This 3-year project funded by both SSHRC and FQRSC grants considered the emergence of victims' rights perspectives on crime in crime news and recent commemorative news genres for victims who have been killed in acts of terrorism and mass violence. The project has since been completed.

The research analyzed this emergence through backchannel artifacts and recent training practices within journalism education that teach reporters how to cover crime, terrorism and disaster from the perspective of their traumatized victims and survivors. The research revealed how training artifacts and profession-specific practices constitute a uniquely American news discourse on victims that evidences the links being built between journalism education, trauma science and victim advocacy. In addition to extensive documentary analysis and interviews with journalism educators, the research was also conducted via site visits to the Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma at the University of Washington at Seattle and the People and the Media Program at the University of Central Oklahoma.

Based upon research conducted for this project, Rentschler published her book Second Wounds: Victims' Rights and the Media in the U.S. in addition to following articles and book chapters:

"Trauma Training and the Reparative Work of Journalism." Cultural Studies 24:4 (2010).

"From Danger to Trauma: Affective Labor and the Journalistic Discourse of Witness." In Media Witnessing: Testimony in the Age of Mass Communication, ed. Paul Frosh and Amit Pinchevski. Palgrave Macmillan (2009), pp. 152-175.

"Victims' Rights and the Struggle over Crime in the Media." Canadian Journal of Communication, 32:2 (2007), 239-259.