By Helena Williams

In a year where 100 journalists have been killed so far while trying to tell the story, and as the media’s coverage of events rocking the Middle East have been brought into sharp relief, it seems high time to examine the delicate relationship between ensuring the safety of journalists and being able to break the story first.

“Libya has been a very traumatic year for journalists, especially for freelance journalists. We lost three good friends,” said Inigo Gilmore, an award-winning freelance journalist who has worked in conflict zones across the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

“No one even imagined Libya would turn to this. How could we [journalists] predict what would happen on the frontline?”

Last night’s talk at The Frontline Club, ‘Reporting Conflict: Competition, pressure and risks’ highlighted the risks that journalists out in the field and news editors back in London face while attempting to break news to an increasingly demanding audience.

Chaired by former BBC executive Vin Ray, and with international editor for ITV news Bill Neely, head of international news at Sky News Sarah Whitehead, and BBC’s world news editor Jon Williams sitting on the panel alongside Gilmore, the debate focused on the difficulties of conflict reporting from opposing sides of the industry – both those commissioning journalists to go to the frontline, and the journalists themselves.

Neely, who has worked in numerous conflict zones, was adamant that the first and constant pressure of covering war did not come from newsrooms in London, but rather from the competitive nature of journalists who want to go and get the story.

The old pressures from the newsroom no longer exist, said Neely, who argued that journalists now travel to hotspots on a voluntary basis.

Journalists have to be savvy while out in the field – the rule is “don’t stay anywhere for longer than 20 minutes in a warzone,” he said –  but it is also up to the editors to monitor the situation.

“Over the past 10 years editors in London understand that it’s people on the ground who have to make the decision not to go those 100 metres up the road.”

Whitehead, whose Sky News teams were hailed for their remarkable coverage from Tripoli’s Green Square during the fighting in Libya in August this year, agreed:

“You’re not there and you have to make sure they [the journalists] can make the decision. This year has been one of the most extreme and dangerous that I’ve known.

“This year I have taken people off air who have been in the middle [of reporting]. One afternoon, when a team was watching a fire fight in Tripoli, snipers opened up behind them and I pulled them off air and asked what their exit route was.

“You have to be there to be the stops if they are taken over by the story.”

While the BBC and other news organisations were criticised for failing to get equally dramatic coverage of events unfolding in Libya, Whitehead insisted that a lot of her team’s reporting was down to luck.

“[Sky News] was at the right place at the right time, and in the right frame of mind. They didn’t know where they were going to end up. A lot of people made other decisions and it was the right decisions for them.”

Williams, who has also had his fair share of managing journalists in hostile environments, said: “Risk must outweigh return, but it is a very fine balance. It’s a difficult call to go forward, and it’s just as difficult to go back. If you have the balls to go back because you don’t think it’s safe I take my hat off to you.”

Neely added: “It’s risk and reward. You have to ask yourself, ‘is it really worth that extra shot?'”

“War reporting is a mixture of judgement and luck – but you can be unlucky. For those 100 journalists this year, for one reason or another, their luck ran out.”

There are still a few tickets left for this Saturday’s unique opportunity to hear WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange in conversation with renowned Slovenian philosopher Slavoj

There are still a few tickets left for this Saturday’s unique opportunity to hear WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange in conversation with renowned Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek. The discussion, which will be moderated by Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman, will focus on the ethics and philosophy behind the work of WikiLeaks and its effect on political institutions globally.

Next week Colin Freeman will be recounting his experience of being kidnapped by Somali pirates and Peter Greste who has recently been in the country for BBC’s Panorama will be talking about the Somali people’s struggle to forge a life in a lawless land.

For July’s First Wednesday, a panel of experts will be discussing the expansion of kill/capture missions in Afghanistan, their effect on the ground and how they level with counter-insurgency hearts and minds strategy.

Follow us on Twitter and catch up on any events you missed on the Forum blog or download our podcasts on iTunes.

ALL EVENTS ARE OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

This report by Bill Neely showing the incredible rescue of Janette Samfour from the ruins of Port-au-Prince in January 2010 won the ITV News international editor a news coverage BAFTA in the same year.

Referring to the "art of the news package" BBC political editor Nick Robinson recently described Bill Neely as one of "the great artists" who could "turn television into magic and use words and pictures like few other people do".

To illustrate his point, Robinson chose Bill Neely‘s reporting of the rescue of Janette Samfour six days after the 12 January earthquake in Haiti, adding that: 

It’s easy to say that anybody who stumbles across somebody whose survived an earthquake could tell that story. Don’t you believe it. It reminds me of that old gag about footballers, the more I practice, the luckier I get. Bill Neely’s either bloody lucky because he still keeps coming across these amazing dramas, or he’s bloody good, and I know which one I think.

That capacity to see that one story as a statement of the wider thing and to stick with it.  Remember, he’s there for three hours, the temptation for the reporter would be to think ‘OK, that’s quite good, let’s get another sequence, then let’s do a piece to camera, then let’s do an ariel shot’.  But to come across this human drama and say let’s stick with it, the amount of guts that takes, with the newsroom saying, is this going to make a piece? What happens if she’d died? Would that make a piece? Or if they got her out in the dark? But he had that instinct to stick with it, stick with it, tell the story. 

Find out more about Bill Neely and his career – and pick up some advice on the craft of television journalism – at our Reflections event on 29 June. You can book here.