See the report online here.

Chair – Hannah Storm

Hannah Storm is Director of the International News Safety Institute (INSI), a UK registered charity whose members include some of the world’s leading news organisations. INSI’s work focuses on physical, psychological, and digital safety and it provides a network for members to share information to ensure journalists stay out of harm’s way. Storm is author of The Kidnapping of Journalists: Reporting from High Risk Conflict Zones (with Robert G. Picard) and No Woman’s Land: On the Frontlines with Female Reporters. Before joining INSI, she worked for organisations including the BBC, Reuters, ITN, and Oxfam.

Speakers

Dr Anthony Feinstein

Dr Feinstein is professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto and director of the Neuropsychiatry Programme at Sunnybrook Health Science Centre. He has undertaken numerous studies looking at how journalists are affected psychologically by their work in zones of war, conflict, and disaster. He is the author of Journalists Under Fire: The Psychological Hazards of Covering War (Johns Hopkins University Press) and Shooting War.

Will Vassilopoulos

Will Vassilopoulos is a freelance Video Journalist primarily working for Agence France-Presse (AFP). He holds a bachelor’s degree in biology & sports sciences and a master’s degree in exercise physiology from Manchester Metropolitan University. He started his journalism career in text for Japanese news agency Kyodo News before becoming a news anchor for the English-language bulletin at Greece’s state broadcaster ERT. In 2011 he went behind the camera and has since covered topics such as Greece’s economic crisis, political unrest in Egypt, Turkey and Romania, the conflict in Ukraine and most recently the migration crisis in Europe. He is the recipient of the 2016 Rory Peck Award for News for his film “Fear and Desperation: Refugees and Migrants Pour into Greece”. ​

Photo Credits: Yannis Behrakis

Calls to support the next generation of independent journalists working in conflict zones were made just days after French freelance photographer Olivier Voisin was killed by shrapnel in Syria.

Shrinking budgets, mounting pressure and increased accessibility to war torn areas were hot topics at On the Media: Unprepared, Inexperienced and in a War Zone debate at the Frontline Club on 27 February, an institution which itself was founded on a cooperative of freelance cameramen who specialised in frontline reporting for television. According to Vaughan Smith, the founder of the club, half of the cooperative were killed in the 1990s.

Journalists, news executives and media support groups attended. Over the course of the evening, the failings of the news industry to support fledgling freelancers were laid bare.

“The pressure comes from people in the industry… who say, ‘we need more action, otherwise we can’t buy it’” said Aris Roussinos, a freelance filmmaker who had just returned from covering the conflict in Mali.

“So on the one hand you’ll have articles in the BBC College of Journalism [website] saying look at these people taking wild reckless risks, look at these crazy freelancers… when perhaps there will be others in the organisation saying there’s not enough bang bang, go back and get some.”

He said that some combat footage he had recently shot in Gao had earned him more than all of his other projects in the past year combined.

Julia Macfarlane, a journalist who recently worked on an independent documentary in Beirut, said that she was also told when her previous pitches weren’t action packed enough.

“I tried hard to pitch stories in Indonesia…. and it wasn’t sexy enough. It’s not our fault [that we take risks] as freelancers,” she said.

With increasingly cheap equipment and flights, and expanding social media, more inexperienced journalists are able to reach hotspots to try to cut their teeth in the industry. But these freelancers are competing with journalists working for large media organisations in already saturated war zones.

The discussion quickly moved on to preparedness and support, the lack of which some freelancers face in comparison to larger news organisations puts them at a disadvantage.

“We want to take risks but we won’t do it unless it’s calculated,” said Colin Pereira, head of safety and security at ITN.

“The machines the broadcasters have in place take over when there are problems.”

“The freelance community does not have that machine – that machine costs a lot of money. They have to work together to get that machine. But [currently] it’s not coherent and it’s not enough.”

Hannah Storm, director of the International News Safety Institute, said that more emphasis needed to be put on planning and preparation before heading to a war zone. She said that this support could be brought by NGOs who could prepare journalists for the realities of war.

“You wouldn’t go out to a war zone without a camera, so why would you go without a flak jacket?” she said.

“It’s great if we can get more of the footage out there, of the good stuff, without taking too much risk and putting lives at risk.”

“There is a need for mentoring. There is a massive amount of stuff out there, information, organisations, insurance possibilities.”

A chartered association of freelancers was one of the suggestions to consolidate freelancers and the increasingly competitive news industry. It would work, Roussinos said, when big organisations pay to train freelancers and provide insurance and equipment, and in return the freelancers could provide content.

“Both sides get something out of the bargain – freelancers get a degree of security, and the news organisations don’t get the moral qualms. I think that would be the most efficient way of mentoring,” he said. “It’s not a new thing that young freelance journalists go off and push themselves further… that’s the economic imperative of being a freelance.”

“No one asks freelancers to do this. We do it because we want to do it.”