Revisiting the most painful memories for survivors, like those in Southport, risks retraumatising them, but can also be an opportunity to talk when they were not prepared to before
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This week (29 July 2025) marks the one year anniversary of the Southport tragedy, where three young girls were murdered, and many others were fatally injured, in a dance hall in Merseyside.
In the press, these anniversaries are golden opportunities to revisit a large and highly sought-after news story. But they are also hazards for retraumatising the victims and families involved.
Southport, as a tight-knit community, has been trying to come to terms with this tragedy and restore its reputation as a family seaside destination, says Andrew Brown, owner of the community news project Stand Up For Southport, and a journalist with 25 years of experience reporting on the local area, on our podcast.
Read more: 'My colleagues helped me through the hardest story of my career'
On the anniversary of the tragedy, he invites journalists to come back to the area and tell the story of how the community is getting back on its feet. There's been plenty of progress made, amongst all the pain and heartache.
"There's an incredible enthusiasm in Southport that we want people around the country to come back and see what a beautiful town this is," he explains, adding that he is happy to share any content on the website and make local connections with news providers (just reach out and ask for permission).
Anniversaries provide new opportunities to speak on the record where someone may not have been ready to before. And so, it is only natural for the press to reach out to victims and families - collectively known as survivors - in these moments.
Read more: 'Acknowledging the impact of 9/11 on journalists' mental health'
However, survivors can become anxious anticipating requests for updates and interviews around anniversaries. When survivors constantly retell their stories, they can become stuck in fight-or-flight mode, leading to prolonged stress.
Speaking on another episode of the Journalism.co.uk podcast, trauma consultant Tamara Cherry, author of 'The Trauma Beat: A Case for Rethinking the Business of Bad News', explained how best journalists can navigate these important, but delicate, opportunities.
This phenomenon, which one survivor in Cherry's research dubbed "media terror," involves feeling "stalked, harassed, followed and hunted" in the aftermath of loss. Crucially, half of the interviewees for Cherry's book said that the media contributed to their trauma. That's not just the original event, but the ongoing coverage of it.
The problem compounds over time. Survivors often recall feeling they didn't want, or feel ready, to talk to the media initially. Bottom line: if people decline to speak, respect their wishes. Your deadline cannot be more important than people's mental health.
The other sore point is that victims and families often report feeling betrayed by the original headlines, quotes and images that followed, which didn't accurately reflect their mindsets later on. Anniversary coverage tends to pull them back into this cycle. They might feel very different from a year ago.
Cherry urges caution around another aspect of trauma: it affects the ability to recall events accurately and causes people to jumble up chronology. It's something Canadian courts have recognised in the unreliability of eyewitness testimonies after traumatic events.
Yet anniversary journalism rarely accounts for these limitations, instead treating traumatic memories as fixed narratives to be revisited and retold.
In 2007, Cherry interviewed a woman who had lost her son in a drive-by shooting. Only years later, listening back to the recording, did Cherry discover the woman never wanted to speak to a journalist in the first place. Pay close attention to any discrepancies in stories.
This retroactive recognition of exploitation highlights how "trauma brain" can also affect consent. People in extreme distress may agree to things they later regret, yet journalism rarely provides mechanisms for addressing this.
Revisiting these stories very much does take survivors back to a painful place. Trauma-informed journalism matters in these anniversaries, just as it did when the story was breaking.
Read more: Read more: Lessons from Southport: how information voids fuel a crisis
In practice, that means: not starting recording until establishing safe and unsafe questions, putting difficult questions in the middle of interviews rather than ending with them (what she calls "closing the trauma lid"), and always checking back with sources later.
Exceptions should also be made, Cherry suggests, when allowing people to preview stories before publication to ensure they're comfortable with what will be published. Critics might argue this compromises editorial independence, but Cherry's response is clear: "It is their story and they should feel in control."
Sources might rescind consent, disrupt deadlines, or alter quotes, but Cherry argues this is preferable to causing additional harm.
This article was first published on 12 March 2024, and was updated on 28 July 2025 with new reporting and context
