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Covering mental health, suicide and addiction: A Q&A with Aneri Pattani

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A UW red graphic showing a head shot of Aneri Pattani, a UW Center for Journalism Ethics logo and this text: "Covering mental health, suicide and addiction: A Q&A w/ Aneri Pattani, 2023 Journalist in Residence"

Audrey Thibert is a 2023-24 fellow at the Center for Journalism Ethics and an undergraduate student in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Throughout Aneri Pattani’s journalism career, she has had to navigate — and sometimes help reconstruct — the ethical guidelines for reporting on mental health. 

Pattani is a senior correspondent at KFF Health News, a national nonprofit outlet covering U.S. health care and health policy. Her reporting focuses on mental health and addiction issues. Her current project is a year-long investigative series on state and local governments’ use of more than $50 billion in opioid settlement cash.

Pattani graduated from Northeastern University with a degree in journalism, and is currently pursuing her master’s in public health as a Bloomberg Fellow at Johns Hopkins University. As a fellow, Pattani helped create a free, online course for journalists to learn how to responsibly report on the topic of suicide. 

She joined KFF Health News in 2020 and became a senior correspondent in January 2023. Before Pattani joined KFF Health News, she worked for Spotlight PA, a publication that investigates the Pennsylvania state government.

Pattani, who is serving this week as the 2023 UW Center for Journalism Ethics Journalist in Residence, spoke with us about the ethics of mental health and addiction reporting. This interview has been edited for clarity and concision.

In a recent article for the Center, you talked about the importance of language in reporting on suicide. How does this also apply to other areas of health reporting? Is there one area of health reporting where we need to especially focus on language?

Language always matters, but it matters especially when we’re dealing with stigmatized issues. The way we frame these issues is going to affect the way people think about them, their willingness to talk about them, their willingness to see them as a health issue or as a criminal issue or as a personal failing. 

I’ve been doing a lot of addiction reporting this year and sometimes in interviews people will say someone is an ‘addict’ or a ‘junkie’ and I try not to use those words in my writing. If I want to quote that person, I will paraphrase them, or use a different quote and say ‘a person struggling with addiction or ‘a person who uses drugs’ or ‘a person with substance use disorder.’ Those terms really make it about a health issue that this person has. The research is all there. We know addiction is a brain disease, so I want to use the language that reflects that.

How do you make sure you are accurately distilling information for readers to understand complex health policies and landscapes in the U.S?

Two things come to mind. One at the front end, I ask a lot of questions, which journalists are generally good at. I ask the extra question anyway. I also find really good sources to interview — people who themselves get it and can distill what a study is saying simply or can just kind of be real with you. It also helps to make an analogy to something. When I find people who I interview can do that, then I can more easily do it in my writing as well. 

The other thing is on the backend. Once I write about complex health policies or research studies or science, I often will send the paragraph or get one of the sources on the phone and read it to them. I never send them the full story, of course. But to make sure that in simplifying an issue, I haven’t misrepresented anything. Cause that’s always the risk, right? I want to simplify it so people understand, but I don’t want to oversimplify it where now I’ve made it inaccurate. The sources don’t get to tell you they wish it looked different or change their quote. I want to check if it is accurate.

Your reporting also highlights solutions and positive developments. In your opinion, what is the importance of solutions journalism in your work?

It’s something that I am learning to do and trying to do a lot more. I think I could still do a much better job of this. It’s hard and our industry as a whole could, I think, do a better job of this.

Highlighting the problems is really important and you have so much accountability. Investigative reporting comes from saying something is wrong and people need to pay attention. But it’s also incomplete because I think a lot of people read those stories and feel like “Problems are all we see in the headlines. There’s nothing to do. The world’s just going downhill.”  I think to make our reporting more complete, getting at the solutions angle is really important. It makes people actually want to read it, makes people feel like it’s useful to them and makes people feel it’s serving them. 

Solutions journalism doesn’t have to find the solution — if that were the case, we probably wouldn’t be writing about the problem. But it’s sort of like, “Is there a policy step that could be taken?” or “Is there research that shows what works?” or “Is there another country, state  or place that is doing something to address the same problem that’s working in some way?” I think that’s part of the accountability, too, because if there is something that can be done, why aren’t the people in power doing it?

In your reporting on addiction, suicide and other heavy issues, you have to interact with some very vulnerable sources. The way we interact with sources depends on the situation, but what are some things you always keep in mind when it comes to interviewing and communicating with vulnerable sources in your work?

