Rana will discuss the challenges of running an investigative journalism organisation based in Jordan and working with journalists in extremely difficult circumstances around the region with Sarah Giaziri , Director of the Frontline Freelance Register, and Mark Hunter, who has worked with ARIJ to develop the ‘Story-Based Inquiry’ approach to investigative journalism.
We will also hear from BBC Special Correspondent Nawal Al-Maghafi and Mohamed Aboelgheit about their experience reporting from Yemen and other countries in the region.
The event will look at how ARIJ tries to build trust with audiences despite often having to publish their investigations internationally rather than in national media due to self-censorship and press freedom issues.
In this discussion, Rana will give an inside track on how her team approaches their investigations and what she has learnt from the last 14 years of running ARIJ, through the lens of some of ARIJ’s most successful investigations, including:
Hannah Storm is the Director and CEO of the Ethical Journalism Network (EJN), a media consultant specialising in gender-based violence and gender-sensitive reporting, and the former director of the International News Safety Institute (INSI).
She is co-author of The Emotional Toll on Journalists Covering the Refugee Crisis and The Kidnapping of Journalists: Reporting from High Risk Conflict Zones, both written for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford and No Woman’s Land: On the Frontlines with Female Reporters, published by INSI, which explores the unique safety issues for women working in the media.
Rana Sabbagh is a founder of the award-winning ARIJ network, established in 2005, Rana Sabbagh has dedicated the last 35 years of her career as journalist, columnist and media trainer to promote free speech, independent media and human rights in a largely autocratic region. She is currently on sabbatical until end 2019 to help design the ARIJ strategy 2020 and beyond. As the former chief editor of The Jordan Times, Sabbagh became the first Arab woman in the history of the Levant to run a daily political newspaper. Prior to her work with the newspaper, she was a correspondent for Reuters International News Agency in Jordan and the Gulf for over a decade.
Dr. Mark Lee Hunter is a founding member of The Global Investigative Journalism Network, and the author of Story-Based Inquiry: A Manual for Investigative Journalists (UNESCO 2009). He is the founding academic director of the Future Media Management Programme at Stockholm School of Economics Riga. He has lectured in 40 countries on five continents.
Award-winning BBC Special Correspondent Nawal Al-Maghafi has been reporting on the Middle East since 2012. Over the past four years, she has been one of the few journalists conducting firsthand reporting of the ongoing conflict in Yemen; travelling extensively throughout the country, both in areas under Houthi rebel and government control. Her reporting has documented the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Yemen, including the bombing, starvation and spread of disease across Yemen. Her investigation into a 2015 attack on a Yemeni funeral — the deadliest of the conflict so far — provided key evidence in the case against weapons sales to Saudi Arabia by the US and UK. She has travelled across the Middle East to investigate how Mass Surveillance technology sold by BAE systems was being used by repressive Gulf states to monitor and stifle dissent by local human rights activists. Her reporting has also uncovered the complicity of the Egyptian army in the booming trade in organ trafficking across North Africa.
Mohamed Aboelgheit (Egypt) is an award-winning investigative journalist, columnist, and documentary editor. He is a contractor with Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) as a journalist and fact checker. His range of coverage included Egypt, Syria, Palestine and Yemen, that he produced recently his film with ARIJ “The End User” about tracking western weapons in Yemen. He won the Samir Kassir Award for Freedom of the Press, 2014 for the best opinion article.
Sarah Giaziri is the director of the Frontline Freelance Register (FFR), which was established in 2013 by a number of freelancers with support from the Frontline Club. It is a membership organisation representing freelance journalists exposed to risk while covering news, with the core objective to support their physical and mental well-being as well as campaigning for their safety and welfare. FFR also provides resources and support to freelance journalists on trauma and digital security training. Before joining FFR Sarah was a programme officer for the Rory Peck Trust for 7 years covering the Middle East and North Africa and providing emergency assistance to freelance journalists in crisis. She also served as the Middle East and North Africa analyst for Freedom House’s Freedom of the Press Reports, covering Syria and Libya. She holds a degree in international relations and Italian, a master’s degree in human rights, and a postgraduate degree in law.
]]>It was chaired by Hannah Storm, Director of the International News Safety Institute (INSI) with guests Rachel Corp, deputy editor of ITV News; Louise Ridley, co-founder of Second Source and freelance journalist currently running news special projects at HuffPost UK; Jasmine Andersson, also a co-founder of Second Source and an investigations reporter at PinkNews along with Mark Di Stefano, media and politics reporter for Buzzfeed News, London.
