Press cards are an essential part of a professional journalist’s kit. They provide proof of a journalist’s legitimacy and credibility, enabling access to essential news stories and events. They also play a key safety role. Carrying a press card can prevent detention or arrest and alleviate suspicion over a journalist’s presence at an event, location or situation. They can make it safer to negotiate difficult checkpoints and can help protect a journalist’s equipment from confiscation. Without a press card, journalists can be exposed to greater risk, especially in critical situations.

But for many freelance journalists, press cards are difficult to obtain.

Freelancers who are not a member of a national union, who work internationally and who are not based in the country of their nationality can often struggle to obtain press cards, especially those who work for multiple clients. The Frontline Club Press Card will ensure that these freelance journalists are better able to secure professional accreditation.

The cards are currently available to registrants of the Frontline Freelance Register (FFR), a representative body for freelance journalists created and run by freelancers. 

All FFR registrants are professional and active journalists who abide by a recognised industry code of conduct. By doing so, they support an increasingly important but vulnerable international reporting community.

Freelancers who are not members of FFR can register their interest at:  presscards@www.beta.frontlineclub.com

In FFR’s soon to be published survey, The State of Freelancing in 2019, 60% of respondents from 70 countries confirmed that press cards are vital to their safety while working. The many comments related to press cards and safety from respondents include:

• “Security forces in Mexico repeatedly ask for press cards and it helps our safety if we have them, since they are one of the main aggressors against journalists.”
• “I am a journalist who has been working in Syria for over a year. Because of the existence of large groups with different ideologies there must be a card explaining to all of them that I am a journalist and neutral”
• “Authorities in the parts of the world where I work generally dislike journalists, but they at least understand the nature of our work. A press card is extremely necessary.”“I work in a country in which it is illegal to operate as a journalist without press accreditation and it is often necessary to show one’s press card. Journalists who are denied a press card are liable to be arrested”
• “Tense checkpoints and authorities have demanded press cards before and backed off when they were provided.”
• “A press card is helpful, particularly in tense protest/riot situations but it’s hard (and sometimes expensive) to have an up to date accreditation. No outlet I work for is willing to issue one to a freelancer.”
• “Without a press card it would be impossible to obtain the necessary permissions to work safely in a hostile environment like Iraq or Syria. More than that, it makes foreign reporters recognizable by security forces.”
• “Police, authorities, government officials and non-state actors always want to see some official documentation to identify me when I’m photographing events/people and showing them a press card lends legitimacy to why I am at a certain place at a certain time.”

Frontline Club Press Cards will only be issued to verified professional journalists. They are not part of the UK Press Authority scheme.

For further information please visit the Freelancer Hub at the Global Media Freedom Conference, Printworks, London SE16 7PJ on 10th and 11th July or contact Vaughan Smith, Founder, CEO & Trust Executive Director: vaughan.smith@www.beta.frontlineclub.com.

Endorsements

Safa Al Ahmad travelled to Yemen to investigate the escalation of US strikes against Al Qaeda. This is a campaign that has largely been fought in secret, but in January 2017 it briefly became headline news when US Special Forces raided the village of Yakla.

President Trump quoted the then Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, describing a ‘highly successful’ raid which ‘generated large amounts of vital intelligence’. Safa Al Ahmad travelled to Yemen to find out what really happened at Yakla. In the film she finds evidence of misidentified targets, civilian deaths and terrorised communities.

With unique access and tireless research, Al Ahmad shows that Al Qaeda recruitment in this region of Yemen is not necessarily driven by a desire for global jihad but by local factors, and is often a simple fight for survival.

The film finds evidence that significant numbers of Yemeni civilians have been killed. Exactly two years since the first strike on Yakla, Targeting Yemen suggests that contradictions in America’s policy towards Yemen are sabotaging its strategic aims – and have been since the start.

Chair:

Christopher Mitchell became Documentaries Editor at BBC Arabic in April 2018, after two years working for the BBC as a freelance executive producer. He is an award-winning writer, director and executive producer, having made many films for networks including BBC TV, ITV, Channel 4, ARTE, WDR Germany and Al Jazeera English. He was managing director of the independent production company OR Media from 2005 until 2014.

