Journalist security: An evolving field

Frank Smyth
PHOTO from
Frank Smyth

Frank Smyth is Committee to Protect Journalists Washington Representative and Journalist Security Coordinator. At the CPJ Blog he reports about The Free Media Conference 2011 devoted to journalist security issues. The conference took place April 1.

The garden city between the mountains and the sea founded by Vikings in 871 cast an historic hue over the discussion. Journalists from nearly every continent gathered this past weekend to discuss journalist security issues in a hotel in Tønsberg, Norway, outside of which a replica of a Viking ship was being constructed.

Marcela Turati is a Mexican journalist who explained that she never expected to cover violence or organized crime. The founder of Mexico's first group established by journalists to help each other, Journalists on Foot, she perhaps set the tone when she tossed aside the bravado that often accompanies such forums and frankly said, "We need help in how to handle our fear."

The journalist security community only began to identify itself as such less than a decade ago in the wake of events since 9/11. It remains an emerging field which now seems to have at least as many questions as answers.

Liberia Women Democracy Radio: Giving voice to the voiceless

LWDR 91.1FM.

Mariella Frostrup explains how Liberia Women Democracy Radio offers a lifeline to women.

Down a dirt track, off a highway that once teemed with the dictator Charles Taylor’s child soldiers, lies the tiny Liberia Women Democracy Radio. In a basic studio, Naomi Saydee is engaged in a live programme about teenage pregnancy. Initially, callers alternate between blaming the parents and children, while Naomi patiently tells nervous young women callers where to go for help. Her perseverance is rewarded: young girls soon jam the switchboard to share their experiences, unseen but heard.

Out in the villages of tin-roofed huts, ‘listening groups’ of women gather round their communal radio. At LWDR 91.1FM they learn how to seek justice for crimes of domestic violence, how to protect themselves from HIV/Aids and about their rights. They also listen to music that ‘doesn’t defame women’, an initiative UK radio might do well to adopt. ‘Giving voice to the voiceless’ is the station’s mission statement. ‘Women need to have their lives represented’, says the founder, Estella Nelson. ‘In Liberia, all the media is controlled by men, it is they who decide what and how things are covered.’

Caitlin Constantine: Journalism and emotional trauma

Caitlin Constantine
PHOTO from Facebook

My average workday involves writing several news stories, and as anyone who watches the news can attest, most of them will not be happy stories. There are the occasional feel-good spots about people who make the most of tough circumstances or break world records, but for the most part, I spend my time writing about the worst days in people's lives.

Caitlin Constantine, journalist and writer owns her troubles in her blog.

If you end up in the news, it's more likely you are there because of some unimaginable horror than because of something amazing you did.

It's difficult not to be affected by the work we do as journalists, although most of us have developed ways to cope. We make inappropriate jokes, we keep a bit of distance, we harden our shells, we don't linger too long on the details. Some of us drink a lot or smoke.

If we allowed the full impact of the stories we cover to penetrate our hearts, we'd never get anything done. So we find ways to protect ourselves.

But some stories still manage to penetrate the carefully constructed defenses. Obviously, reporters and photographers who are actually out there are most vulnerable. Poynter Institute recently ran a column about a New York Daily News reporter who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder after one of the WTC towers collapsed practically right on top of him.

Filtering The News

MK'ULTRA
Photo from RUVR

Ever wonder why the news is so often packed with horrible tales of human misadventure? Can’t they report news that is more clinical than localized horrors? The answer is yes, but the reason why traumatic stories are embedded or weaved into normal news is to accomplish a very important objective; to allow fiction to become fact elsewhere.

ONE PAGE NEWS a Journal of Reality insists on it definitely with its Trauma Journalism post

A Bit Of History

Right after World War II a very serious and covert operation was carried out to smuggle war criminal Nazi’s into the United States in a sanitized manner in which these same individuals would be able to live full wonderful and free lives in America, a country they had up until recently been fighting. The operation was known as Operation Paperclip where approximately 1,200 German Nazi scientists in the fields of rocketry and psychological experimentation. The PR spin was to “deny Russia the scientific mind trust of these same Nazis,” but in later retrospect it was primarily to augment US military technology to build a world army capable of executing European rule.

