Professional role negotiation after traumatic events: Bahamian journalists’ constructions of duties to others and themselves after Hurricane Dorian

This study explores how journalists navigated professional, moral, and personal obligations in narrative recollections of their work during a weather disaster and whether the experience had lasting influences personally or professionally. Research on journalism’s normative roles, role negotiation, and practices of care and self-care provide the theoretical framework to interpret their reflections. The duty to inform the public was central in their narratives, but a moral duty of care for others emerged as a complementary obligation. A third obligation was a duty to self-care, which was comprised of care for their physical safety and emotional wellbeing, which participants believed should be supported by their supervisors. Journalists who struggled to reconcile these three duties in their recollections of the event reported longer-term emotional distress. Others described adopting trauma-informed practices and advocacy roles in reporting, attributing these shifts to their experience covering the disaster. Participants were 11 Bahamian journalists covering Hurricane Dorian’s impact in The Bahamas, including the first author. The first author engaged in autoethnographic reflection during the study design and then conducted semi-structured interviews with other participants as a mutual process of reflection. The study contributes to literature on journalists’ occupational stress, coping, and role negotiation, suggesting unresolved tensions between professional, moral, and personal obligations have emotional costs and supporting the inclusion of trauma-informed journalism and self-care in journalism education. As climate-related disasters increase, understanding how journalists navigate overlapping duties is essential for supporting their wellbeing and sustaining ethical, effective reporting.