Frontline Club founder Vaughan Smith chats with Ben De Pear of Channel, 4, Marcus Mabry of The New York Times, freelancer Emma Beals, and AFP’s David Williams.

As many major news organisations close foreign bureaus, freelancers are called on more and more to cover global conflicts. They face risks often without the structure, training and resources that come with having a large media outlet behind you.

Continuing a conversation that began at the end of October in New York at the Overseas Press Club of America (OPC), Vaughan Smith, founder of the Frontline Club, spoke with leading editors at the club in London on Tuesday 18 November. They discussed the importance of pay to reflect risk, training, and new ways of determining how much responsibility for freelancers news outlets should take on.

Joining Smith were David Williams, deputy global news editor at Agence France-Presse (AFP); Marcus Mabry, editor at large for The New York Times and president of the Overseas Press Club of America (OPC); Ben De Pear, editor of Channel 4 News; and Emma Beals, a multimedia independent journalist covering Syria and Iraq and member of the board at the Frontline Freelance Register (FFR).

New Standards
How freelancers are folded in to media organisations vary from outlet to outlet, so what should best practice look like?

“There’s an inverse relationship between the amount of control and the amount of responsibility they should take on for that person,” Beals said of the freelancer–editor relationship.

“We commission people in a very clear way. They have to take a hostile environment awareness course. We have to know them,” said De Pear. “Do you trust this person, are they trained, will this person deliver something we will put on television?” he said are important questions they ask, adding, “the Arab Spring was a bit of a nightmare. Libya was a fantasy war zone. Anyone who had a camera flew in.”

“I think the future is more to incorporate regular freelancers into our structures,” said Williams, pointing out that they made a tough decision after two of AFP’s top editors met with freelancers on the Turkish–Syrian border in 2012. “We will not accept production from freelancers where we don’t dare to venture ourselves,” he said, “we don’t want to encourage freelancers to take risks that our own journalists won’t take.”

Better Pay = Safety
Marginal wages for a story from a conflict zone don’t allow freelancers to invest in much needed training and equipment, argued Beals and many from the audience.

“You have to pay them more than $300 for 1,000 words in Syria,” she said. “It’s a professional work force with unprofessionalised wages. The pay is about safety,” Beals added, noting a recent story had her covering her expenses, which were twice the rate she was getting paid, up front with a promise of reimbursement months later.

Treating freelancers like a member of the AFP team under a new approach, said Williams, means they have more financial backup. “We bring them into the same structure that an AFP reporter would have. Generally they should have the same benefits.”

Smith said he is astounded by the number of freelancers he meets who have not been on a hostile environment training course. “We did a survey of freelancers at FFR,” he said, “a third said they thought that the editors they dealt with didn’t give a fig about their safety.”

You can watch the talk and listen again online here:

On 28 October 2012, a government jet dropped a bomb on the village of al-Bara. Only 300 meters away, Olly Lambert was filming a meeting of rebel soldiers. While keeping his camera rolling, Lambert documented the shocking impact of the regime air strike on a civilian population.

As he was editing the highly acclaimed Syria: Across the Lines – a revealing report for Channel 4/PBS – he realised the footage shot that day in al-Bara offered a candid insight into the reality of documenting a war. Lambert decided to narrate the raw footage and publish it online, creating a rare, immersive and powerful portrait of the civil war. This footage went viral and reached a far greater number of people around the world than had tuned in to the original Channel 4/PBS piece.

Taking as his starting point the stark difference between the standard format piece of reportage he was commissioned to film and the 36 minutes of intimate personally narrated footage which became known as The Bombing of Al Bara, Lambert will discuss in depth the experience of filmmaking on the front line.

Directed by Olly Lambert
Duration: 36′
Year: 2012

Between the Lines was a three-day festival that took place at Rich Mix from 1 to 3 March. In a series of follow up events we continue to explore the challenges facing documentary makers, investigative journalists and citizen reporters in the new media landscape.

Presented by:

Supported by:

‘Reflections’ at the Frontline Club brings well known journalists to the stage to look back on their careers. Incorporating video clips, still images and articles selected by them, the host Vin Ray describes it as “a cross between Desert Island Discs and This is your Life”.  It is held in association with the BBC Academy College of Journalism.

On 29th May Alex Thomson, chief correspondant for Channel 4 News and the recent winner of the prestigious RTS Television Journalist of the Year joined Vin Ray.

Alex Thomson with Vin Ray. Photo credit: Caroline Schmitt

The first to be shown were two black and white still images showing the famous albino boy in Biafra by Don McCullin and Eddie Adam’s man being shot in Vietnam, the Saigon Execution.