In the area of rocketry we got NASA led by Wernher Von Braun who mistakenly misled the United States into a mission to the Moon which was not possible given the next 50 years of technology, but that’s for another article.

The second tear of Operation Paperclips outcome with the heavily infused exploration of the human psyche. Project MKULTRA was hatched by the same scientists eager to continue their immoral and illegal experimentations on humans. It is not completely known the entire list of horrific tests conducted on humans, but one of the more prominent areas of research was in the mind’s ability to deal with trauma.

Caroline Casey: Looking past limits

Caroline Casey
PHOTO: TED

Activist Caroline Casey tells to TED the story of her extraordinary life, starting with a revelation (no spoilers). In a talk that challenges perceptions, Casey asks us all to move beyond the limits we may think we have.

First, Caroline Casey put Ireland on the accessibility map. Now she's changing the global social landscape for people with disabilities.




Advocate for disabled people
Caroline Casey has dedicated the past decade of her life to changing how global society views people with disabilities. In 2000, she rode 1,000 kilometers across India on an elephant to raise funds for Sight Savers. Then, as founding CEO of Kanchi in Dublin, she developed a set of best practices (based on ISO 9000 quality standards) for businesses, to help them see "disabled" workers as an asset as opposed to a liability. Hundreds of companies have adopted the standards, changing their policies and attitudes.

In 2004, Casey started the O2 Ability Awards to recognize Irish businesses for their inclusion of people with disabilities, both as employees and customers. The initiative has received international praise and, in 2010, a parallel program was launched in Spain.

"She is one of those people who, instead of just talking about changing the world, gets up and actually does it however tough the doing of it turns out to be. "
The Irish Times

Covering Violence & Trauma

The Canadian Journalism Project

The Canadian Journalism Project: March 2011
Find MORE here

Ivory Coast journalists caught in the crossfire
March 28, 2011 - Posted by Heather McCall
Journalists working in the Ivory Coast capital Adidjan are finding themselves trapped between two sides of a looming civil war. ProjetJ reporter Anne Caroline Desplanques spoke with Stéphane Goué, a freelance journalist and president of the country's Committee to Protect Journalists, about the threats he and his fellow journalists are experiencing.

"None of us thought we were going to live": kidnapped NYT journos
March 23, 2011 - Posted by Dana Lacey
Four recently-kidnapped New York Times journalists tell their harrowing tale.

Reporting evacuation: rule evasion or evolution?
March 30, 2011 - Posted by Dana Lacey
In these days of SEO-friendly headlines, long-standing language rules are often ignored -- like the one that says you can evacuate places, but not people. Judy Maddren, former CBC grammar guru, sets the record straight.

Libya releases detained New York Times journos
March 21, 2011 - Posted by Dana Lacey
Six days ago, four New York Times journalists were reported missing. It was later learned that the four were detained by the Libyan government. They were released today under the expectation that they leave the country within hours, VOA News reports. Other journalists, including two reporters and a photographer from French news agency AFP, remain missing.

Japan: PHOTOcovering disasters

PHOTO: Damon Coulter

Gianni Giosue talked to IJNet about covering a major event on his home turf and offered some advice for journalists taking photographs.

Gianni Giosue, a Tokyo-based international freelance photographer who covers social issues, has worked with NGOs in several countries in Asia and the Middle East.

His photos have appeared in publications worldwide including The Daily Telegraph, Jica World Magazine, The Sankei Express, The Los Angeles Times and The Japan Times. Recently, his project “One year in Russia” earned a 'Coup de Coeur' nomination at the 2010 “VISA Pour L' Image” Photojournalism Festival. You can see more of his work on his website.

IJNet: What's the most emblematic photo you shot of the Japan earthquake?

