Students Participate in Carter Center Journalism Workshop on Veterans and VA

January 25, 2010, Athens, Georgia (Grady College, University of Georgia) - "The toughest thing veterans have ever done is come home," said veteran and former U.S. Senator Max Cleland. The fear and anxiety they shoulder is "unbelievable," and returning vets face trials so difficult that Cleland refers to homecoming as the 4th tour of duty.

From the stage of the Carter Center in Atlanta, Cleland spoke to a crowd of journalists, medical experts and veterans' advocates gathered by the Columbia School of Journalism, the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, and the Carter Center's Mental Health Journalism Program. The goal was to improve local and regional coverage of issues facing veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And thanks to an invitation the Carter Center extended to Patricia Thomas, Grady's Knight Chair in Health and Medical Journalism, she and three Grady students - Andre Gallant, Taronda Gibbons and Kirk McAlpin - also participated in the three-day event.

"When Veterans Come Home: A Workshop for Working Journalists" began with a panel led by National Public Radio correspondent Daniel Zwerdling, and included chilling first-person stories from Michael Jernigan, a Marine who was severely wounded in the Iraq War and who blogs about his post-war experiences for The New York Times. A roadside bomb blinded Jernigan and left him with PSTD, or post-traumatic stress disorder.

Friday's sessions were devoted to specific issues facing a new generation of veterans, including unprecedented numbers of women combat veterans and an explosion of PTSD.

Because only 1 percent of the population has served in Iraq or Afghanistan, the vast majority of Americans think of war in political, not wrenching personal, terms, said Matthew Freidman, executive director of the National Center for PTSD. He said journalists play a critical role in educating the public and making veterans' experiences real.

War scars veterans both physically and psychologically, and even when help is available they may not know it's there. Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, said that whenever a local news organization covers veterans' issues, demand for services soars in that area.

But as reporters work to inform their communities of veteran's struggles, explaining the intricacies of physiological injuries to their readers and to the veterans themselves, it's important not to create reverse stereotypes, said Bruce Shapiro, executive director of the Dart Center. He advised journalists not to pigeonhole every veteran as damaged and to treat each individual as a fresh subject.

On Saturday, the sessions turned to the craft of reporting veteran's issues. Getting answers from the Department of Defense and the Department of Veteran's Affairs (VA) can be daunting, so Salon.com reporter Mark Benjamin, former VA official Dr. Thomas Horvath and Paul Sullivan offered advice on where to aim the flashlight in the bureaucratic fog.

Photographers Lori Grinker and Nina Berman, famous for her "Marine Wedding" image, and talked about how hard it is to produce images that cut through stereotypes. Stories about men and women returning from combat are often devalued as "vet issues" and seen as separate from the rest of the country, Berman said. Although their wounds are from the military, they are now civilians.

Miles Moffeit of the Denver Post discussed a local reporting technique he called "orbiting" military installations. Journalists can find gateways into stories by developing sources in community groups and social networks surrounding military bases.

While the workshop's primary audience were the two dozen reporters who competed for expense-paid slots, there were plenty of learning opportunities for the Grady students. Taronda Gibbons, a Grady graduate student from Atlanta, said that she's grateful for this type of hands-on experience.

"It allows you to see professionals who are actually in the field that you want to go into and how they operate, how they work, how they help each other out and how they workshop," Gibbons said.

Gibbons' initial interest in the conference came from her family's military ties - two of her uncles served - and her own earlier consideration of the military as a career choice. Last semester, she worked on a story about whether college graduates, facing a stiff job market, were turning to the armed forces as a potential employer. While reporting the story, she found military personnel to be difficult interviewees. Gibbons said she hoped to learn techniques that would improve her general interview skills.

"The more people talk to you about how to be a good reporter, a good writer, the more something is going to resonate with you," Thomas said. Anyone at the workshop, be it a reporter or an expert, can be a wonderful teacher for a young journalist.

Kirk McAlpin, a graduate student from Atlanta, said he picked up journalism tips-such as what not to do when interviewing people exposed to trauma-that can help him cover many different types of news. He also witnessed what it's like to be a working journalist.

"The exposure to this level of expertise is something you don't get in the classroom every day," he said.

Thomas predicts that the physical and mental health challenges facing returning veterans will have a rippling effect in their communities, touching millions of people beyond the 2 million who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan so far.

"Northeast Georgia is an area with a very high number of veterans," Thomas said. "I don't believe their stories are being adequately told and it's my hope that some of my students can give voice to some of these people."

The writer of this article, Andre Joseph Gallant, was one of three Grady students who recently attended an Atlanta journalism workshop on improving coverage of issues facing veterans. Gallant is a 30-year-old senior newspapers major from Athens.