, I haven't shut up about it now, you know, the sort of the we need to help our journalists, we need to get better at this. Once I got my voice back because
00:23:49
Speaker
I suppose I, before this happened, I was the most confident person in the world and I totally, this incident and this experience, this whole experience totally destroyed me, destroyed my confidence in myself and just in life in general.
00:24:03
Speaker
and really broke me down to the various lowest levels that you could possibly be as a human being, I suppose. And there's only one way to go from rock bottom to top, and that's kind of, I've been climbing my way up ever since, but just talking, I think, is probably the most, the best advice. Talk to people because other people will probably have experiences not exactly the same, but similar to yours, and they might have ways to help. Talking, yoga, meditation,
00:24:31
Speaker
And just kids, my kids, and to do myself with beautiful, comforting things, comfortable things, familiar things, and sort of leaning on those kind of things. Going back into safety because it really was not safe at that time. What your experience was, was really, you know, it was life-threatening and our life was lost. So having to come back in your body, having to come back into that safety, needing to come back into that safety.
00:24:57
Speaker
Yeah and it was not only that but it was I was getting death threats too so that's it yeah in my home and so my home wasn't safe so there was no place of safety and then locked down in a house that is under threat from paramilitaries too it wasn't you know it just it wasn't fun times at all there was zero zero positive stuff that I could I could look back apart a little and to say that now because
00:25:22
Speaker
I suppose once something really terrible happens, you know, it makes you stronger, makes you more resilient. And at this stage, I suppose I'm made a titanium and I know that my family haven't got my back and we're all very strong together and we've all grown together through this as well because it was a nightmare trying to navigate through. But we did and that's made us what we are today. We're a very strong unit.
00:25:46
Speaker
OK, so then the question being, you know, do you believe that healing is possible? And if so, what does that look like for you? Because everybody is different. You know, hearing has to be your own. Yeah, I do think that healing is possible. I genuinely do. I don't think I would have been able to heal myself without the help of professionals, though. I genuinely don't think that. I know that and I think that it was a combination of me being ready to heal and them being willing to help me that really
00:26:17
Speaker
particularly this last six months or so doing CBT. I think that was just, that was life-changing for me, that CBT program.
00:26:25
Speaker
It made me kind of sit with my pain and the therapist sat with me through that entire process and it was really, really hard. But when I came out the other side of it, I felt like I genuinely feel like a different person. I feel like the person that was four years ago was that person and that whatever she was, journalist and what have you, I feel like a different person now. And I feel kind of like, not that this happened for a reason because it was an awful, awful experience, but I have healing.
00:26:55
Speaker
allowed me to say that I need to do something. I need to find some light in this horrible sort of darkness that I am kind of emerging from and use it as fuel to help other people and I think that's part of my healing. Healing for me and I don't know maybe it's just a type of person I am, wouldn't be me sitting doing yoga and just keeping it all to myself. If I have some kind of experience that I can use to help
00:27:20
Speaker
other people and help make the newsrooms better and help our journalists survive and thrive, then I want to do that and that will also aid my healing. Someone spoke to me about, I remember about maybe two years after that happened, about post-traumatic growth. I was in the throes of PTSD at that time and I thought there's
00:27:37
Speaker
because he said to me, remember, I can see the shits of post-traumatic growth with you. And I thought, no, you can't meet, no, you absolutely, there's nothing group with me at the moment. It's all kind of, you know, it's all still very consuming and I could very, very rarely see the positive side of life. But he said, no, I can see, I can see some of those things happen. And it was because I was talking about the book and I wanted to make things better for other people and I wanted to share stories and get other people to talk.
