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.”

The international editor for ITV News, Bill Neely delivered a fascinating masterclass in television journalism last night at the Frontline Club.

Part of a regular series of ‘Reflections’ events in association with the BBC College of Journalism, in which top journalists talk about their work and those who inspired them, the hour-and-half event was a mine of information and expert analysis on how to best make use of words, pictures and sound – and silence.

A must-watch for aspiring journalists and those who want to improve their game, the event includes insight into some of the key moments in TV journalism history since the 1980s, including the Bosnian war of 1992 to 1995. In the face of the atrocities carried out during that conflict, some journalists including the BBC correspondent Martin Bell and Ed Vulliamy decided that detachment was no longer possible and instead opted for the “journalism of attachment”, Neely explained.

He also analysed his colleague Penny Marshall’s use of words and pictures in a 1992 report from a Serb-run detention camp in Bosnia, which opens with Marshall saying ‘We were not prepared for what we saw there’. “Then for 18 seconds, she said nothing,” said Neely.

The report won the International News Award for 1992 at the Royal Television Society TV Journalism Awards but was caught up in a “storm” after Living Marxism magazine claimed that the video tapes were faked.

ITN successfully sued the magazine for libel but some people “still had not forgiven” BBC world affairs editor John Simpson’s decision to give evidence for the magazine, Neely said.

After showing one of his earlier reports from Newry while he was the BBC’s Northern Ireland correspondent, Neely examined the work of a number of journalists from ITV News, including Colin Baker and Paul Davis and the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen and Martin Bell.

Good journalists are able to use words to “grab a person by the lapels and never let them go,” said Neely,  who talked about the different approaches used by journalists, including Bell, who did not script his reports.

Drawing on a career that had seen him cover stories around the world from the fall of the Berlin wall to the Haiti earthquake and fighting in Libya, Neely also discussed the use of sound, pointing out the differences in the way  ITV News and the BBC reported from Dunblane massacre in March 1996.

Neely highlighted Baker’s report that showed school children leaving the primary school where 16 of their classmates and a teacher were shot dead. Ove the images, the former senior correspondent said: “Evil touched them, but just brushed past.”

During the report the sound of grieving parents could be heard from a building behind him but at no point did Baker draw attention to it, Neely said. “I think there are times when you just don’t need to,” he added.

The award-winning journalist, who picked up BAFTA’s three years in a row, contrasted different reporting styles from the BBC correspondent Kate Adie’s “icily detached” approach to the more conversational style of his colleague Tom Bradby, political editor of ITV News.

Neely talked the audience through step by step through his report from Haiti that won him his most recent BAFTA  last year. The report was shown in three parts and Neely highlighted different aspects of the package, which Ray pointed out broke with accepted wisdom of “using your best pictures first”.

Part two of the interview is here: