Families who experience bullying or cyberbullying often undergo complex negative emotions that can debilitate their ability to effectively respond to and cope with bullying. News stories reporting on bullying and cyberbullying can intensify these negative emotional reactions, especially hopelessness, since many news stories on bullying and cyberbullying use alarmist language to capture attention (e.g., epidemic, tragedy) or commonly report on bullying or cyberbullying stories that end in suicide (Moreno et al. in Prevention Science, 20(8), 1274–1283, 2019; Moreno et al. International Journal of Bullying Prevention, 3, 270–277, 2021). Altering the way bullying and cyberbullying news stories are written may be one avenue of intervention that can help change beliefs about bullying and decrease feelings of helplessness among families. The goal of the present study was to understand how journalists approach writing bullying news stories and identify what would help journalists produce stories that have less negative emotional impact. We recruited and conducted interviews with 20 journalists from different news mediums (70% newspaper, 45% magazine, 15% digital) and ranges of reach (60% national, 35% regional/local). We used an inductive, constant comparative, grounded theory approach to identify emergent themes among the interviews. Three themes emerged from the data: (1) balancing emotions with solutions, (2) development and distribution of resources to journalists, and (2) the role of researchers. Findings clarify what resources are needed for journalists to construct bullying and cyberbullying news stories that can help empower families and the community.