00:28:06
Speaker
But I just thought, that's helping me. And I didn't realise it would be helping other people as well. Yeah. And so the post-traumatic growth, I can definitely see that now. I can definitely see that in myself now. And I've emerged from this nightmare, I suppose, a stronger person and someone who will never have their voice taken away again by people or broken down by people. And I'm going to fight other people's corner as well. And even if they don't want me to fight their corner because people keep saying like, you know,
00:28:36
Speaker
you keep going on about mental health in newsrooms and you're going to create snowflakes and stuff and I think I don't care what you say, perhaps you're not in a good place yourself to kind of recognise that it's quite a dysfunctional
00:28:49
Speaker
environment, but I'm going to just play on here myself and make it better. It's because you understand it. It's because you know what trauma is, and we all know what trauma is to a certain extent, but your understanding goes to that deeper level. You have an experience with your years of experience as a journalist, you know what's happening within the culture of it.
00:29:11
Speaker
And now as the course director for undergraduates for university, how has your perception changed of trauma over like the last four years? So like that, as you say, post-traumatic growth, but from the start of not wanting to stop to now, actually, I have few to make a difference.
00:29:31
Speaker
Yeah, I'm responsible for a lot of students. I'm responsible. They look to me for guidance. They look to me for, they look at what I'm doing. And I suppose with regards to trauma, and I know the environment that those folks are going on to, and it can be tough. And some of the stories they're going to be covering will be tough. And the support perhaps will not be there because they're going to sort of places of work that I perhaps worked on myself.
00:29:59
Speaker
So I know that I have to make things better for them, but I know as well that they're looking at me about how I behave. And if I was, if I had the fact that I struggled with something, that I wasn't human and that something traumatic happened and it didn't affect me at all, I'm absolutely fine, then they would feel fear about maybe saying something impacted on me or something landed on me or whatever. So I have to be very careful about how I behave. And I say to them in classes, we do classes on resilience.
00:30:29
Speaker
I said to them, I had terrible anxiety, awful anxiety, I had panic attacks, I had insomnia. They look at me as this person who, well, I hope they do, you know what I mean? And has it all together. This comes to class and does their class.
00:30:41
Speaker
And I'm a professional person. I'm the head of the department and I've got it, you know, I've got it mostly together. But also on the side, I also have, you know, there's a human piece. Yeah, there's a human element there. And I've also got sometimes my anxiety, anxiety flares up. And while I'm, you know, still
00:31:01
Speaker
teaching and whatnot or sometimes things trigger me or sometimes when there's things happen in the court case and it really just sort of winds me back. Sometimes I have insomnia, I come into class and I'm yawning a bit or whatever. I want them to know that don't let people dehumanize journalists. Don't let people disregard journalists. You're just as worthy of sympathy and care and support as any other profession, any other person.
00:31:29
Speaker
We're in this era of still the Trump era of journalists or the enemy of the people or fake news or liars, all that type of thing on social media. I don't want my journalists to think that they're like that. They believe that narrative. They need to know if they're traumatized by something, there needs to be some help there. And that's what I want to do. I want to put that help in place. I want to put a tribe in place also that they feel that it's perfectly normal and
00:31:59
Speaker
perfectly normal and okay to talk about how things impact on you. I don't want them to go into an environment where
00:32:06
Speaker
There's a lot of old school journalists there saying that, no, if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen or stop creating snowflakes or you're a snowflake, go and do something else if you can't handle this, because that's what some people, that's what people have said to me. And that's what people will say to young journalists as well. I can hear it being said, you know, it's not beyond the realms at all. So what steps can the newsrooms take? So anybody that's in a position, you know, how can they support the mental health of their reporters?
00:32:34
Speaker
Some of them do at the moment and they have mental health first aiders there. The problem with that is that it's still in the newsroom environment.