Welcome to the @frontlineclub's panel discussion on how to deal with sexual harassment in the media – we'll be tweeting highlights from the panellists, and the event will also be made into a Frontline Club podcast! pic.twitter.com/N1RePPRMBo
— The Second Source (@the2ndsource) March 7, 2018
Starting the discussion Storm asked Corp to share her experiences when she began working in the industry roughly twenty years ago and if she thinks there has been a cultural shift in the way women are treated within the newsroom.
Crop commented: “When I started working in television and broadcast there was this sense that if you were a young woman you were slightly fair game. It wasn’t necessarily at the desk but around socialising for work which was necessary part of getting on in your career and you had to have sharp elbows. But I hope in certain parts of the media we have come a long way from this fair game culture.”
Talking about the sea change which has come since campaigns such as #metoo Storm asked Andersson how her organisation is pushing for improvemnts. She replied:
…I think now when you enter the industry, it’s a lot about patronage, it’s a little bit more sophisticated, more insidious. So hopefully together we can present an active force and say that, ‘this isn’t going to happen anymore’
Louise Ridley emphasised that Second Source through being an informal network keeps solidarity among women and holds events to bring all the conversations together. It is also collecting sexual harassment and Human Resources policies of different media organisations to see where the loopholes are.
She said: “We are launching a mentoring scheme to help women in the first few years of their career…women who think they might drop out of Journalism, particularly we want to focus on working class women, women from ethnic minorities. We want to offer all the normal career advice and support but what is really important for us is that we offer help on those personal and difficult issues as well.”
On the particular subject of harassment in the newsroom Storm turned to Mark Di Stefano who has recently reported on a number of such cases. He said:
I feel as though there has been a noticeable change particularly in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein allegations and every young man in the industry should pause and take stock and reflect on their own behaviour…it’s also how we deal with our female friends, in group chats, in WhatsApp threads
There’s is a general disassociation within the media on debates around feminism and harassment of women. They are scared of putting their head above the parapet – tonight’s panel discussion on sexism within media. pic.twitter.com/Ujm1ubcgrO
— Frontline Club (@frontlineclub) March 7, 2018
He added: “The hardest thing you come across when you are reporting on harassment allegations in this environment in Britain is that libel laws are very strong and reporting from anonymous sources is very hard…I have had a dozen anonymous sources who have all corroborated each other on something that could have taken down a very senior media person but I could not get past my editors because I needed someone on the record which was very hard.”
A number of questions from the audience followed the formal discussion and some shared their personal experiences of harassment. The question of redress for freelancers who have been sexually harassed was also raised.
For this Storm suggested that organisations working with freelancers, such as Acos Alliance and Frontline Register among offering other support should also embed conversations around harassment into their protection mechanism.
To watch the talk click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzmR5mUwypg
For more information about The Second Source visit: http://www.thesecondsource.co.uk/
]]>Another News Story takes a fresh view of the European refugee crisis. The film opens in 2015 Greece as refugees arrive on the idyllic island of Lesbos and follows refugees into Hungary and Croatia and across Europe to a hoped-for sanctuary. Since 2015 the current refugee crisis has flooded every news and media outlet across the globe. Another News Story takes a unique approach to capturing this narrative. While still giving a groundfloor perspective of migrants fleeing Syria and Turkey and their struggle to find a country where they are welcome, director Orban Wallace simultaneously turns the camera on the journalists and the role they play in representing the crisis to the world. Wallace’s gripping debut feature raises important questions about what happens behind the camera, and how the life cycle of a news story starts and grows.
Another News Story has had 17 international film festival selections including Karlovy Vary, IDFA, Zurich and Glasgow among others. The UK theatrical release for the film is at the end of April.
Run Time: 84 mins
Trailer: http://www.anothernewsstory.com/
Ethical Journalism Network
The Ethical Journalism Network is an alliance of reporters, editors and publishers aiming to strengthen journalism around the world, working to build trust in news media through training, education and research.
The EJN has developed migration-reporting guidelines, which are available as an infographic and as a video have been used for training around Europe and have been presented to the United Nations in New York and other international forums.
The migration and media studies that the EJN has published or contributed to are:
How do media on both sides of the Mediterranean report on migration – A 17-country study commissioned by the International Centre for Migration Policy Development to produce a study analysing how media cover migration in Europe, Middle East and North Africa.
Fatal Journeys – Improving Data on Missing Migrants – Published by the IOM in 2017.
Refugees Images: Ethics in the Picture – From the EJN’s 2017 Ethics in the News report.
Moving Stories – An international review of how media cover migration published by the EJN in 2015.
To find out how to support the EJN visit: http://ethicaljournalismnetwork.org/support
]]>