Portland Stations Shuts Down Newscasts to Deal with Stress

I’m not sure that I have ever seen this before….

Sinclair’s KATU decided not to air any newscasts yesterday, so their entire could attend a seminar to help deal with on-the-job stress and trauma.

KATU Photojournalist Mike Warner posted about the news shutting down on his social media.

Apparently, a team from the Poynter Institute was brought in to present a program designed to help journalists cope with on-the-job stress and trauma.

I have mixed emotions about a station just shutting down the news department.

On one hand, it Is nice to see management taking the mental health of employees into consideration and putting on a program like this.

On the other hand, the news never stops, and isn’t your duty to give viewers the news? Could this not have been done in shifts?

What if the local fire department or police said that they were not going to respond to any calls or emergencies for an entire day, so the staff could attend a seminar dealing with stress?

I know that if I was the News Director, I would be completely stressed out knowing that we were not producing a newscast for the people of Portland.

I think the effort by the station is a noble one, I feel the execution of the plan could have been carried out better and NOT delivering the news to their viewers could have been avoided.

But, that’s just my opinion.