00:32:42
Speaker
And people are fearful of going to those, you know, people within the news organization because they think it might be fed back to their editor or they just don't trust it. That's the feedback I'm getting from people. So there needs to be something outside of the newsroom that people can go on to confidentially. And I think the most important thing is that people know that there's support there, that people, even if it's not used, that people, the newsrooms have, okay, there's this, if there's a critical incident, like for example,
00:33:10
Speaker
A few months back, there was an awful incident in Donegal where the gas explosion happened. So a lot of our folks would have went down to that and covered that. It was a hugely traumatic incident. And they were there for 10 days covering it. And that was really, really consuming. And there were sometimes there were two funerals a day. And it was just it was really horrific for the people who were there in the village, obviously as well, but also horrific for the journalists who were covering it. And some of the people
00:33:39
Speaker
went back to their workplace and they didn't even so much as get an email to ask if they were okay. Sometimes that's the only thing that would help you. I see you, Peace. You know, you did something really hard today. I see you doing your job well done, but that must have been so hard. Yeah, they didn't, you know, a lot of them that I spoke to didn't get that. They didn't get an email. They didn't get, they didn't even get sort of, you know, if you need any help, then, you know, I'll point you in the direction of something. A lot of them, a lot of them didn't.
00:34:09
Speaker
Perhaps some newsrooms did, but a lot of the people that I spoke to didn't have that. So it's just simple things like that, but also being trauma aware. You know, we're seeing our journalists under these environments, heroin stories, court cases and murder cases and all those type of things. And we expect them to come out completely unscathed and just get on to the next story. You know, there needs to be some processes there that people can go to somewhere.
00:34:34
Speaker
someone within the newsroom or outside the newsroom and talk to them, process that stuff, debrief the way they do.
00:34:41
Speaker
you know, the ambulance service and stuff like that. Obviously, we're not dealing with, you know, car crashes and trying to help people stay alive and stuff like that. But we're dealing with the second line that we're going on there and dealing with the emotional stuff and the grief and the trauma and the anguish and the hate and the drill. It's not a hierarchy to trauma as well, by the way. No, I don't. You know, even that piece, we're not seeing it as much as maybe first responders. You know, a thing that affects me or you will not affect, you know, five other people.
00:35:09
Speaker
and I think that affects them will not affect us. Whatever it is, it is. That's the part of trauma. It doesn't discriminate, it doesn't care what your job is, it doesn't care what your title or your age or your gender, any of that. If you witness something hard as a human, you will feel it and sometimes we never know what the event or the experience is going to be that stays with us.
00:35:34
Speaker
It's okay, but it does. It's such a, there is this such a belief of, you know, and I think you said it earlier as well, you know, I think I said you're part of the story as well. It's your story as well. I said, well, at least I'm part of it. You were moving yourself up. It's such an experience for you. Yeah.
00:35:52
Speaker
No, this is true. And that comes again. We're not as bad as them. That comes from disregard of ourselves as journalists. And we are really good at that. We are really good at disregarding. And that has been said to me while I was putting out this book about people being traumatized by things. Well, it's not as if you're an ambulance driver. It's not as if you're a fireman or whatever fire officer. And it's kind of like we're totally disregarded. And that's
00:36:19
Speaker
That's a thing that we need to stop doing in newsrooms. We need the newsrooms to be trauma aware from the top, down, bosses need to put in place measures to support journalists. And they would be fearful of that because they'll take journalists off jobs or, you know, it's very fast paced in newsrooms. Things have to be turned around very quickly. So perhaps there's no time to deal with those type of things. But then that damages our journalists and then they go off on the sick or they burn out or whatever. But also from the bottom up,
00:36:49
Speaker
journalists need to also realise that the stuff that they're dealing with can be damaged and maybe they don't realise it, they don't realise maybe their anxiety or their tendency to drink two bottles of wine a night or their addiction, they protect prescription drugs or things that are trauma responses, they don't realise perhaps that. So it's not educating because that sounds patronising, but it's kind of letting them know that this stuff can unpack you and here's how you deal with it.
00:37:17
Speaker
So I'm developing alongside two clinical psychologists as well, a newsroom program that will take in all of that and kind of do some training with them and then put in place almost like a triage system if something big happens.