“There is something peculiarly arresting about these photos; something that makes you stop and look about a photograph, different from television. I can visualise still images from Syria more easily than some of the moving images.”

When asked about what safety measures the Channel 4 News team take in conflict zones, Thomson shared an anecdote about one of his early experiences:

“When we started doing the Croatian War, we had a white diesel W2 Golf and wrote TV on it with black gaffa tape because that’s what they do in war movies. . . We just didn’t know what we were doing.”

When Ray asked what draws the correspondent to conflict zones, he stated:

“I do it because I like doing it. I do it because I don’t want to stand outside the House of Commons or in the City. That would drive me into a very early state of unhappiness.”

Thomson then read to the packed audience the report ‘Massacre in Sanctuary’ about the Qana Massacre in southern Lebanon. Written by Robert Fisk, Middle East Correspondent for The Independent in April 1996,  according to Thomson it was an example of “first-class, unencumbered and passionate eye-witness reporting.”:

“When you just look at that, when you take that apart as a piece of writing, there’s so much going on, there’s so much conveyed. . . . I just think that something like that just stands and there will always be a place – online or in the newspaper – there will always be a place for that kind of writing – direct, passionate reportage.”

Another issue raised by Thomson was the underreported issue of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) amongst soldiers operating remote drones in the US, which he elaborated on after presenting the infamous helicopter gunship footage leaked to WikiLeaks:

“They [USAF drone operators in Nevada] do a shift, they operate a drone and go back to see the assessment, so they see what the drone has done. They see the people  and the bits of people lying there . . . and switch off their computers. . . . Half an hour later they are in the shopping mall with their kids. That’s incredibly difficult for a human brain to link up. . . . Post-traumatic stress isn’t just found on the battlefield, it’s found on the virtual, real battlefield amongst drone operators as well.”

He finished with his well known foot-in-the-door interview with Kelvin MacKenzie, former editor of The Sun, to inquire about the newspapers infamous editorial take on the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster:

“Nasty. Vindictive. Pointless. Unpleasant. Personal. Tawdry. Cheap…theatrical. It’s all of that. Every time I see it, I feel more sorry for him actually. . . I started laughing, that was the problem . . . I couldn’t believe the way he mishandled it.”

Watch the full video or listen to the podcast below:

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/reflections-with-alex-thomson

What is the relationship between the extent of a disaster, its media coverage and the resulting help from charities and the public? A panel of Sky News and BBC journalists, DFID and experts with a background in humanitarian aid analysed these dependencies at a ShelterBox event hosted by the Frontline Club on March 5 2013.

https://twitter.com/ShelterBoxUK/status/309018570275295232

Mike Thomson, foreign affairs correspondent for the BBC, drew attention to a major challenge within conflict reporting:

“When sending reporters to a conflict zone, their task is to engage busy people in London with a country that is too far away to directly affect their lives.”

Thomson also highlighted that it can sometimes be too time-consuming to find the right sources in an environment where not everyone is a potential eye witness. Sarah Whitehead, head of International news at Sky News, is faced with another crucial limitation:

https://twitter.com/ShelterBoxUK/status/309021597832978432

Ross Preston, head of operations at ShelterBox International, differentiated between political and natural disasters:

“Man-made disasters traditionally are the bigger story and get wider coverage, whereas natural disasters that need more humanitarian aid don’t attract as much attention. Despite all, ShelterBox isn’t there for reportage, we’re there to assist.”

Dylan Winder, head of humanitarian response group of the Department for International Development (DFID), acknowledged the dependent relationship between the media and the government:

“The press raises awareness in places where we don’t have enough staff. Although media coverage is essential, cameras are turned off too soon. There is an accountability to affected nations. We are currently working on improving our sources, especially in building a relationship with local journalists.”

Whitehead responded to the criticism of the cameras “being turned off too early”:

“We always stay for as long as there is a compelling story. Each development has its own life span and we need to find the stories that connect with the audience. That is not a science.”

“Chances of surviving a disaster is about where it happened. That is morally unacceptable. Often the coverage we have is not enough to initiate the required aid.”

Winder added a governmental perspective to the debate:

“What is aid and what is politics? We recognise the massive threat of getting involved.”

Watch the event here:

The Aftermath Project holds a yearly grant competition open to working photographers worldwide covering the aftermath of conflict. In addition, through partnerships with universities, photography institutions and non-profit organizations, the Project seeks to help broaden the public’s understanding of the true cost of war— and the real price of peace — through international traveling exhibitions and educational outreach in communities and schools.

2011 APPLICATION AVAILABLE NOW (Deadline is 1 November)