For vulnerable individuals who are sharing their personal story — not elected officials, not PR folks, not company representatives — I make a much bigger point of explaining to them how journalism works. What my story is gonna be, how I will talk to them for a while, but only a little bit will appear in my story. I talk to them about how their name will be out there in my outlet, but it could be reprinted in other places — it might show up in their small town, it might show up on a national outlet. 

I want them to be really informed when we talk about people giving us consent. If someone is really sharing something vulnerable with me, I want them to know a future employer might see this, someone they date in the future might see this. I say, “Are you okay with that? I think you’re really brave to share this story and I think it’s important and I want you to share it with me, but I also wanna lay out the risks.” Because I’ll write the story and move on. And the person can’t. And sometimes it results in people deciding they don’t want to talk to me or pulling out of a story. 

And as a reporter it sucks to go to your editor and say a source doesn’t want to do it anymore. But at least that person is not living with it for the rest of their life. As journalists, we sometimes wrongly assume everyone understands how journalism works.

How do you navigate and protect your own mental health when reporting on heavy topics? What sorts of things do you prioritize in your day-to-day that help your mental health?

I get this question a lot and I always like to preface it with the fact that the topics I write about are really heavy. And when I tell people I cover mental health, suicide and addiction, they assume it’s intense. But I think even though the topics are heavy, the individuals I’m interviewing are really inspiring. Because, generally, I’m talking to people who have been through something terrible in their life, but have come out the other side and want to use it to make a difference and help others. And that is really inspiring. And while there are sad parts to a lot of my conversations, I walk away feeling like humans are so resilient and this is amazing. 

Of course there are still hard things that get to me. Some day-to-day things I really like doing are either going out for a walk or a group workout class. I like doing something where I’m less in my mind because my body is demanding me to pay attention to something else. Otherwise, I’m someone who will think back on the interview and think through what I should be writing or how I felt and just staying in those thoughts for too long. So I like doing something physical that gets me out of it and gets me a little break. 

Also, there are certain topics that are particularly sensitive for me because they touch on my personal life. So when I do stories about college suicide and college mental health, it’s particularly hard for me. So I only do one at a time and I don’t do them back to back. And I’m in a very privileged position where I can make that choice and I can tell my editors I can’t do another follow up right now and I need to do something else.

You often report on policies that affect people in rural places. What is the importance of working with and uplifting local journalism in these types of places when it comes to health reporting?

I think it’s huge. This is my first job where I’ve been a national reporter. Before this, I’ve always been either a state level or a city level reporter. And I think those are the reporters and the outlets that local elected officials and other people in power in those communities know and recognize. And they’re the people who stay after a story. So when you really want to hold someone accountable at a local level, I think local reporters have a unique power to do that. As a national reporter, I can do certain things. I can elevate the conversation to a national level and get people informed on it. But I think a big part of my role, if I want accountability, is to support local reporters doing that work. 

So particularly with the opioid settlement money, it’s being spent differently in every county, every city, every state. So I can highlight a few places in a national story, but if I really want accountability on that money, the better way to do it is by helping local reporters cover in their community where they can stay on it, write an article and call the elected official. I think it’s huge for national newsrooms to support local outlets because those are the people that are most recognized and know what’s gonna make a difference in their community. I think that is a unique power. 

Where do you see the future of addiction/mental health reporting going?

I think mental health reporting has gotten a huge boost in recent years. I think during COVID more people in the public have been talking about mental health and they’ve been talking about mental health in schools and kids. And that has made a lot of editors realize this is an important area of coverage. Same thing with the addiction crisis. We’ve had, unfortunately, really high overdose rates since COVID. More people are paying attention to that. And that has an effect on the media, which then also affects public conversation. I think we’re seeing more importance given to it, which is great. I hope we’ll see a lot of this understanding from reporters that we need to be careful and thoughtful in how we report on these topics. And that because we are shaping the public conversation, it matters how we talk about it. If we’re giving solutions, what language we’re using — all of these things matter. I think there’s been more awareness but I think it needs to grow. 

The Center for Journalism Ethics encourages the highest standards in journalism ethics worldwide. We foster vigorous debate about ethical practices in journalism and provide a resource for producers, consumers and students of journalism. Sign up for our quarterly newsletter here.

Building reader trust with enhanced reporter bios: A Q&A with editor Edmund Lee

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Sophia Vento is a 2023-24  fellow at the Center for Journalism Ethics and an undergraduate student in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Edmund Lee, an assistant editor on the New York Times Trust Team, recently helped launch a new initiative to boost trust with audiences by spotlighting journalism ethics issues in reporters’ author pages. 

Implemented last month, this project seeks to address reader skepticism about reporter bias and cultivate a more explicit understanding of the journalistic process. 

Edmund Lee, New York Times Trust Team

Prior to joining the Times as a media reporter in 2018, Lee wrote for Bloomberg, Businessweek, Advertising Age, Condé Nast Portfolio, Vibe, New York Magazine and The Village Voice. He also wrote and edited at Vox and Recode. 

Lee spoke with us about the development of the Trust Team and its operations as well as what trust means to him. This story has been edited for clarity and brevity.

How did you come to be a part of the newsroom’s trust team? What does the team do? 

I joined the Times as a media reporter. It was a really fun time because the media was changing. Media was going through so much transformation. But there was an opportunity to join a new group at the Times that they were calling trust and innovation.

The building question was how do we bridge this trust gap. It was not just this gap between readers and the Times readers, but the media altogether. A lot of it stems from what the Internet has wrought. News is no longer gatekept. The Internet has affected the news landscape, it’s affected democracy, it’s affected how readers think about the media. We needed to tackle that more head on.

We decided we needed to do a better job of explaining our process, explaining how journalism works, explaining what reporters do, who reporters are. One of those things is what we call enhanced bylines. It’s a snippet of text that runs below the byline. Readers aren’t necessarily aware of the fact that reporters have beats. They tend to think reporters are all generalists. The enhanced byline is a way to address that. 

This is a big sea change for the Times, in particular, because the adage in journalism is that we’re not the story. We shouldn’t talk about ourselves. That actually has to change because readers are more aware that there is a journalistic process. When you don’t talk about it, when you don’t explain it, they’ll fill that void by presuming something, and often it’s the wrong thing. There is a very low level of news literacy and that explains a big part of this trust gap. 

We’re updating the reporters’ author pages to show in a uniform way who we are and what we do. It describes in plain English what the reporter does and their background. We also have a new section called journalistic ethics that explicitly states how reporters operate, what we do as reporters, and the rules that we adhere to. 

Now, to be really clear, Times reporters adhere to the same ethics guidelines. It’s very extensive. Anyone can read it, but few are aware of the guidelines in the first place. The point of this little section is to explain how that applies to that particular reporter. Again, it’s the same for everybody, but how it applies is slightly different for a business reporter versus a politics reporter versus a science and health reporter. From our research, we found this did a lot to address skepticism and develop more awareness for readers. 

You’ll also notice it’s written in the first person, which is another big change. We discovered from research that having that personable tone made reporters more accessible to readers. 

This is an issue for the Times in particular where we are often seen as this sort of cold, impenetrable institution. But that goes against exactly what it means to be a reporter. We are open. We come as a blank slate so to speak. We are impressionable by design. This change in how we present ourselves allows readers to understand us better as people. We go about our jobs with an open mind every single day. That’s the fun of being a journalist, and readers don’t know that.

The inclusion of the journalistic ethics statement on author’s pages is a very specific addition to a reporter’s biography. Was there a moment or turning point that prompted the team to implement this? 

When the trust team was formed in 2021, we got in a room and discussed all kinds of different ideas. This was one of them. A lot of this stems from my time at Vox Media and Recode. We included in our author pages an ethics statement. Tech reporting, in particular, was rife with a lot of conflicts of interest. Reporters were very cozy with the subjects they wrote about —  it wasn’t totally clear where that line was. At Recode, we were very clear what that line was. We said it up front. 

I took that idea to the Times. Again, I don’t think it’s unique to what we were doing at Recode and Vox Media, but it probably was one of the only news sites around at that time that actually put out an explicit ethics statement. Of course, at the Times, it wasn’t a new thing. The Times has had an ethics guideline forever. It was just a matter of being more explicit about it.

It became more urgent, as the Times saw that generative AI was really becoming prominent and would obviously start to seep into the media landscape. We see there are potential benefits, but also a lot of pitfalls to what generative AI will do to the media ecosystem. The newsroom felt it was now more important than ever to highlight the people behind our work, that we’re not bots. We’re people with ethics and with a whole set of rules and practices. It’s important to highlight our personalities — our humanness so to speak. 

Is there research suggesting the inclusion of ethics statements increases transparency and boosts trust?

We did do extensive research on the enhanced bio. The format — what I cover, my background, journalistic ethics and contact information — was all born out of this research. These were the specific areas that readers were very keen to know about our reporters. 

Our existing reporter pages are all over the place. It’s just not really uniform.. They don’t always address the questions readers have. 