00:37:31
Speaker
then you go to this person and it's very well signposted because I remember at the time when I was having difficult days, I had a go and search on the internet for someone who could help and I put out calls on Twitter, nobody knew who could help or there just wasn't anybody available. While I was on my darkest hour, I was going, who can help me with this? And you're not thinking there, you're not running on all cylinders to be able to, you know,
00:37:56
Speaker
check all of these things out and know what is the right thing for you. So having that signposting would be amazing.
00:38:03
Speaker
Yeah, so signposting two things, but also just the rhetoric that we use as well and the narrative of, I don't know, I just think that sometimes editors need to speak to their journals. Are you OK? That was a tough story. Do you need to chat? Do you want a cup of coffee? I mean, it's sometimes as simple as that. Instead of write you to the story, go and do another one, there's another traumatic story for you to kind of rub away at your soul with.
00:38:33
Speaker
Sometimes it's just that, but it's a whole process. But changing the mindset, firstly, of the newsroom is important. And, you know, I'm getting a lot of pushback about that because historically, this is the way newsrooms have been forever. That does not mean that they're right. They're still really dysfunctional places. And just because they've always been dysfunctional places doesn't mean that they need to keep being dysfunctional places because that's how it works. We need to change the mindset that we're superhuman, nothing can unpack this.
00:39:01
Speaker
And if it does impact on us, your week, go on doing our job. Is that getting worse in the digital age where, you know, story after story just comes in, you know, there is no 24 hour news cycle just doesn't exist. It's just constant now. Do you know what I mean? It's just story after story, it breaks no matter what. So you go on Twitter at 2am and there's another story breaking.
00:39:21
Speaker
Like what you're talking about there is that vicarious trauma, vicarious trauma is that witnessing trauma after trauma, witnessing others pay, it does have an effect, you know, it lands, it's a real thing. So what do you think is the impact of the digital media age journalists and readers? Because like us as readers are also taking in some of this, it can maybe triggering some of our own trauma that we may not realize.
00:39:48
Speaker
This is true. Digital journalism, 24 hour cycle of news now, and it's just one thing after the other. After the other has to be the biggest news that gets the biggest hits and it's pulling people in, pulling the public in as well. It's relentless. It's a relentless grim conveyor belt of doom at times.
00:40:06
Speaker
And the digital age has made that even worse because when you think about, like when I first started out, we had, I don't think the internet was even invented. That's how old I am. But when you think about it, so you would build up the paper. I worked on a weekly paper, you build up the paper and it went out on a Thursday and that was it. And then you maybe have a couple of quiet days and you build it up again now.
00:40:24
Speaker
stories old, five minutes after it's gone online and you're seeking out the next one, you're going out to stories, perhaps something has happened. So you're trying to seek out sources, you're trying to seek out eyewitnesses, nonstop, you're shooting videos, you're shooting photographs, you're constantly... And you're doing it now, aren't you? There's not a team that goes with you. So like the intervention of the iPhone, you're now...
00:40:45
Speaker
editor on the run and cameraman and all of that sort of stuff. You're doing it all then. Yeah, you're doing it all. You're a multi-platform journalist, and that's expected of you. So you're going to do something often alone. Perhaps you're covering a rally, which is maybe either there's maybe it's an anti-vaccine rally or something like that, and they're hostile towards journalists, and you're out there by yourself. But you know, dealing with something maybe that's a hostile environment is quite traumatic. Yeah, so you're on your own. It's
00:41:12
Speaker
And you're always needing to be first. So as well as all the different sort of trauma that you're dealing with there, the emphasis on being first with the story. So your pressure is to get the most up-to-date information and get it out there very quickly. So there's so many new pressures on journalists these days that weren't when I was just starting out. And as well as that, there's added dimension of the online abuse. You're doing stories perhaps that are covering controversial subjects. You put it online.
00:41:39
Speaker
emphasis in newsrooms is to share that story as many times from your own digital platforms as well. That brings in a whole host of crazy people who will say anything and tell, you know, and say everything about you and criticise you and disregard you and kind of try and bring you in the distributing stuff like that. It's just an absolute minefield. So that brings a whole new dimension to it as well.
