My friend Bruce Shapiro, executive director of Columbia University’s Dart Center on Journalism and Trauma, has written an incredibly perceptive and nuanced essay on how the issue of bullying has been covered by some reporters. It is posted on the Dart Center’s website, a rich source of information about journalism and trauma.

Shapiro insists that “harassment, intimidation and humiliation among children and young adults – whether person-to-person or, more recently, involving the Internet – can inflict deep, enduring and sometimes fatal wounds.”

Bruce looks at everything from journalism ethics to the complexity of causal inference in the social and behavioral sciences. And he  never lets the complexity of the issue obscure his basic commitment to finding compassionate responses and solutions.

I can’t recommend it strongly enough.