Speakers:

Safa Al Ahmad is journalist and filmmaker who has directed documentaries for PBS and the BBC focusing on uprisings in the Middle East.  Her  film “Yemen Under Siege” won two Emmy Awards in 2017.  She is the winner of the 2015 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award for Journalism, the El Mundo award for journalism for her body of work in 2015, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression  (CJFE) in 2015 and the Association of International Broadcasting (AIB) Best International Investigation for her film ‘Saudi’s Secret Uprising’ in 2014. Her writing on the Arab uprisings was published in an anthology ‘Writing Revolutions’ published by Penguin and won an English Pen award.

Farea Al-Muslimi is chairman and co-founder of Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies. He is also an Associate Fellow at Chatham House. He previously worked for the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut and Middle East  Institute in Washington, D.C. as a visiting scholar where he covered Yemen and Gulf.

In August 2016, UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon appointed Al-Muslimi to the Advisory Group of Experts for Progress Study on Youth, Peace and Security, a study mandated by Security Council resolution 2250 to examine the positive contribution of youth to peace processes and conflict resolution and effective responses at local, national, regional and international levels.

Al-Muslimi’s writings and analysis on Yemen and the wider region have been published in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, New York Times, The National, The Independent, The Guardian, Al-Hayyat, Assafir Arabi, Al-Monitor, and many other publications.

Following a new report on journalist safety and the launch of Committee to Protect Journalist’s new Emergencies Response Team, this evening will bring together a variety of perspectives on how the safety landscape for journalists and media workers has changed in recent years. The speakers will discuss the new threats facing journalists, what work has been done to address them, and what work remains to be done.

Chaired by Vaughan Smith, co-founder of the Frontline Freelance Register and Founder of the Frontline Club Charitable Trust.

Speakers:

Colin Pereira, CPJ’s journalist safety specialist

Neil Breakwell, London Bureau Chief for VICE News

Nevine Mabro, Head of Foreign News and Foreign Films at Channel 4 News

Alison Baskerville, Freelance British documentary photographer and FFR affiliate

Maria Salazar Ferro, Emergencies Director for CPJ, will make introductory remarks about the new report and emergencies response team.

On Tuesday 1st November, in an event organised in partnership with the London Press Club and Index on Censorship, six journalists met at the Frontline Club to redefine Foreign Correspondence.

“Where once we were seen as neutral observers, now we are targets” said Caroline Lees, author of Index’s recent article ‘Under The Wires’. Backed up by a deterioration in journalistic safety and evidence supplied by Assad defectors, it is clear that journalists are now firmly in the military’s crosshairs.

Freelance photojournalist Paul Conroy attributed this to the rise of the use of truth “as a weapon of war”. Kim Sengupta, Defence Correspondent at The Independent noted that the use of kidnapping and public beheading by rebel groups has led to “a huge tranche of Northern Syria not being covered”.

However, this tactic of limiting press freedom through violence is not limited to terrorist organisations.

Conroy is in a court case against the Assad regime after documents smuggled out of Syria proved that he and his colleague Marie Colvin were a victim of an assassination operation. These documents state that “international journalists were to be treated the same as combatants”.

The rise of untrained freelance journalists in the field worsens the problem. Freelancer Samira Shackle mentioned that she had come across numerous “horror stories” of young journalists arriving in hostile zones without even basic precautions. She cited the dangers of young reporters travelling without insurance or basic cyber security.

The problem is exacerbated by the increased role of ‘fixers’. As local employees who offer on the ground support to the international press, these freelancers run many of the same risks as Western journalists but with little of the support. They also must cope with increased hostilities and accusations of being a spy or traitor.

They are also often left out in the cold when it comes to kidnap or imprisonment.

Caroline Lees mentioned the case of Jovo Martinović, the Montenegrin investigative journalist arrested whilst researching a gun running story. Despite the dubious charges, the French station he was working for has done little to help him.