00:42:05
Speaker
And now I'm thinking, as teaching the next generation, what's the biggest challenge you're facing right now?
00:42:14
Speaker
Yeah, I suppose, oh, there's a lot of different challenges, I suppose, when you're teaching in the next generation to go into the field, but just preparing them for it because it's an environment like no other. It really, really is. And I think that online abuse is a really big thing that you have to sort of prepare them for. I don't think that they realise that, you know, for example, if you're working in Northern Ireland and you go out and you cover an orange march on any given July day,
00:42:38
Speaker
you'll get a whole tsunami of abuse about that and you'll be called all the names onto the sun and the next week you'll be out covering perhaps a distant Republican rally and all the people from the people who don't like that side of things will be on criticising you and saying that you're promoting this and you're promoting that and it's a side that a lot of people
00:43:00
Speaker
take a while to get used to, take a while to harden up to. And you shouldn't have to toughen up those type of things, but you do. And I think that's one of the, the hostility and the harassment is one of the biggest things. Like put aside, you know, the stuff that you have to learn, the media law, the shorthand, the public affairs, and knowing everything about every single subject, the finding your sources, you know, navigating the deadlines in your newsroom and
00:43:26
Speaker
the fast pace of getting stuff out there. All of that stuff dealing with traumatic stories, dealing with the adrenaline of all of that adrenaline, surviving on coffee, just all that type of stuff. It's not fantastic for a regulating nervous system.
00:43:43
Speaker
And then you also have this online kind of thing that's an added dimension of stress just, and I think that's one of the hardest things that they'll take to get used to. It's probably still something that's been figured out because while I'm not in that field, just reading about it and hearing about it, it's
00:44:02
Speaker
evolving to like this doxing stuff, which I'm only still getting my head around. And I'm sure you've actually probably experienced that. But the ways of getting at a person is evolving. And this is evolving on the online platforms, you know, as well. So
00:44:21
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. It's a whole new world, I suppose, the online, but, you know, I've never docked in, I suppose, it's more of an American thing. And I do know people who that has happened to, where they find out people's addresses and stuff. And yeah, it's not, it's not, well, I mean, I suppose that has happened to me and to other people as well. And people can
00:44:40
Speaker
Get information from me online. And I've told my students this as well. I don't put any photographs of my kids online. I don't put photographs of where I'm at online. If I'm, you know, wherever you're an ordinary citizen and you go out to a restaurant or whatever and you maybe share a picture of your dinner and you post wherever you're at, I wouldn't do that because you don't know whose favour you're not in this week for because of a story that you've written.
00:45:05
Speaker
or who means you harm or who hates journalists or who's nearby that you know that maybe you've written a court story about sometime when they don't like it or so I would always make sure that from the get-go from when they're in journalism school with me that they're conscious of their safety the entire way through not only their physical safety but their their mental well-being as well but yeah it's it's it's tough going and it's a whole keyboard warriors are just they give journalists such a hard time particularly female journalists
00:45:34
Speaker
seem to attack female journalists more than male counterparts. And I've been at the rough end of that a couple of times. I remember one time, it's not Dachshund, but I remember during that whole Leir McKee conspiracy theory thing, someone posted a photograph of me. Someone sent me a photograph of myself in a coffee shop by myself to tell me how close he was able to get to me. And I thought that, you know, I was sitting with my back down and he took a picture from behind.
00:46:02
Speaker
And, and that really, that's frightening. My friend, Trish Devlin, she was sent a horrible message. They say that she went to her grandmother's house. She had just had a baby. She just had a baby boy. She went to her grandmother's house that they would, they would rape the baby. You know, it's, it's horrible. That type of, that level of abuse that you don't even think, you know, I know that I say things to my students and they think that's not going to happen to me, but sometimes it can. It's a very real thing. It's a very real thing.