Gianni Giosue: There are probably are two photos I enjoyed taking the most. The first one is the picture of the torn flag and a man crossing a huge puddle on his bicycle. The Japanese flag is battered, the country is suffering a lot. There is a lot of information.

PTSD: When the news breaks the journalist

Chris Cramer
PHOTO: Cramer Media

Frederik Joelving for Reuters
NEW YORK

Chris Cramer, 62, was a fledgling war correspondent when one spring day 30 years ago he got much closer to the battle than he'd ever intended.

Just back from Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, his boss at the BBC had asked him to fly to Tehran, where militants were holding dozens of Americans hostage at the U.S. embassy.

But as he went to pick up his visa in London on April 30, 1980, he jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire: Six gunmen stormed the Iranian embassy, taking Cramer and 25 other people hostage.

"I lasted two days before I became sick -- well, I actually feigned a heart attack to get out," said Cramer, now global editor of multimedia at Reuters in New York.

While the experience left his body unscathed, his mental health was in tatters.

"I went through real anguish for a couple of years," he said. "I had flashbacks, I had extraordinary claustrophobia, which I'd never had before. For several years, I did not go to a cinema, I did not go into an elevator. If I ever went into a restaurant, I positioned myself near the door for a fast exit. For many, many months after the incident I checked under my car every morning before driving it. I was a basket case, I was a mess."

It is becoming increasingly clear that there is nothing unique about Cramer's case. In fact, a 2003 survey found, more than a quarter of war correspondents struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

Japan Quake

Guide for Reporting
By Yoichi Shimatsu
Comprehensive advice for Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma from an environmental issues writer and editor for news professionals bound for Japan: how to prepare, what to expect and how to keep yourself safe while reporting on the earthquake, tsunami and damaged nuclear plants.

PHOTO of New America Media

Yoichi Shimatsu is an environmental issues writer and former editor of The Japan Times Weekly, who covered the earthquakes in San Francisco and Kobe, the Tokyo subway gassing, Mount Unzen volcanic eruption, and led a field study (while simultaneously doing rescue work as a volunteer) in the worst-hit Khao Lak region of Thailand right after the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004.

Summary: Japan can be a paradoxical place for reporting, even for its own journalists and longtime expats. The tendency of government agencies and corporations to impose a veil of silence and half-truths doubles the difficulties.
Habitual censorship and blanket public-security rules mean that journalists, if we are going to fulfill our professional responsibility to the public, must "bend" a few rules while minimizing the risks of openly violating the law. Your embassies are unlikely to come to your aid and, often to the contrary, may actually cooperate in curbing the foreign press. Despite these constraints, it is possible to report by stretching the outer limits of the law, which means that you’re still well within the bounds of reason.



PREPARATIONS

Radiation Medicine: Call around to pharmacies in your home country to purchase sufficient potassium iodine capsules for five-to-ten people for a month. The extra capsules are needed for your translators and drivers, as well as a good-will gesture to your local sources. Your thyroid gland absorbs iodine, and these pills help to block radioactive iodine-131. At the pharmacy also pick up some Imodium and nasal inhalant or gel (Vicks type), the latter to help reduce the foul smell of corpses, which wears down your morale.

Is your journalism ethical? Take the test

If the content you produce pushes an agenda, spins a line, favours a sector of society, or has a desired outcome, you are producing public relations copy or propaganda. Real journalism is based on editorial ethics that permeate all we do. So, do you pass the test?

The public interest test
1. Exposing or detecting crime
2. Disclosing significant incompetence or negligence
3. Uncovering information that allows people to make more informed decisions about matters of public importance
4. Protecting the health and safety of the public
5. Preventing the public from being misled
6. Protecting issues of freedom of expression.

Take the test

David Brewer
Media Helping Media

The author of this piece, David Brewer, is a journalist and media strategy consultant who set up and runs the site Media Helping Media. He delivers media strategy training and consultancy services worldwide and his business details are at Media Ideas International Ltd.
He tweets@helpingmedia.