Protecting freelance foreign correspondents in a new era of volatility

The risks are increasing for freelance journalists reporting in conflict zones around the world. A panel of journalists and experts brought together by the National Press Club’s Freelance and Press Freedom Committees Nov. 9 sized up those risks and offered advice on how to handle them.

“I think we are at a turning point,” said Charles M. Sennott, GlobalPost co-founder, the GroundTruth Project founder and executive director.

Speaking of risk, Sennott added: “For me personally, profound deeply personal turning point was the murder of James Foley,” who was a friend and colleague. “In this shifting landscape we rely a lot more on freelancers. Jim’s murder spurred us to look for a new model, find a way as news orgs and freelancers, because we have to make sure they are safe, insured, that they think through risk analysis and that we as editors make sure we have the resources to do that.”

The six panelists ranged from freelancer to foreign editor to the heads of three nonprofit organizations devoted to international reporting. Their roles over the years included documentarist, foreign correspondent, front-line reporter, media-rights advocate, foreign bureau chief, producer and editor. For those who like to look at the world in terms of numbers, their years of experience collectively added up to just over a century.

The violence is not just a westerners’ problem. Ninety percent of the journalists kidnapped are locals — often Libyans, Syrians, Ukrainians, said Delphine Halgand, U.S. director for Reporters Without Borders.

The story of Rasha Elass, who covered the Syrian war for two of her 10 years reporting in the Middle East, put the audience right on the ground, or more precisely, the water, as she recounted a secretive trip across a lake near Homs, Syria, to reach a group of rebels. Once they were in open water, one of her Syrian transporters told Elass many of his “colleagues were still in the lake.” Air strikes and snipers had claimed their lives, he explained, because the lake was a vulnerable target. It was too late for her to ask them to turn the small boat back.

Other stories took the audience behind the foreign editor’s desk in Washington, D.C., making decisions about whether to accept the work of freelancers without being able to fully back them up if the worst happened.

“News organizations do need to recognize we have an obligation to do more than say thank you very much, here’s your check,” said Douglas Jehl, foreign editor of The Washington Post, which is fighting to free one of its own reporters, Jason Rezaian, from captivity in Iran. They have a duty to provide for the safety and security of the freelancers they use, he said, adding that the Post would not accept the work of freelancers in dangerous areas if the newspaper could not back them up as they could an employee.

Each organization has its own standards, though.

This fractured approach led to GroundTruth’s introduction of a document called “The Call for Safety Standards,” which endorses worldwide freelance-protection standards, but it may be a tough sell.

When questioned by co-organizer and moderator Carmen Russell-Sluchansky, Greg Myre, international editor for digital news at NPR, said he did not know if NPR would be signing on.

The Post had no plans to sign, Jehl said. In an email after the event, he clarified, “we very much welcome the role that the ‘code of conduct’ for news organizations and freelancers is playing in focusing attention on journalists’ safety,” but that as a general practice, the newspaper prefers to make decisions regarding safeguarding reporters “independently rather than in harness with others.”

“The digital age created a lot of disruption,” Sennott said. Not only have newspapers folded their foreign bureaus, extremist groups no longer need reporters to get the story out, some argue. Instead, they can use social media. Journalists have become more valuable for the ransom they can fetch than for the storytelling they can do.

“Journalists have a price on their heads,” said Steve Sapienza, a senior producer for the Pulitzer Center.

Elass countered there still is a recognition that skilled reporters are better at getting stories out to the world. She said journalists should consider filing stories anonymously.

“Non-byline reporting is how I managed to do it for two years in Syria,” Elass said. “Nobody knew I was a journalist. It changes all the rules about who I can talk to, who I can quote. It was the only way I could have done it. In the end, it was worth it. Very often I was the only international media in Syria.”

The question of how many women are reporting undercover was one the panel tackled at the prompting of Russell-Sluchansky. Halgand had the statistics.

“If you look at numbers of journalists killed every year,” Halgand said, “a very small percentage — maybe five to 10 — are women, and most of [the casualties] are locals. In most of these countries, most of the journalists are men.” But, she said, the statistic “doesn’t say anything about the everyday realities.”

Hazards are not limited to wars. Sapienza has shot and produced stories from dozens of countries, with an emphasis on crises other than war: HIV/AIDS crises in Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica; climate changes’ effect on Bangladesh; landmine survivors in Cambodia.

GroundTruth is pushing young reporters to start their careers in areas like those, said Sennott.

“We have pushed hard to tell the next generation of journalists, ‘don’t start your career in a war zone. There are really important stories to tell on global health, economic inequality, climate change,’” Sennott said.