00:46:30
Speaker
And so I try and prepare them for that. And it's probably one of the nastier sides of the job in this modern era. What are the good sides? Because there's a lot of disruption to the nervousness. You've written some great stories and shed some light on issues that maybe would not have been heard about. So there's that side of it too. There's an altruistic side of it. Would that be fair?
00:46:59
Speaker
There's a really good side to journalism. It's a brilliant job. I mean, it makes you feel so alive when you're doing it. It's fantastic. And most of the job is very positive. You know, I've done stories with people who perhaps were trying to raise money for a child who needed treatment in Germany or whatever. And I've written the story and they needed £30,000 and they've
00:47:20
Speaker
raised it within half an hour of the story going on. And that's helped that child or I've done stories. You can really make a difference as a journalist. I've done stories about people needing cancer drugs that were available in England, weren't available here, put pressure on the government and the drugs available here, which prolong people's lives. You know, all that type of thing. You shine a light in dark places. You can give a voice to the voiceless. You can really make a difference in your city, in your community, in your country and in the world with journalism as well.
00:47:47
Speaker
you can hold people to account, you can hold people in power to account. It's all good. Also, you get talking to politicians and presidents and pop stars and, and the places you go to is not, you know, you get to go everywhere. I don't think I've ever, I don't think I've ever bought a ticket for a concert. I always got press passes or going to it for the press pass. You can get to witness history and fold before your very eyes and not many people get to do that. It's a really,
00:48:17
Speaker
special, interesting, vibrant, lively, exciting job that is like no other. I wanted to continue like that. I want our journalists to be able to survive and thrive in this environment and not burn out with the stuff that may be
00:48:34
Speaker
times well at the end, it's not so great. I would like them to be, enjoy it and really love this job. It sounds like you're trying to safeguard it rather than, you know, as you say, you're just making them into snowflakes. You're actually safeguarding quite people. Yeah, 100%. Definitely. That's what I want to do. I don't want people to burn out. And I know people that have alcohol problems and drug problems. I know people have taken their own lives. I know people who
00:49:00
Speaker
have really bad mental health. I know people who have had breakdowns. It doesn't have to be that way. It doesn't, it only takes a wee bit of support and people are, you know, you can't wear people down with stuff and just sit back and just say it was always like it's in the newsroom. And if you're not tough and you can't stick it out, then go somewhere else. You can't, you can't be like that. That's
00:49:23
Speaker
You know, it's a really, really good, good job and there are some fantastic journalists that we just need to keep going and keep supporting and keep because they're the ones that are going to shine the light in those dark places. Some of those people that maybe are burnt out, you don't know what they would have done. We need those people. We need journalism. We need journalism to society. Go on. Yeah, exactly.
00:49:46
Speaker
So tell me then, so any journalist that's listening, and I think anybody that's listening, so having listened to your story, what you've gone through and what we've just highlighted here today and the effects of trauma, they might be recognising themselves in this. And what steps can they take to reach out to for help and support? So I suppose the one in the journalist's point of view, where could they go? What resources or advice could you give them?
00:50:11
Speaker
Yeah, well, we'll have our program hopefully ready by May, but in the meantime, there are some really fantastic journalists who are doing amazing things out there. Hannah Storm, if you follow her on Twitter, she is part of Headliners Network, and they do some fantastic stuff about journalism and trauma and just everyday kind of newsroom stuff that will help you even as much as it's not just journalists, it's all media workers. Sometimes people are
00:50:39
Speaker
are maybe filtering, particularly the war on Ukraine there. For example, they're filtering the pictures and the stories that are coming through from those war zones. And they're not journalists themselves. They're just, they're working on digital perhaps. And they're being traumatized by some of that. It's, and they have on Headliners Network, they have really helpful tips about how to deal with that sort of taking time away, turning the volume. Do they have a podcast?
