Who bears the burden? Emotional culture and the distribution of vulnerability in U.S. journalism

This study investigates how journalism’s emotional culture shapes vulnerability for structurally disadvantaged groups during high-intensity events. Drawing on 39 interviews with U.S. journalists who covered such events between 2015–2023, the analysis examines how institutional norms governing emotional expression mediate experiences of precarity and risk. Three tensions emerge: boundaries between occupational and personal hazards, distinctions between professional and unprofessional conduct, and conflicts between institutional support and systemic barriers. The findings show that journalism’s emotional culture—rooted in objectivity norms that privilege white male staffers—systematically marginalizes vulnerabilities experienced by women, freelancers, and racialized journalists. In doing so, this study reveals emotional culture as both a primary organizing force that reproduces structural inequalities through exclusionary logics and a contested terrain where dominant norms face ongoing challenge.