Dr Haider Al Safi formerly of The Independent, said that in many cases, these employees were being exploited: “They are overworked, not getting paid well and also not introduced to their rights”.

There was consensus on how the journalistic world could respond. This included major organisations taking more care in training all it’s employees. Some attempts have been made towards this end.

However, Lees mentioned sources from news organisations who said they didn’t support fixers because it was “too complicated, too expensive and they don’t want to accept liability”. With statements like this it is clear a sea change across journalism is a long way off.

For decades, newsrooms around the world have relied on local journalists, fixers and translators to help journalists carry out on-the-ground reporting from unfamiliar and dangerous regions. Without their support and local knowledge, international news gathering would not be able to function and some of the world’s most important stories would never have made the news.

But who looks out for the fixers when the international news teams go home? And what happens when local fixers become victims of a media crackdown against journalists?

An expert panel reveals how international news gathering really works, considers the risks in getting the story out and assesses the role of international news organisations in safeguarding the unsung heroes of foreign reporting.

Panelists:

Mowaffaq Safadi is a freelance fixer, translator and journalist who works across broadcast and print media. He writes regularly for Arabic and Syria-opposition websites and was a presenter for Syrian radio station Hawa Smart. He has worked for the Guardian, the Observer, BBC Radio 4 and international NGOs.

Issa Awadat is a freelance Syrian video journalist and photographer working on the current conflict in Syria from 2011-2015. He has been employed as a reporter and field producer for a number of western media outlets including the BBC, CBS and CBS 60 Minutes. As well as his work with the media, he has also produced short video documentaries and still images for a number of NGOs, covering the refugee crisis across the Turkish/Syrian border.
In 2015, after receiving numerous threats from ISIS, he left Turkey and gained asylum in the UK.

Jo Glanville is director of English PEN. She was an award-winning editor of Index on Censorship and was previously a BBC current affairs producer and documentary maker. She edited Qissat (Telegram), an anthology of short stories by Palestinian women writers. She has written for the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, the London Review of Books and the Observer, amongst other publications.
Kevin Sutcliffe, Head of News Programming, VICE Europe

Sarah Giaziri, Middle East North Africa Officer at Rory Peck

Evan Williams, Journalist and filmmaker specialising in international investigations

The vulnerability of journalists to kidnappings was starkly illustrated by the killing of James Foley and Steven Sotloff by Islamic militants in 2014. Their murder underscored the risks taken by journalists and news organisations trying to cover developments in dangerous regions of the world and has forced news enterprises to more clearly prepare for and confront issues of safety.

We will be discussing how news organisations prepare for and respond to the risk of kidnap, and how insurers, victim recovery firms, journalists’ families, and governments influence the actions of news enterprises – and why freelancers are particularly at risk.

This event will be chaired by Richard Sambrook, chairman of INSI, senior research fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and author of Reporting Dangerously: Journalist Killings, Intimidation and Security.

The panel:

Nicolas Hénin is a French freelance journalist who has reported on conflicts in Iraq, Sudan, Somalia and Yemen. In June 2013 he was kidnapped by Daesh militants in the Syrian city of Raqqa. He was held captive for eleven months until his release in April 2014, and was held alongside other Western hostages including James Foley, Steven Sotloff, Alan Henning and David Haines – all of whom were killed by the extremist group. He is the author of Jihad Academy: The Rise of Islamic State, published in 2015.

Colin Pereira is Director of HP Risk Management and Head of High Risk Security for ITN. He started out as an analyst at the BBC and left a decade later as Deputy Head of the Security team. He has managed and developed risk management structures and training programmes for a number of organisations and manages journalists and filmmakers working on the frontline on a daily basis.

Hannah Storm is director of INSI and author of The Kidnapping of Journalists: Reporting from High-Risk Conflict Zones and No Woman’s Land: On the Frontlines with Female Reporters.

James Harkin writes for Vanity Fair, Harper’s Magazine and Newsweek and is the author of Hunting Season, about the rise of Islamic State and its campaign of kidnapping.