00:51:01
Speaker
They do, yeah. I think I might have listened to that podcast with you, so I'll put the links in. Yeah, if you could, yeah, that would be fantastic. So they talk non-stop about journalism and mental health and Hannah really helped me. She gave me a lot of courage to speak about my own stuff. She had me in on the podcast a couple of years back as well. And it's really helpful to hear other people, people like Clive Myrae and
00:51:28
Speaker
other really well-known journalists talking about how things have impacted on them. I think that's so important to hear that voice, hear that well-known voice that you'll see on the 10 o'clock news, you know, that night after you've listened to him talking about how, you know, some of the things he saw on Ukraine really had a deep impact on him. And humanizing journalists, that's really, that's really, really important for all those. So I would definitely point people in the direction of headliners and network. They're doing such amazing work.
00:51:55
Speaker
And Hannah is just fantastic. She's a really, she had PTSD herself and she's a reporter for a long time. So just hearing voices like that help people.
00:52:06
Speaker
they understand that they're not on their own, they're not. Newsroom can be quite isolating, I suppose, at times when you think that story really impacted on me, but I don't want to tell anybody else because they might think badly or they might think I'm weak or they might whatever. But hearing other big voices talk about it, and it gives people a wee bit of a notion that they're not by themselves, they're not on their own, they're not going crazy, they're just a human being responding to something which is very traumatic.
00:52:34
Speaker
So okay, so the journalism that are going through now, I imagine they're maybe 18, 19 years of age. If you could go back and give yourself, your 18 year old self, one piece of advice going into this, what would it be? Oh gee, that's a tough one. I couldn't be a doctor instead, I'm only joking.
00:52:56
Speaker
Just stay true to yourself. Just stay true to yourself and you'll not go wrong because that's what I always did. Try and help. Do no harm. That's probably the best advice if you only want a couple of words. Do no harm. Just treat everybody in the same way whenever you're doing this job and try your best. Just keep at it.
00:53:16
Speaker
And if you need help, get help. Yes. Okay. So for those looking to learn more about what we're talking today, do you have any recommendations, books or podcasts? Well, we talked about your book, there's Breaking Trauma in the News. You've been podcast headliners. I would direct them towards those two things. There's a lot of
00:53:36
Speaker
A lot of people that are starting to talk about this topic now, but Break and Troll in the Newsroom is a good start. It's kind of the hell of my homework here. And Headliners are just fantastic. The work that they do, they have so many resources on there. They've got videos that are kind of
00:53:53
Speaker
explaining vicarious trauma and how it impacts you. Also, how do you recognize the signs of anxiety or trauma in yourself, even so much as kind of when you're listening to something or you're doing something with regards to news and your palms are sweating and your heart's racing away, whether your breathing is different and stuff like that. People will recognize some of those symptoms in themselves whenever they're actually on the job and they might not know what they are.
00:54:19
Speaker
So yeah, definitely Headliners will be a big one and I would point people towards Headlines Network. Headlines Network. Okay. I'll add that in. So then this podcast will go out on the 24th and I believe on the 25th you have a TED Talk. I do. I have a TED Talk in Stormont, which is going to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. And so I'm going to be talking about my own experience there.
00:54:47
Speaker
Which if you had asked me six months ago, would I stand up in front of an audience and talk about it? I would have, it would have terrified me. But as I say, CBT has done some magic voodoo, woo woo, whatever.
00:55:00
Speaker
and work wonders and I've got my courage back and hopefully I'll be able to get through that without getting upset but I'm talking about my experiences and how you kind of what happened to me has really fueled this desire to make things different, to make the newsroom different for other people, for other journalists coming through and for journalists that are there now at the moment and just
00:55:20
Speaker
talking about sort of how macho the newsroom is and how you kind of, as I said, dysfunctional it is, it can be and how journalists are expected to just get on with things and not be, you know, not struggle with anything, not be hurt by anything, not be impacted by anything and how I wanted to shine a light on that. Shine a light on journalists were used to, I suppose,
00:55:42
Speaker
telling other people's stories. It's a bit more difficult to tell our stories, but my talk is called, or what's it called? I can't remember what it's called. That's all right. I put everything in the show notes. For anyone that wants to watch it, can they watch it afterwards?
