The purpose of a mentoring programme in this context is to assign a more experienced journalist in the newsroom to mentor colleagues with less experience, especially those who are new to the newsroom or who have not previously covered certain divisive topics. On the one hand, mentors should help mentees become aware of online abuse as an issue, the topics that typically lead to it and the forms that it may take.
On the other, they should serve as a source of encouragement for mentees when faced with such harassment both as to support mentees’ mental well-being and so as to help avoid the temptation of self-censorship. Mentors should walk mentees should their own experiences with harassment in the past and how they personally coped with the issue, including but not limited to by making use of newsroom measures for reporting abuse.