It was chaired by Hannah Storm, Director of the International News Safety Institute (INSI) with guests Rachel Corp, deputy editor of ITV News; Louise Ridley, co-founder of Second Source and freelance journalist currently running news special projects at HuffPost UK; Jasmine Andersson, also a co-founder of Second Source and an investigations reporter at PinkNews along with Mark Di Stefano, media and politics reporter for Buzzfeed News, London.

Welcome to the @frontlineclub's panel discussion on how to deal with sexual harassment in the media – we'll be tweeting highlights from the panellists, and the event will also be made into a Frontline Club podcast! pic.twitter.com/N1RePPRMBo

— The Second Source (@the2ndsource) March 7, 2018

Starting the discussion Storm asked Corp to share her experiences when she began working in the industry roughly twenty years ago and if she thinks there has been a cultural shift in the way women are treated within the newsroom.

Crop commented: “When I started working in television and broadcast there was this sense that if you were a young woman you were slightly fair game. It wasn’t necessarily at the desk but around socialising for work which was necessary part of getting on in your career and you had to have sharp elbows. But I hope in certain parts of the media we have come a long way from this fair game culture.”

Talking about the sea change which has come since campaigns such as #metoo Storm asked Andersson how her organisation is pushing for improvemnts. She replied:

…I think now when you enter the industry, it’s a lot about patronage, it’s a little bit more sophisticated, more insidious. So hopefully together we can present an active force and say that, ‘this isn’t going to happen anymore’

Louise Ridley emphasised that Second Source through being an informal network keeps solidarity among women and holds events to bring all the conversations together. It is also collecting sexual harassment and Human Resources policies of different media organisations to see where the loopholes are.

She said: “We are launching a mentoring scheme to help women in the first few years of their career…women who think they might drop out of Journalism, particularly we want to focus on working class women, women from ethnic minorities. We want to offer all the normal career advice and support but what is really important for us is that we offer help on those personal and difficult issues as well.”

On the particular subject of harassment in the newsroom Storm turned to Mark Di Stefano who has recently reported on a number of such cases. He said:

I feel as though there has been a noticeable change particularly in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein allegations and every young man in the industry should pause and take stock and reflect on their own behaviour…it’s also how we deal with our female friends, in group chats, in WhatsApp threads

There’s is a general disassociation within the media on debates around feminism and harassment of women. They are scared of putting their head above the parapet – tonight’s panel discussion on sexism within media. pic.twitter.com/Ujm1ubcgrO

— Frontline Club (@frontlineclub) March 7, 2018

He added: “The hardest thing you come across when you are reporting on harassment allegations in this environment in Britain is that libel laws are very strong and reporting from anonymous sources is very hard…I have had a dozen anonymous sources who have all corroborated each other on something that could have taken down a very senior media person but I could not get past my editors because I needed someone on the record which was very hard.”

A number of questions from the audience followed the formal discussion and some shared their personal experiences of harassment. The question of redress for freelancers who have been sexually harassed was also raised.

For this Storm suggested that organisations working with freelancers, such as Acos Alliance and Frontline Register among offering other support should also embed conversations around harassment into their protection mechanism.

To watch the talk click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzmR5mUwypg

For more information about The Second Source visit: http://www.thesecondsource.co.uk/

Our panel discuss sexual harassment within media organisations and how best to tackle the problem. How do we make this a conversation that includes both men and women? Is there a generational difference to ideas of consent between women over the age of 30 and below? And is this a problem that is predominant in the media world, given the fragile freelance contracts of many journalists, or have they simply been provided with a larger platform to air their grievances than women in other industries?

Chair

Hannah Storm  is Director of the International News Safety Institute (INSI) and an expert on gender and media safety. The author of ‘No Woman’s Land – On the Frontlines With Female Reporters’, the first book dedicated to the safety of women journalists, Storm also co-wrote INSI’s report with the International Women’s Media Foundation on ‘Violence and Harassment Against Women in the News Media’. Having worked previously for Reuters, ITN, the BBC and Oxfam, her current work at INSI focusses on physical, psychological, and digital safety, and provides a network for some of the world’s leading news organisations to share information to ensure all journalists stay out of harm’s way. Storm also works as a freelance media consultant for organisations such as the UN specialising in gender-sensitive reporting and the coverage of gender-based violence

Speakers

Rachel Corp formerly editor of 5 News, has moved to deputy editor of ITV News. Corp was part of the team that launched 5 News in 1997. Corp joined ITN as a trainee and her early career included the roles of north of England and senior field producer, covering major stories in the UK and abroad, from Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, to the Hutton Inquiry and the Soham murders. She spent time at the BBC as its senior Moscow producer before returning to ITV News as a news editor.

Louise Ridley is a freelance journalist currently running news special projects at HuffPost UK. She was previously news editor for longform and special projects for BuzzFeed UK, where work she edited was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize and the British Journalism Awards in 2017. She has run series covering topics from disability rights and trans rights to housing and student life, and written on gender, inequality and the media. She is a co-founder of The Second Source, a group of women journalists tackling sexual harassment, and an associate lecturer in journalism at Birkbeck, University of London.

Jasmine Andersson is an investigations reporter at PinkNews, and previously worked on women’s rights and social justice issues at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the likes of Stylist, The i and Metro as a freelancer. She is the co-founder of Second Source.

Mark Di Stefano is a media and politics reporter for Buzzfeed News in London. He is the former Political Editor at Buzzfeed Australia. Mark joined Buzzfeed from ABC News as breaking news reporter.

[vimeo clip_id=”29681484″ width=”360″ height=”225″]

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Directed by Ilse van Velzen and Femke van Velzen
Duration: 60′
Year: 2011

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