00:56:02
Speaker
I think it's going to be online afterwards, yeah. Broken Places is where the light shines through. That's what I call it. How do you have it? Oh, very good. Broken Places is where the light shines through. So yeah, it'll be online and it'll be on the TED Talk website, YouTube channel and stuff like that. So yeah, it'll be good. It'll be good. Because I just sometimes don't think of people, as you said, when you read the book. I didn't get it. I didn't get it. I just didn't think of it. Of course it made sense when I was reading it. I was like, of course. Of course you would.
00:56:32
Speaker
But I just didn't see it. People don't. People don't. And I suppose that's part of it as well, sort of trying to make people understand that journalists are human beings. They're not there for people to abuse online or harass on the street or they're not liars or cheats or whatever else that the people of the brand, they're branded by, they're trying to do a good job. They're trying to kind of tell stories and do their job well. Yeah.
00:57:00
Speaker
OK, so what can people expect next from it? I know that you're writing another book. I'm writing, I've written another book and I've written it. Well, they're not a nonfiction, they're fiction books. So the next book that I have come out, I just come out next year. It's a work of fiction. It's called Perdition Street. And it's about a Dublin private detective who binds the souls of the murdered to their murderers.
00:57:27
Speaker
I wrote that lockdown in the midst of PTSD and I suppose it helped me exercise a lot of demons because whenever I was working as a journalist I wrote a lot of stories about legacy cases, about people who had been murdered during the troubles and my own experience as well and people not getting, not been held accountable for those kind of murders.
00:57:50
Speaker
And I have this guy rocking around, doubling in all our places, binding the souls of the murder to those who took their lives and dragging them to hell. So it sounds really grim and sort of dark, but it's not. It's actually quite funny. I gave him a lot of my traits. He's got anxiety issues and he has panic attacks and whatnot.
00:58:14
Speaker
and so yeah he's a really fun character so he has to end up saving the world as well so yeah so that's coming out in next year I can't remember what date it is next year but it's 2024 anyway and then the other one I just finished writing there is another fiction work it's about it is called Apocalypse is scheduled for Sunday
00:58:33
Speaker
And it's about Covina witches just outside Dublin. They're a family, the Moriarty's. And the sisters and the family are related to the Morrigan, the goddess of war, death and destruction. They don't know that. There's a lot of family secrets there. They're elemental witches, so they kind of take their power from the elements. They also have to save the world. So there's a lot of saving the world kind of going on here in the background. Maybe that's what I want to do. I'm hitting a team here. Yeah.
00:58:59
Speaker
You're getting a theme? Yeah, maybe that's what's next. Saving the world, Claudia. That's what I'm going to do. I've no doubt you will. I've no doubt you will. Okay. So, Mayonna, thanks so much for anyone that wants to keep up with you and to keep up with the books coming out and catch up with the talk. Where can they find you? Where's best to?
00:59:18
Speaker
Yeah, I'm on Twitter normally. I'm Leona O'Neill1 on there. So O'Neill with two Ls, O-N-E-I-L-L-1, the number one, the numeral one. I'm on Instagram, Leona O'Neill Ireland. So you can get me on there as well. And Facebook is just pictures of my dinner and my dog. Nobody wants to look at that. I'll add the links for Twitter and Instagram. And follow kind of catch up with you there.
00:59:45
Speaker
Thank you so much. That was really enlightening and I think a lot of people will get a lot out of that and probably like me, have their eyes opened into the world of journalism and what you have to do to report the news. And I can't wait to see what you do with this programme. I think it's going to be really beneficial to journalists, but also to the next generation coming. Well done. Thank you very much. Thank you, Clona. Thanks for talking to me. All right.