Addressing the large audience gathered in Trinity ‘s Thomas Davis Theatre, Professor Bruce Shapiro, Executive Director of Columbia University’s Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma, began his talk in the most unlikely of places.
Quoting ‘Bill the Butcher’ from Martin Scorsese’s 2002 blockbuster ‘Gangs of New York’, Shapiro set the tone for an expansive lecture traversing storytelling, trauma, and violence:
You know how I stayed alive this long? All these years? Fear. The spectacle of fearsome acts. Somebody steals from me, I cut off his hands. He offends me, I cut out his tongue. He rises against me, I cut off his head, stick it on a pike, raise it high up so all on the streets can see. That's what preserves the order of things. Fear.
Scorsese’s film, he said, depicts “the roots of American violence, nativism, anti-immigrant sentiment”, things which have become only more relevant as time goes on. On the violence, terror and rising authoritarianism currently playing out across the world stage, Shapiro argued that “journalism, good and bad, is part of the story of how we got here and…how we get out.”
In his lecture, fully titled ‘The Spectacle of Fearsome Acts: Violence, Journalism and the Democratic Future’, Shapiro traced his own personal encounters with violent events and a familial history in the “great fear-generating spectacles of the pre-war Europe” to show how myths and lies can be both spread and countered by journalism, and how evolving scientific understanding of trauma has created a “revolution in storytelling.”
Speaking of his home institution of Columbia University, Shapiro remembered a Friday morning class on journalism ethics with his students just a week after the 2023 Hamas attack on southern Israel, and in the early days of Israel’s retaliation against Gaza.
“As I prepared for ethics class that morning, I knew I would have to say something. But what?”
“In a moment like this”, he proposed, “it’s easy to get trapped into doomscrolling, or to tighten into a fist, or to shut down entirely and turn away.” But this is where Shapiro’s many years of writing and reporting on human rights and criminal justice informed his response.
He told the audience that his own understanding of how violent acts and trauma shape people changed dramatically when he went from crime reporter to crime victim, following a stabbing incident in the early 1990s. From there he found himself asking “how do we report on people who’ve had the worst experiences of violence?”
From the trauma of Vietnam veterans or the victims of sexual institutional violence to current day international conflict, our understanding of how trauma and PTSD shapes people and the journalists that cover these events is critical. “The biggest decisions democratic societies have to make”, Shapiro argued, involves “how we respond, how we prevent, how we understand human trauma.”
Five key takeaways on violence, journalism and the democratic future from the 2025 Annual Humanities Horizons Lecture:
- Violence is central to news and public storytelling but “good reporting refuses to either sensationalize violence or turn away from its reality.”
- “Constant arousal” in the news, in true crime or in video games is a dangerous thing for society
- Confronting authoritarianism through storytelling means constantly innovating – “in subject matter, information-gathering and narrative.”
- “Amid the spectacle of fearsome acts, shared ethics are what make journalism a democratic force.”
- “Reporting at its best offers an alternative” to violence and authoritarianism, which models inquiry and empathy and civic discourse.
The Annual Humanities Horizons Lecture was established in 2013 to provide a reflection on and advocacy for the Arts and Humanities. Bruce Shapiro’s lecture was broadcast on ‘Big Ideas’ on ABC Radio National on Thursday, 22 May 2025.
Listen back to the programme here
About Bruce Shapiro:
Bruce Shapiro is Executive Director of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, a project of Columbia Journalism School, encouraging innovative reporting on violence, conflict and tragedy worldwide.
An award-winning reporter on human rights, criminal justice and politics, Shapiro is a contributing editor at The Nation and U.S. correspondent for Late Night Live on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio National. He also teaches ethics at Columbia Journalism School, where he is adjunct professor and Senior Advisor for Academic Affairs. His books include Shaking the Foundations: 200 Years of Investigative Journalism in America and Legal Lynching: The Death Penalty and America's Future.
Shapiro is recipient of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies award for "outstanding and fundamental contributions to the social understanding of trauma." He is a founding board member of the Global Investigative Journalism Network.