Stark facts and personal tales of attacks on the press took the centre stage at the Frontline Club on Wednesday 8th May, in a session chaired by BBC Global News director Peter Horrocks

Elizabeth Witchel from CPJ details the findings from their current report on press freedom. Photo: Alex Glynn

Heather Blake from Reporters Without Borders (RSF) outlined why her organisation thinks this is an important issue to campaign on:

“It affects all of us. The hallmark of democracy, of society, of freedom is in the freedom of speech and the freedom of press. And the press being attacked is always a sign there are other violations taking place.”

Defence and diplomatic correspondent at The Independent, Kim Sengupta, stated the immense importance of shedding light on what is happening “and it is essential they are protected to tell the truth.”

Getty Images picture editor Aidan Sullivan reminded the audience:

“If people aren’t being held accountable for killing and hurting journalists, we will eventually get to a point where sadly it is too dangerous to go and cover stories.”

He started the press freedom campaign A Day Without News? because, he explained: “I’ve just lost too many friends.”

Elizabeth Witchel of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) relayed the findings of their current report. She also reminded the audience of the human face to the statistics, drawing attention to a banner featuring the face of Saleem Shahzad, a Pakistani journalist who was found dead in a canal in 2011, showing signs of torture.

Blake shifted the conversation to the increasing role and repression of citizen and digital journalists (netizens) and talked about how RSF now records acts of impunity against these groups as well as traditional journalists:

“One of the stark changes in what RSF is calling ‘the changing character of reporting’ is the proliferation of citizen and netizen journalism. Due to this change, the impunity against digital community users is on the rise – they have become the new target of state and non-state actors.”

On this point Horrocks asked:

“Is there a danger that by extending the definition of those that RSF are concerned about, regimes will say you’re talking about people we would see as activists?”

An international humanitarian lawyer in the audience chipped into the debate:

“I think the conflicts of the last few years, including Syria, highlight that this is the role that these people will fill when the international media is excluded a large part of the time.”

Sengupta cautioned that this was a problematic point:

“I have great difficulties because I think as a journalist you try to subscribe to a certain ethos – we try to be objective. And citizen journalists are not. In Libya, guys who were writing on the web were then picking up the gun and going to fight.”

Sullivan agreed with Sengupta, warning that although netizens are not combatants, and they should be protected, it shouldn’t necessarily be as journalists:

“When we start to blur those lines, what we’re trying to do and what I’m trying to achieve becomes more difficult.”

Alex Glynn is a freelance journalist currently doing a Newspaper Journalism MA at City University.

You can watch the session or listen to the podcast below.

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/attacks-on-the-press-stamping

In an evening of contrast, colour and laughs, Reportage by Getty Images showcased two of their key talents, Peter Dench and Tom Stoddart.

After reviewing portfolios at Getty’s Open Edit with his team all day, Vice President of Photo Assignment for Getty Images Aidan Sullivan introduced the evening with a short overview of the kind of work Reportage by Getty Images engages in. He explained that Reportage, five years old this September, is an autonomous agency within Getty and was launched as:

“an agency [to] represent what we believe to be some of the finest photojournalists working today. We set about creating this website, bringing in the photographers, and I’m very privileged to work with not only some of the greatest photographers around today, but also the greatest editors, many of them are here this evening. It’s a joy to work with them and share their passion, and it is real passion.”

Peter Dench demonstrated some of that passion as he took the audience through a sample of images featured in his crowd-funded book England Uncensored.

“I think it’s appropriate that Tom is here giving a talk tonight as well, because visually we’re both very, very different, but I think we still share the same drive and enthusiasm to tell an engaging story through our photographs.”

Dench‘s playful delivery buoyed the audience along as he provided an irreverent look at this green and pleasant land and its relationship with getting pissed. Full of bright colour, Dench made a point of contrasting his work with Stoddart‘s:

“When I joined IPG Tom […] gave me some advice. He said “Peter, if you photograph a woman in a yellow dress, all you see is the yellow dress, but if you photograph her in black and white, you see her soul”. After I’d wiped up the wine I’d splattered down my top I said “Tom, you’re wasting your breath, all I see is a picture without colour.”

The widely respected Tom Stoddart, who has worked with Aidan Sullivan for 35 years, also picked up on Sullivan‘s comments about passion.

“It’s the one thing that I think that people trying to get into the industry don’t really understand. This is not a job, it’s an existence.”

Referencing the great Don McCullin, who had popped by the Club earlier, and his commitment to photography still at the age of 75, underlined his point.

Like McCullin, Stoddart is known for his images of war and human suffering. Stoddart‘s Perspectives exhibition, featuring classic images of disasterous world events he has covered over the years, opens on the 25th of July to highlight the International Committee of the Red Cross’s Healthcare in Danger campaign.

While speaking of going back to Sarajevo to meet the Bosnian war’s survivors who he had photographed, Stoddart said:

“It’s great- it’s not very often you get the chance to square the circle in our work, you’re normally in someone’s face for 5/100th of a second- I once worked out that I probably worked only 2 minutes in my life”

Stoddart’s work couldn’t be more different from Dench’s, but Sullivan pointed out that they are both storytellers with serious messages behind their work. A true showcase for Reportage, the evening demonstrated how varied their stories can be and the breadth of subject-matter photojournalism can cover.

Watch the event in full or subscribe to the Frontline podcast on iTunes.

Reportage by Getty Images covers a huge diversity of topics in the news: from famine and conflict to documenting the quirkier side of life. Two Getty photographers Peter Dench and Tom Stoddart will be in conversation with Getty’s Vice President of Assignment Aidan Sullivan about their distinctive projects and their experience of photographing diverse subjects.

Peter Dench joined Reportage by Getty Images this year and is about to publish his first book, England Uncensored which was crowd funded through Emphas.is . His work takes a humorous look at the state of the nation. Dench has won a World Press Photo Award in the People in the News category and an exhibition of England Uncensored was displayed at Visa pour l’Image in 2011.

Seasoned photojournalist Tom Stoddart has covered the fall of the Berlin wall, the wars in Lebanon, Bosnia and Iraq as well as famine in Sudan. He works closely with Getty Images to produce photo-essays on significant world events. Stoddart has recently returned from Southern Sudan and will be showing work from this trip and other work he has produced in conjunction with the ICRC campaign, Healthcare in Danger.

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