OFFICIAL SECRETS is based on the true story of Katharine Gun, a British whistleblower who leaked information to the press about an illegal NSA spy operation designed to push the UN Security Council into sanctioning the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The Observer newspaper later broke the story and Gun was subsequently arrested and charged under the Official Secrets Act, sparking a public outcry.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the people behind the true story, Katharine Gun and journalist Martin Bright, as well as the film’s director Gavin Hood. It will be moderated by FT film journalist Danny Leigh.

Complimentary drinks will be available from 7pm before the screening starts at 7:30pm.

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For this special event we are delighted to be joined by the film’s director and co-writer Tom McCarthy and co-writer Josh Singer, along with The Boston Globe journalists that the film is based on: Sacha Pfeiffer and Mike Rezendes.

In a discussion chaired by the former head of BBC News and director of the centre for journalism at Cardiff University, Richard Sambrook, they will talk about the events the film is based on and the process of adapting them for the screen.

Spotlight will be released in the UK on 29 January 2016.

Acts of journalism should be shielded from targeted surveillance, data retention and handover of material connected to confidential sources. This is a key early finding from a recent study commissioned by UNESCO on the state of journalistic source protection in 121 countries.

Early findings from the study, Protecting Journalism Sources in the Digital Age, authored by Australian journalist and journalism academic Julie Posetti, indicate that legal source protection frameworks in many of the countries studied are outdated and need strengthening. It also shows that they are being eroded by national security and anti-terrorism legislation; undercut by surveillance – both mass and targeted; and jeopardised both by mandatory data retention policies and pressure applied to third party intermediaries to release data.

UNESCO commissioned the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) to undertake the study and Posetti led the project in her capacity as WAN-IFRA Research Fellow.

In an event in partnership with the Foreign Press Association, we will be joined by the author of the study and other experts to discuss the implications of the findings and what needs to be done to ensure journalists can fully protect their sources.

Chaired by journalist, writer and Foreign Press Association President, Paola Totaro.

The panel:

Julie Posetti is an Australian journalist and journalism academic. A former news editor, presenter and political reporter with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Posetti is currently based in Paris as a research fellow with the World Editors Forum and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers. She is completing a PhD on “The Twitterisation of Journalism” at the University of Wollongong, Australia, where she teaches social journalism, radio, TV and multimedia storytelling. She recently completed a major UNESCO-commissioned study of journalistic source protection in the digital era in 121 countries for WAN-IFRA.

Gavin Millar QC has a broad practice spanning media, information, public, criminal, employment and discrimination law. He is a noted specialist in all areas of media law including defamation, privacy, breach of confidence, publishing contempts and reporting restrictions. He often represents media outlets, journalists and politicians in both civil and criminal proceedings.

Jonathan Calvert is the longest serving editor of the The Sunday Times’ Insight team in its 50 year history, having held the job for a decade. His first scoop for the team was exposing the cash for questions scandal as an undercover Insight reporter in 1994, and he soon after became investigations editor at The Observer where he oversaw a string of major exclusives. Since returning to The Sunday Times he has headed a long line of exclusives – most recently the Fifa files investigation which made waves around the world.

Paul Myers is a BBC internet research specialist. He joined the BBC in 1995 as a news information researcher. He also runs The Internet Research Clinic, a website dedicated to directing journalists to the best research links, apps and resources. His role in the BBC Academy sees him organise and deliver training courses related to internet investigation, data journalism, freedom of information, reporting statistics, working with social media, web design and image production. He has worked with leading programmes like Panorama, Watchdog, national news bulletins, BBC Online, local & national radio and the World Service.

PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT WILL BE FILMED AND STREAMED LIVE ON OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL

Every year, women journalists are killed, assaulted, threatened and defamed – all in pursuit of the truth. Many of these journalists face not only the implicit dangers of hostile environments, but cultural and social prejudices that would keep them silent.

Now more than ever, female journalists are responsible for covering the world’s most challenging hostile environments yet remain under represented in the global news media at large; identifying the types of threats women journalists face and how to address those threats is key to greater gender equality in the global news media.

News Reporting and Navigating Risk will be a moderated discussion with accomplished journalists who have reported from hostile environments around the world about their experiences with a focus on best practices for security, emotional self care, and access to medical, mental health, and emergency resources.

Chaired by Elisa Lees Munoz, the executive director of the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF).

The panel:

Alison Baskerville is an FFR board member and a documentary photographer.

Nadine Marroushi has worked for 8 years as a journalist writing about the Middle East and Africa.

Richard Spencer is the Middle East editor for The Telegraph.

PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT WILL BE FILMED AND STREAMED LIVE ON OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL

From Egypt to Mexico, Russia to Syria, journalists are increasingly coming under attack. They are murdered, imprisoned and intimidated for doing their job. If this continues we will face a growing crisis in information – a shortage of the news that we need to make sense of our globalised world, and to fight human rights abuses, understand conflict, and hold power to account.

As executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, Joel Simon is on the frontline of the global battle for media freedom. In his latest book, The New Censorship, he details that battle and offers a prescription for how to counter these new challenges.

Simon will be joining us to offer an insight into the problems we face and to examine what needs to be done to ensure future generations are not deprived of a free press.

Chaired by Richard Sambrook, Professor of Journalism and Director at the Centre for Journalism, Cardiff University. He is a former director of Global News at the BBC where he worked for 30 years as a journalist, producer, editor and manager. He is the chairman of the International News Safety Institute (INSI).

Joel Simon is the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and has written widely on media issues. He is a regular contributor to Slate and the Columbia Journalism Review, and his articles and commentary have appeared in the New York Review of Books, The New York Times, World Policy Journal, and other publications. He is also the author of Endangered Mexico: An Environment on the Edge.

Shrinking editorial budgets have resulted in journalists increasingly turning to aid agencies to cover stories. At the same time, aid agencies are being pushed to be more media savvy in order to get their message out and to support advocacy and fundraising efforts.

In conflict and disaster zones, aid agencies often have the local knowledge and access to affected communities. Journalists need these stories, while aid agencies are equally in need of the media coverage. Although it appears to be an ideal partnership, this kind of embedded journalism raises significant editorial and security questions.

We will be joined by an expert panel of journalists, security experts and humanitarian workers to examine the editorial complexities and security risks presented by these partnerships. The media and aid agencies have long had a symbiotic relationship; we will be looking at how that is developing.

Chaired by Ben Parker who has worked in media and humanitarian response for over 20 years. He is the co-founder and CEO of IRIN.

The panel:

Polly Markandya is the head of communications at Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

Lisa Reilly is the executive coordinator of the European Interagency Security Forum (EISF). She has 20 years experience in the development and humanitarian response sector, working overseas in a variety of programme management roles in both Africa and Asia.

Michelle Betz is a former journalist who now does media development work with UN and aid agencies in conflict and post-conflict countries.

Siobhan Sinnerton is the commissioning editor for news and current affairs at Channel 4.

Photo: Fabio Basone/MSF. MSF doctor, Dr Javid Abdelmonemin, adjusts his goggle camera equipment during filming for the BBC Panorama documentary ‘Ebola Frontline’ at MSF Case Management Centre, Kailahun, Sierra Leone.

This event is in partnership with the European Interagency Security Forum.

“Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible.”

Janet Malcom, The Journalist and the Murderer

Hosting a debate on the role of fiction/nonfiction in documentary storytelling, David Wilson, founder of True/False film festival, chaired a panel of past True/False filmmakers Kevin Macdonald, Sarah Gavron and Beadie Finzi. He began by asking them all what it was that guided their decision making process that ultimately skirted the line between fictional representation and factual accuracy.

“When you find yourself in a position where you are investigating how to shape a story, how to shape a narrative, how do you determine whether you are going too far or you have not gone far enough . . . that this is right and this is wrong?”

Photo by Dogwoof

Finzi, co-founder of BRITDOC, claimed this was a question of the internal moral code of a filmmaker.

“This is a grey area, a spectrum. Whenever you make a film you’re making a representation of somebody, crafting an impression of them and there is license in that. We all recognise when you are guiding the story for effect by manipulating the characters or enhancing them in a way which crosses a line.”

Filmmaker Macdonald disagreed that this is a line that is clearly defined and recognised by both filmmaker and audience/reader alike, and that the relationship between filmmaker and protagonist remains complicit.

“By selecting and counterpointing elements in any story you are changing what they are. In the end it comes back to what you yourself are comfortable with.”

Referencing Janet Malcom’s opening line from The Journalist and the Murderer, Macdonald acknowledged that you are ultimately using people’s lives and their personal narratives to make your film and therefore “it is, in effect, all indefensible”.

It is Malcom’s understanding of the ‘relativity of truth’ to which Macdonald alluded when speaking of evidence as part of an argument and the importance that chance and surprise play in the construct of this narrative.

For Finzi, this makes building a film “like surfing the wave . . . you have to adapt”. But these are adaptations that affect the narrative arc and, in turn, the consequence of the story.

“There was no greater example of this bombshell than Citizenfour. Laura [Poitras] had already finished a film about the surveillance state when Edward [Snowden] emailed,” starting a process by which an entirely new film would be found and made.

In the case of Citizenfour, this organic process emerged precisely because Snowden realised that Laura Poitras was the filmmaker who really “understood the issue, who was deeply invested in it, who was authentic and serious and who he, ultimately, felt safe reaching out to”.

