The Overseas Press Club Foundation is among a number of organizations that have stepped up to help implement a core element of the Global Principles and Practices task force: hazardous environment training for freelance journalists. With close to 80 signatories now supporting the list of principles that require such training, the task force recognized the need to make the sometimes prohibitively expensive training accessible to those who need it most. At its meeting in early October at the Dart Center of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Reuters investigative reporter David Rohde, a co-chair of the task force, announced that Thomson Reuters would cover the costs of 14 freelance journalists to attend a five-day Hostile Environment and Emergency First Aid (HEFAT) training course run by Hawthorne Proactive from Nov. 22 to 27 in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
While Thomson Reuters was covering the bulk of the costs, applicants were responsible for their own travel to and from Belfast. More than 200 freelancers applied for the training course. The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, a Washington, D.C. based non-profit group that provides reporting grants to freelancers, selected the winners. Half requested financial assistance to cover their travel to Belfast. The OPC Foundation, the Pulitzer Center, the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation and 2LIVES: Steven Joel Sotloff Memorial Foundation provided the funds.
The 14 freelance journalists represent a wide variety of experience and backgrounds. Those requesting travel assistance are from Bulgaria, Belarus, Pakistan, Gaza Strip, Nairobi, Iraq, and a Polish-American based in Turkey. The remainder are from the United States, Germany, Spain, Ireland, Denmark and the UK. They are print and radio reporters, photojournalists and filmmakers who work for local and international media organizations. Because many have already worked in conflict zones, they know of the critical need for journalists to have basic survivor skills. One wrote how his professional background had given him critical hands-on experience in different facets of war photojournalism starting with covering hot spot news (airstrikes and violent demonstrations) and ending with the ongoing invasions/wars, but the only safety training he had received was theoretical lectures in college.
An Iraqi journalist requested the training so he can “obtain the skills necessary to make doing my job safer. In the course of my work there is a threat of kidnapping and death. There are many gangs, militias and armed insurgents who target reporters and journalists who work for foreign media institutions, especially American and British ones.” Another wrote, “My recent reporting from Cizre and Diyarbakir, the nodes of the PKK’s urban insurgency, and from Adiyaman, a petri dish for ISIS suicide bombers, has convinced me I cannot afford to postpone a HEFAT course any longer.”
Finally, a photojournalist wrote how he wanted the training not just for the insurance but because he knows it save lives. Wanting to be better prepared, he added, “The Hostile Environment training will give me knowledge which I need to be ready as a professional for assignments in hostile environment places like Eastern Ukraine.”
Typically HEFAT training lasts four to five days and can cost up to $3,000 per person. The Global Principles and Practices task force will continue to work with major media organizations and non-profits, like the UK-based Rory Peck Trust and International Media Support in Denmark, to make such training available for freelance reporters, especially those working in dangerous conditions and conflict zones.