Lesley Topping, a New York based producer, film editor, and video maker, filmed the INSI panel. Watch all three segments >>
The International News Safety Institute marked the launch of its North American arm on Friday, October 14. That day, the number of journalists killed since the start of 2011 rose to 97.
With this somber news in mind, a panel of celebrated reporters and industry leaders spoke to an audience of over 50 people in New York about dangers and risks, in what has been one of the bloodiest in recent years for those working in journalism.
CNN International’s Michael Holmes moderated a discussion between Santiago Lyon (AP Director of Photography and OPC Board Member), Cami McCormick (correspondent for CBS News), David Lee Miller (correspondent for FoxNews) and INSI’s Hannah Storm on topics including the Arab Spring, social media, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and the need for new safety practices in reporting environments.
"INSI figures are showing 97 of our colleagues killed this year, and it’s only October," Holmes reminded the panel in his opening remarks.
Holmes appreciates the dangers of the job acutely: In 2004, reporting in Iraq, he survived an ambush on a convoy which left two CNN staff dead. Many of the panelists, like Holmes, had one time in their career or another, found themselves under fire. CBS’ McCormick was seriously injured in Afghanistan in 2009 by a roadside bomb. "I still get nightmares," she told the audience. She and Holmes admitted that adrenalin and a feeling of responsibility drive them back to dangerous beats.
And while such risk hotspots used to be traditional conflict zones — covered by seasoned war correspondents — dangers are emerging in a whole spectrum of environments. Nowadays journalists with little experience of reporting from hostile environments can quite as easily find themselves caught up in unsafe situations, as was the case during the Arab Spring, and in the aftermath of natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina and the earthquakes in Japan and Haiti.
"You don’t have to be a high flying war correspondent to be in a dangerous situation," said INSI’s Hannah Storm, who discussed the benefits of the secure email exchange she coordinates for operational journalists, news editors and managers, to share confidential and time sensitive advice on a range of safety issues affecting news teams.
INSI’s newly appointed director for North America, Judith Matloff, noted specifically that traditional war training does little to help journalists working in the one of the two most dangerous countries in the world for journalists, Mexico, where drug cartels regularly ensure that reporters don’t survive their stories.
The panel also discussed the relative merits — when it comes to safety — of better communications technologies. "Journalists can now stay in harm’s way longer," said the AP’s Lyon, noting that before the rise of social media and smart phones, reporters would have to return to the safety of their hotels to file stories.
The reporting landscape has changed, the panel agreed, and new safety training and trauma care resources are needed for more and more journalists — including citizen reporters.
"There’s a time and a place for more traditional security training, but there’s a need to develop training more bespoke to country and crisis," said Storm, adding that INSI was creating such a training curriculum and also provided safety advice and tips for journalists on its website, as well as safety advisories, compiled from the non-confidential information garnered from INSI’s email forum.