First of all, readers inherently trust the Times. Certain segments of the readership don’t trust us, but in general, there is a high level of trust. However, when they come across a story they disagree with or find objectionable, that’s when they start to question the reporter. 

If they’re fine with the story. They don’t even care who the reporter is. They just read the story. As soon as they come across a story that they don’t agree with, or don’t like, they will click on the reporter’s name and be like, “Who is this person? What’s their agenda? Where are they from?” 

Our research showed that author pages really should address these things. We found not just this format, but specifically things like the ethics statement gave a huge boost to reader trust. It’s explicit, plain spoken and answers a lot of questions and inherent skepticism readers have. There will always be naysayers, but we found having a statement did a lot to bridge the gap. 

Screenshot showing New York Times reporter Apoorva Mandavilli's "enhanced bio," which is readable here: https://www.nytimes.com/by/apoorva-mandavilli
A screenshot showing New York Times reporter Apoorva Mandavilli’s enhanced bio.

How are you measuring this project’s success? How’s it going so far? 

Success is getting the newsroom to do it. It’s a big newsroom. It will take time. It’s a very new initiative. We did a pilot over the summer with about a dozen reporters to fine tune. 

Of course we want more readers to be aware of this, but we felt it was just good journalism. Despite whatever metrics come out of this, it’s just a good thing to do. Showing our work and showing who we are fits into the underlying ethos of what journalism should be about. 

What have you been hearing from readers about this initiative? 

Apoorva Mandavilli, a science and global health reporter, was one of the early pilots. She shared this note from a reader just last week. 

She was on a podcast and the host was raving about the new bio format. The host said she loved it — it was much more personal and engaging. She said it made her trust her more as a reader. 

This is a loaded, abstract question, but what does trust and transparency mean to you?

My background as a media reporter is well suited to this trust initiative. Media reporting is an unusual animal within the world of journalism. It’s about other journalists. As a media reporter, you’re reporting on other newsrooms.

If the whole point of journalism is a story not about yourself,  media reporting kills that idea. It is about us to some degree. Media is hugely important and has always been. It’s a huge part of democracy. It’s a huge part of social conversation. Now, more than ever, the way that the Internet has changed everything, it’s more important to examine how information works, how journalism works, how things spread, and how things are messaged. 

In a way, everyone’s become much more aware of how media works. What trust means is embracing our profession. It’s okay to talk about ourselves. In fact, it’s more than okay. It’s necessary to talk about ourselves. We need to stop thinking we’re not the story because we are the story and will continue to be the story. 

Where do you think the industry as a whole can do to make strides to increase transparency and build trust with their audiences?

I hope they follow some of our lead. You don’t have to follow exactly what we’re doing but again, just being more explicit about how you do what you do. Proffering more transparency about the overall process, but also what is the mission of your news site? Who are you owned by? Who makes those decisions? 

All of those things should be more upfront and transparent. This is not a panacea by any means. It’s a game of inches. There is no silver bullet as far as I can tell.

 

The Center for Journalism Ethics encourages the highest standards in journalism ethics worldwide. We foster vigorous debate about ethical practices in journalism and provide a resource for producers, consumers and students of journalism. Sign up for our quarterly newsletter here.

Associated Press reporting on Russian attack on Mariupol wins 2023 Anthony Shadid Award for Journalism Ethics

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Graphic showing the head shots of the 2023 winners of the Anthony Shadid Award for Journalism Ethics. The Associated Press team includes: Mystyslav Chernov, Lori Hinnant, Evgeniy Maloletka and Vasilisa Stepanenko.

A team of Associated Press reporters has won the 2023 Anthony Shadid Award for Journalism Ethics for their work documenting the Russian attack on the Ukrainian city of Mariupol in March of 2022. 

For almost three weeks, video journalist Mystyslav Chernov, photographer Evgeniy Maloletka and video producer Vasilisa Stepanenko were the last international journalists on the ground documenting the atrocities committed as Russian forces closed in on Mariupol. With AP journalist Lori Hinnant, the team brought the shocking new realities of the war in Ukraine to an international audience and put pressure on Russia to open humanitarian corridors. 

The Center for Journalism Ethics will present the award on May 17 in a ceremony at the University Club in New York City.

The event will also feature a moderated conversation on journalism ethics with investigative reporter and senior writer at ESPN, Steve Fainaru and award-winning journalist and author David Maraniss. 

Registration for the ceremony is now open. 

