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

We are joining forces with the Frontline Freelance Register and Rory Peck Trust to bring you a live online stream of safety tips and risk assessment. Three succinct online panel discussions will address the issues and answer questions about preparing freelancers for working in hostile environments.

The discussions will take place at the Frontline Club and will be streamed on the Frontline Freelance Register site, here. You can check out some of the Rory Peck Trust resources for freelancers that will be discussed during the streams here.

It will kick off at 2:00PM on Tuesday 22 October. You can pose questions and start your own conversations during each segment by posting to #safetystream on Twitter.

We’ll be covering:

• 2:00PM: Doing a risk assessment. We’ll get into the vital task of assessing the risks you may encounter on assignment. The Rory Peck Trust’s Risk Assessment resource can get you started.
• 2:30PM: Creating a communications plan. A rapid response is critical in a crisis situation, yet it’s often a weak spot in a freelancer’s preparations. This segment goes over what’s at stake. The Rory Peck Trust have produced a Communications Plan template that you can access now.
• 3:00PM: Digital security preparation. How you’re going to communicate securely on the ground and protect yourself digitally wraps up our sessions. We’ll be touching on topics that you can find in the Rory Peck Trust Digital Security resource.

Panelists to be confirmed.

The Syrian conflict is in its third year, and it is largely freelancers who assume the great risks in covering the events. The Frontline Club has recently launched the report Newsgathering Safety and the Welfare of Freelancers to consider how these risks can be mitigated.

Independent filmmakers, Olly Lambert and Mani, both made award winning films in Syria receiving wide acclaim for their powerful storytelling and unprecedented access. Head of High Risk for the BBC Simon Marr will also join the panel, which will be chaired by veteran journalist and filmmaker Inigo Gilmore.

This session will address the extremely treacherous challenges of filmmaking and reporting in one of the world’s deadliest places. What does the Syrian war tell us about the future of freelance journalism and independent filmmaking? How do we take necessary safety precautions – whilst managing to produce a great film?

Watch last year’s session ‘Dying to tell the Story’ with Founding Director of the Frontline Club Vaughan Smith, photographer Giles Duley and Siobhan Sinnerton, Commissioning Editor at Channel 4. Last year journalist Inigo Gilmore also chaired the debate.

A year ago, we invited freelancers, editors, managers, trainers and safety advisors to come together and discuss the issues of safety in the field.

Since then, professionals from across the industry have been collaborating and sharing their experiences and insight to shape this paper, overseen by ex-Director of BBC World Service Richard Sambrook.

In this paper, we have tried to to address the problems facing today’s freelancers, whose efforts to inform and engage us are now more valuable than ever – coverage of the ongoing conflict in Syria is testament to this.

Our efforts do not end here. The findings on duty of care, safety training, digital security and insurance are foundations that we will continue to build upon to improve the lot of freelancers and, in so doing, encourage a wider view of the world around us.

DOWNLOAD THE REPORT HERE:

Unique, uplifting and heartbreaking, The Network tells the story of Afghanistan’s first independent television network – TOLO TV – and the people behind it. TOLO TV has grown to be Afghanistan’s largest and most successful television network, employing over 800 Afghans producing news, current affairs, drama, comedy, music, and lifestyle programmes.

As the country faces the impending withdrawal of foreign troops, and with security rapidly deteriorating, the team behind TOLO TV are set to face their biggest challenge yet.

In The Network director Eva Orner gives an insight into the daily life at the tv-station and the learning process they face in these challenging circumstances. Through extensive interviews with managers, producers, on-air hosts and others involved with operations, Orner artfully portrays television as a form of entertainment, education and an agent of change.

Directed by Eva Orner
Duration: 97′
Year: 2013

This screening is in partnership with Dogwoof

So, chaired by Richard Sambrook, we are pulling in many of the events attendees and other parties to properly think through the ideas that came up before re-presenting them. We will look for workable refinements on duty of care issues, consider how safety training might cover new threats, study how freelance insurance could deliver and think how best to launch a safety ‘Kitemark’ for freelances. We aim to report at the end of September.

It is clear that the Frontline Club can play a collaborative role in promoting workable ideas on news safety. Our relationship with practitioners, the club’s members, and our history in freelance journalism places us in a unique and complimentary position to other bodies that promote news safety, like INSI or the CPJ.

To inform the 8^th May meeting I sent out survey to freelance photojournalists, video journalists and newspaper stringers. Below are links publishing the results.

The Frontline Club Freelance Safety Survey is the first survey of its kind. Freelances play an ever-increasing role in gathering the news, their importance to journalism is unlikely to diminish but their voices are rarely heard on issues like news safety. It is clear that they need to be.

In 1989, when Peter Jouvenal, Rory Peck and Nick della Casa and I launched the Frontline News Television agency, we were completely dependent on the established news industry to purchase and publish our work. This is changing, particularly for photojournalists who increasingly fund their work elsewhere, viewing the established industry as a partner or outlet rather than an employer.

Personally, I believe that freelances have become journalism’s great hope. For as long as I have been in news they have complimented the mainstream output and with most overseas bureaux a thing of the past they help fill widening gaps.

At Frontline News Television we learned from the news industry. We weren’t welcomed by it, but we soon realised that to be accepted we had to subscribe to journalism’s ethics and did so fully. The survey tells us that today’s freelances will do the same thing now on safety and since freelances mentor each other good practice can be spread.

In the survey I ask freelances the question, “If the Frontline Club launched a representative body for independent journalists, cameramen and photographers would you support this and continue to contribute your opinions?”, 90.7% of respondents indicated “Yes, wholeheartedly”, 8.8% said that ‘It was a good thing but they wouldn’t participate” and only 0.5% that this “Was not interesting”.

While we consider it how to best deliver on this mandate, the Frontline Club will continue to gather freelance views and present them as helpfully as possible. I am personally convinced that an industry recognised ‘Kitemark’, won through demonstrating a professional approach to news safety and the promotion of the highest freelance reporting ethics will serve freelances and journalism well.

This link publishes Frontline Club Freelance Safety Survey 1, showing the comments by those who left them.

Freelance Safety Survey 1 – Full

The following three links illustrates where answers between photojournalists, video journalists and newspaper stringers are significantly different.

Freelance Safety Survey 1 – Photojournalists

Freelance Safety Survey 1 – Video Journalists

Freelance Safety Survey 1 – Newspaper Stringers

N.B. In the interests of openness I am happy to receive requests to audit this survey. Note that I have removed respondents where I was satisfied that they had no actual experience working in conflicts.