Questioned on whether this demand for ‘absolute truth’ represented a gold standard or holy grail and justified or explained the methods utilised in documentary films, Wilson replied that “for me and most filmmakers the closest word is actually honesty – which is a little more gut sense – when we are being honest to our subjects, when we are being honest about our understanding”.

“I certainly don’t know any documentary filmmaker who thinks there is an absolute truth that they are going to present to the world but maybe it’s more a case of truths – plural.”

However, for Wilson, transcending and challenging this line remains problematic.

“When you take a glass of water and mix in a single drop of ink you have changed it entirely. It’s no longer clear and the whole thing has now become murky. As filmmakers you find that it’s not ink at all – it does not dissolve like that – that’s not the right metaphor for thinking about how people include elements of fiction in their work.”

Positioning documentary in relation to journalism, Macdonald suggested a story, “whether it’s in a newspaper, on television or in a cinema, is a construct which is by its very nature selective”, bound by the need to have a beginning middle and end, “which creates some sort of order out of chaos is”.

“That’s how the human brain works, that’s how we understand things. We make life bearable by telling stories in every moment of our lives and so documentary (and to an extent journalism) becomes an extension of that.”

While all acknowledged the cross-over between journalism and documentary, none of the panel chose to define themselves as journalists. However, they did recognise the profession as a broad church encompassing artists, filmmakers and journalists; depending on which affected how you viewed the issue of the truth, “according to who you are and how you see yourself”.

With this shift towards interdisciplinary practice, Finzi suggested that the audience had become more demanding and critical of how stories presented as ‘true’ were represented.

“With audiences now, there is an awareness when they are being lied to.”

For Wilson this comes back to the fundamentals of intermedia literacy.

“Audiences are going to bring their own tools to view the film and the sophistication of those tools is what is going to help them figure out their way as a reader. So from the nightly news to the furthest fiction – the truth can be viewed more as a playing field where it is as important to know where a film started from as where it ended.”

It was such an inspiring meditation on dox thanx @frontlineclub @davidkinofist @finzibeadie @SarahGavron K. Macdonald pic.twitter.com/mVJKi67UpR

— başak ç. (@_ARTvoltage_) November 18, 2014

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.

Freelance journalists are being relied upon more and more, it is imperative that they have the resources and training to protect themselves, as well as to help them get the story.

Following our event in New York with the Overseas Press Club of America (OPC), they will be coming to London to continue the discussion.

We will be bringing together a panel of freelance journalists and editors to examine what more needs to be done to make sure freelancers are supported by the news industry and have the resources available to prepare themselves for the risks of front-line reporting.

Chaired by Vaughan Smith, founder of the Frontline Club, an award-winning independent cameraman and a member of the board of representatives for the Frontline Freelance Register (FFR).

The panel:

David Williams is deputy global news editor at Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Marcus Mabry, editor at large of The New York Times and president of the Overseas Press Club of America (OPC). Previously he worked for the The New York Times and International Herald Tribune in in London and Paris, and was the associate national editor.

Ben De Pear is the editor of Channel 4 News and a member of the board of trustees for Rory Peck Trust.

Emma Beals is an independent multimedia journalist covering Syria and Iraq. She is a member of the board of representatives for the Frontline Freelance Register (FFR).

This event will take place at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs Building, 420 West 118th Street #1, room 1302, New York.

We are delighted to be teaming up with the Overseas Press Club of America (OPC) for two events on freelance safety. The first will be held at Club Quarters in New York and the second in November at the Frontline Club in London.

The brutal murders of James Foley and Steven Sotloff have again brought to the fore the dangers that front line journalists face. With freelancers being relied upon more and more, it is imperative that they have the resources and training to protect themselves as well as to help them get the story.

A panel of experts in the safety field will discuss what is available now, what more needs to be done and what responsibility news organisations have to the freelancers they employ.

The event is free, if you are in New York and able to attend please RSVP to patricia@opcofamerica.org.

The panel:

Bruce Shapiro, executive director of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma.

Sawyer Alberi, chief trainer for RISC (Reporters Instructed in Saving Colleagues).

Judith Matloff, a veteran foreign correspondent who teaches a safety training course at the Columbia University School of Journalism.

Vaughan Smith, founder of London’s Frontline Club, award-winning independent cameraman and member of the board of representatives for the Frontline Freelance Register (FFR).

Micah Garen, an independent documentary filmmaker and multimedia journalist and founder of Four Corners Media who has worked in conflict and post-conflict zones around the world including Iraq, Afghanistan and Egypt. Garen was kidnapped in southern Iraq and held for 10 days in 2004 while filming a documentary about the looting of archaeological sites.