All attendees will receive a free copy of The Kidnapping of Journalists: Reporting from High-Risk Conflict Zones.

A panel of freelance journalists and photographers joined an audience at the Frontline Club on Thursday 28 January 2016 to discuss the story behind a new exhibition of freelance war photography. Osie Greenway, Anne Alling, Benjamin Hiller and Jeffry Ruigendijk introduced photography and footage from their time in the Middle East – particularly Iraq, Syria and Lebanon – and explained that the exhibition’s purpose was to bring to light to the complexities that surround freelance journalism, which are rarely recognised by those who ultimately view the content produced. 

The @WZFreelance team discussing their project & exhibition @frontlineclub https://t.co/ZkVVWndicu #Support #WZF16 pic.twitter.com/T1T0874Eft

— Metro Imaging (@metroimaging) January 28, 2016

“We think there needs to be more light shone on [freelancing], to understand where the news comes from and how the news is reported. There’s a lot more going on behind the scenes when you see a picture,” explained photojournalist Osie Greenway.

The panel commented that the War Zone Freelance Exhibition was also created in order to draw attention to the vital – and sometimes highly dangerous – work of fixers and local journalists. 

“They are often forgotten in the long run,” said photojournalist and writer Benjamin Hiller. “We leave, they stay behind, and often they have to take up the consequences of that.” Without them, he said, the work of western journalists would be near impossible. “We are intertwined; we are dependent on each other,” he said.

Dutch photojournalist Jeffry Ruigendijk agreed, saying that local journalists frequently don’t receive recognition for their contributions – even when the western media picks up their stories or photographs. “You see a byline with a name from an Arab country, but apart from that you never hear these guys. You never hear them speak on the radio; they never appear on talk shows. They’re ghosts with a name and a beautiful photo.”

Ruigendijk also commented that the exhibition aimed to provoke a discussion about the inconsistent payment of freelance journalists. “Usually [editors] want the photo or video last week, but you get your invoice paid in a couple of months. At the moment I’m waiting on two invoices: one which is a year and a month old, and a second which is nearly a year old.”

If the exhibition could provoke a discussion of “what is ethical and not ethical” in this context, Ruigendijk said, then it would “help freelancing in general.”

Anne Alling, a Danish writer and reporter, said the exhibition was a “developing project” with the purpose of exposing the unique work of freelancers. She added that the exhibition reflected some emerging trends in freelance work, such as the use of crowdfunding and social media to maximise support for the project. She hoped the exhibition would “give an insight into what it takes to be a freelancer, and provoke some kind of debate about freelance journalism.”

Such an interesting evening @frontlineclub on warzone freelancing. Be back tomorrow for the follow-up on #warzonefreelancingexhibition

— Sarah Mbengue (@sarah_mbengue) January 28, 2016

Ultimately, Greenway said, freelance journalism is not a new profession: “it’s an ancient craft, we’re not trailblazing.” Instead, he said, “our goal is to bring it back into the light, to make people see what it takes to take a photo.”

The panel will return to the Frontline Club this evening – Friday 29 January – for a discussion on the future of freelance journalism.

Contact warzonefreelance@gmail.com for more information on the exhibition, and visit the Frontline Freelance Register website for more information on freelance conflict reporting and its risks.

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:

If you have done a first aid course before or a hostile environment course, then this is the one-day programme to refresh those skills. This practical workshop will allow you to update your core skills to save someone’s life in the field.

We’ll cover basic life support – breathing and bleeding and other useful tips – as well as how to do this in a hostile environment. Our practical simulations will provide you with a good reminder of what to do and refresh those forgotten skills.

If you have any queries about course content then please contact Caroline Neil.

Timings for the day:
09:00 AM Arrive
09:30 AM Course starts
12:30 – 1:30 PM Lunch
4:30 PM Course ends

This is a pilot course organised by the Frontline Club and the International News Safety Institute (INSI). You must have completed a first aid or a hostile environment course.