Named for UW–Madison alum and Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Anthony Shadid, the award honors the difficult ethical decisions journalists make when telling high-impact stories. Shadid, who died in 2012 while on assignment covering Syria, was a member of the Center for Journalism Ethics advisory board and worked to encourage integrity in reporting. 

The Shadid Award judging committee lauded the extraordinary care, quick thinking and courage the Associated Press team demonstrated while covering the earliest stages of the war. 

Lucas Graves, associate professor in the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication and chair of the committee, said this year’s winner edged out a strong pool of finalists.

“Reporting from Mariupol weeks into the Russian siege, the AP team faced a string of difficult choices,” Graves said. “Like previous generations of journalists on the front lines, they had to weigh their duties as reporters and as human beings. This meant not just protecting sources but helping victims of the war — and accepting their help to avoid capture and get the story out.”

“Anthony Shadid’s legacy indeed burns bright reading the work of this year’s winners,” said Kathleen Bartzen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics. “The courage and integrity they showed is surpassed only by the humanity they brought in sharing this vital reporting with all the rest of us.”

Fainaru is an investigative reporter at ESPN and co-author of the award-winning, New York Times best seller “League of Denial: The NFL, Concussions and the Battle for Truth.” He won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for his coverage of the Iraq war and was a friend and colleague to Shadid. Conversation moderator David Maraniss is a New York Times bestselling author and associate editor at the Post. He is a three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and won a Pulitzer for National Reporting in 1992.

Registration for the ceremony is now open. 

The Center for Journalism Ethics, housed in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UW-Madison, provides an international hub to examine the role of professional and personal ethics in the pursuit of fair, accurate and principled journalism. Founded in 2008, the Center offers resources for journalists, educators, students and the public, including internationally recognized annual conferences exploring key issues in journalism.

For information, contact Krista Eastman, Center for Journalism Ethics administrator, at krista.eastman@wisc.edu.

Announcing our spring conference, “Ethics, Urgency & Climate Journalism”

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Center for Journalism Ethics hosting its spring conference, “Ethics, Urgency & Climate Journalism,” with support from craig newmark philanthropies and the Evjue Foundation

Madison, Wisconsin – The Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will host its 14th annual journalism ethics conference at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery on Friday, April 28, 2023, in Madison, Wisconsin. The conference is free, open to the public and made possible by generous sponsorships from craig newmark philanthropies and the Evjue Foundation. 

Called “Ethics, Urgency & Climate Journalism,” the conference will bring together news media professionals, non-profit news leaders, media innovators, academics, climate change communicators, students and the public to address the ethical dimensions of covering climate change for our local, state, national and global communities. 

Some argue that journalism still isn’t effectively communicating the scope and scale of the climate change problem. And some barriers to conveying climate change urgency  lie within the field and practices of journalism itself, leaving journalists to question hard-baked professional practices and reimagine their position within existing ethical codes and value systems. 

As media organizations and thought leaders continue to call for new, different and improved coverage, the conference will foster important discussions around three areas of ethical concern: who gets heard on climate change?; what are the structural barriers to conveying scope and urgency?; and what are the many ways forward for journalists and other climate change communicators?  

“In this moment, climate questions feel relentless,” said Kathleen Bartzen Culver, James E. Burgess Chair in Journalism Ethics and director of the Center. “The public needs effective and ethical journalism to aid in the search for answers to those critical questions. I’m proud this conference will advance those efforts.”

Expert panelists will take on subjects such as climate reporting, equity and justice, how traditional media structures affect what gets covered and how, the contentious role of advocacy in journalism and more. TIME Magazine climate change reporter Justin Worland will provide a keynote address titled, “Justice and Journalism’s Climate Challenge.” 

The Center for Journalism Ethics, housed in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UW-Madison, provides an international hub for the examination of the role of professional and personal ethics in the pursuit of fair, accurate and principled journalism. The Center offers resources for journalists, educators, students and the public, including internationally recognized annual conferences exploring key issues in journalism.

The Evjue Foundation is the charitable arm of The Capital Times newspaper. Since its founding in the 1960s, the Foundation has made grants totaling more than $70 million to worthy educational, cultural and charitable organizations in the newspaper’s circulation area. 

craig newmark philanthropies supports groups that seek to defend values such as fairness, opportunity and respect and strengthen American democracy. The organization drives broad civic engagement by working to advance organizations focused on trustworthy journalism and the information ecosystem, voter protection, women in tech, and veterans and military families. Craig Newmark is the founder of craigslist. 

Registration is open and available here.

For more information, see the conference web page and/or contact Krista Eastman, administrator at the Center for Journalism Ethics, at krista.eastman@wisc.edu.