Reporter’s Notebook: De-Escalation, as a Journalist

Over the summer, I joined an informal group of journalists called the Homelessness Beat Reporters Collective after reading about them in Poynter, a nonprofit media institute. As the sole homeless beat reporter in the state of Kansas, I leapt at the opportunity to be surrounded by others who understood what this coverage entailed. The work is about humanizing public policy, walking through places most don’t, and often interviewing people in delicate states of mind or environment.

That is a key, unavoidable part when you write about homelessness and poverty. Oftentimes as reporters, you are meeting and interviewing people who are living in dire conditions, have a mental or substance use illness or stick to you because you are willing to sit with them, make eye contact, really listen – a gift of the job, but, sometimes those conversations push journalistic boundaries or eek toward a safety concern.

I am an empathetic person and it can take a lot to phase me. Even when I’m uncomfortable I do my best to hide it. That doesn’t mean I always know what to say in tense situations, a skill that I know needs sharpening as I grow in this career.

This is why I, again, jumped at the chance to sign up for a Collective training with Jumpstart Mastery, an organization that teaches de-escalation techniques when encountering someone in crisis. Andy Prisco, the founder, and instructors Hannah Olson and Monica Vanderheiden led our group through eight hours of what they called “verbal craft,” which was practicing various approaches to diffusing a tense, emotional or dangerous situation.

What struck me most from the teaching was the confidence and compassion Prisco, Olson and Vanderheiden required for a successful de-escalation. I think we’ve all seen – in news reports or movies – that handling an angry or aggressive individual means neutralizing, containing or restraining. It implies that the person is less a person and more a stick of dynamite to snuff out before it explodes. But, in their teachings, de-escalation is being an empathetic witness to someone’s deregulation and moving that person, in inches, from where they are now to an area with greater regulation. De-escalation isn’t about solving the person’s problem, it’s about widening their limited diversity of thought and expression to a point where they can meet you at a desirable level.

We learned different categories of behaviors that precede a crisis response and how steering one with a calm, firm hand can save everyone involved. You should ignore bizarre behavior or statements, which can enable those actions, but suggest alternative methods that can give them what they really want: dignity, influence and a way forward that benefits them.

For example, I often hear grievances from currently homeless people about institutions that are meant to serve them, like shelters. When you feel let down by something that’s supposed to care about you, you are right to be angry, hurt and want to tell anyone who will listen about how you were rejected. I hear frustrations like this every week. I hate that I didn’t know how to respond to those concerns as someone who needs to maintain some ethical distance but wants so badly to help.

But after Jumpstart Mastery’s training, I have more confidence in my approach. See:

I understand how being harmed by a place that’s supposed to help you is frustrating. It’s desirable that we’re uplifted by those we’re putting trust in. What if I connected you to the right person so that they can learn about what you’re going through? If we do that, they can know what issues to address and prioritize, and you can be part of the solution.

What this verbal craft does is validate (this sucks), defer (this isn’t about you or me, but a larger set of principles that influence this situation) and suggest an alternative route that could genuinely help them (connect to the right resource, be seen as engaging instead of impossible to satisfy).

Not every drill was done with a theoretical homeless source in mind. We got to practice scenarios we often confront, which ranged from awkward encampment exchanges to dealing with an upset public official to talking to on-the-record sources that panic and want to back out of a story.

Discomfort and confrontation are an unavoidable part of being a reporter. To be a good one, you have to learn how to navigate it – quickly and efficiently. It’s not always because, if I don’t, I’m in danger. More times than not, it’s about protecting the relationship with community members or managing reactions from the subject of a story. J school does not emphasize people skills like it does writing skills.

I am grateful to the Collective for existing as an intellectual and friendly space for reporters like me. I am also extremely grateful to Prisco, Olson, Vanderheiden and our education. Is what we learned exhaustive to every reactionary person we meet? No, sometimes a situation is bigger than one can handle, as with anything in life.

But I don’t think of the training as just a professional benefit. It was a personal one, too. Breaking down de-regulation as unmet bio- and physiological needs was a reminder that there is always humanity behind intensity. And that there can be a right thing to say to pull that out instead of stamping it out. We need all the help we can get to take care of one another.

This article first appeared on KLC Journal and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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Previously Published on klcjournal.com with Creative Commons License

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