In an episode of the TV show Elementary, a surgeon prepares to perform a surgery. After he dons his gloves and mask, with his students watching from the back, he plays some funny music from speakers. The students are pleasantly surprised. The surgeon turns around and tells them that they will need to learn to take performing surgeries easy. That they should not let ‘it’ get to them. What he means is that if a surgeon puts herself under pressure because a life is at stake, she could make more mistakes and further endanger that life.

The protagonist in the Tamil film Doctor stands for a similar idea, and it taught me something about remaining a journalist. Journalism done properly can exact a particular psychological toll. Just the developments pouring in from different parts of the world add to the ordinary unhappiness of the human condition. Investigative journalism, news analyses, and perceptive and knowledgeable commentary can exacerbate adverse thoughts, and make one feel helpless and one’s work seem too small, even negligible, in the face of the world’s profound challenges.

Some journalists who are on the ground reporting on trauma and grief often have it worse. We sometimes talk to our colleagues, friends, and family members about feeling despondent due to being journalists specifically.

Social media platforms’ preference for noise, tolerance for bots, and embrace of artificial intelligence has only made matters worse.

Since graduating from journalism school and starting work, most of my batchmates have left the profession. They have done so for various reasons but one common refrain has been “the stress is not worth it”. It does not mean that those who have stayed back have elected to live with stress. They have probably found a way to manage it, especially the specific variety that comes with being a journalist.

For instance, like the surgeon in Elementary who treats each surgery as just another task he has been trained to do, I treat many news developments as just more pieces of information I have learnt to respond to. Earthquake in Venezuela? Let us write an explainer. Climate talks failed? Think about who can write a news-analysis. Government approves drug without proper testing? Ask a medical researcher if she can write a commentary piece. Then move on.

In these instances, I have learnt to not take the information to heart. I do not think about what it means for the world, for society or for my beliefs. It is neither cause for despair nor source of hope. And it is only possible because there are others who care more so I do not have to (division of labour), freeing me up to efficiently collect, clean up, organise, and communicate knowledge. Sometimes, the problem is really that if you care too much, it could get in the way of you doing your job.

This psychological device also carries risks that we need to constantly beware and minimise.

One is that of reducing human tragedies to items on a checklist. Another is to not lose sight of the empathy required to narrate or edit a story with the requisite gravitas.

If I stop sensing the weight of the news, I could stop sensing the humanity of the people within. I also need to militate against the division of labour leading to a hollowed-out version of journalism that informs the head but ignores the heart. There is no free lunch.

But I have personally found this to be more maintainable than always feeling the weight in full. There are also those few topics where I really do care, perhaps even too much, like democratising scientific publishing.

The next time you meet a journalist, ask them how they are managing their stress. It is probably why they are still at it.