Nina Funnell

I had some really challenging experiences with a couple of journalists.

But it taught me that there is a way to do, you know, the positive experiences made me think, yeah, there is a way to do this work and it is important work.

I also noticed that a lot of the things that really harmed me at the time were not necessarily intentional on behalf of the journalist.

So back in the day.

Yeah.

Back in 2007, the Sydney Morning Herald used to, and all the newspapers, they would refresh at midnight.

Yeah.

So I would be up at 11.59 pressing refresh, refresh, refresh, waiting for my story to come up about what had happened to me.

And then when it's not there, I panic and I start spiraling going, you know, has something happened?

Did they not believe me?

Is something wrong?

And by the time 9am rolls around and I can call the journalist and find out the story just got held over, as you know, stories get held over all the time for all kinds of reasons.

I've been up half the night having an anxiety attack.

Now, that's not because of a bad journalist.

That's because of they weren't aware of the fact that for someone in my situation, I would be, you know,

hyper anxious about that story you know there were other things like one journalist went to the police and asked for a copy of my police report and I experienced that as her disbelieving me because I thought well why wouldn't you just you know I told you my story if you wanted a copy of my police report you could have just asked me and I would have given it to you yeah

By you going behind my back without my knowledge to the police, that makes me feel like you don't trust my work.

Now, as a journalist, I know exactly what she was doing.

She was fact checking.

But had she taken an extra five minutes and explained that to me, that that's what she was doing, I would have experienced that quite differently.