Freelance work has long been a way to break into the business of international reporting; nowadays, increasingly, it is the business. A foreign assignment at a major news organization has traditionally come with traveling expenses, medical coverage, security and first-aid training if you are covering conflict, fixers and translators and, in a few instances, paid leave for language training. It comes with technicians who make sure your computer and satellite phone work. It comes with lawyers in case you get sued or arrested. It comes with editors who will tell you not to take foolish chances, and notify your family if something bad happens. These days the disturbing trend is to pay freelancers on spec. Without even offering a contract or a formal assignment, which at least implies some responsibility, news organizations ask independent reporters to pitch completed stories or photos after the rental cars have been paid for, after the work has been done — after the risks have been taken. (And even then, it can be an ordeal to get paid. A freelancer in Yemen recently started a campaign to “name and shame” news organizations that stiff journalists.) When a freelancer gets into trouble in a conflict zone, “You just fall into a black hole,” said Emma Beals, a British journalist who has worked in Syria and has become an advocate for freelancers there and in other treacherous places. She estimates that there are currently 17 kidnapped foreign journalists being held by various factions in Syria’s civil war. The majority of them are freelancers. [...] Even after United Nations inspectors had visited the site and filed a report, they did not resolve the question of culpability. It took an experienced reporter familiar with Syria’s civil war, my colleague C. J. Chivers, to dig into the technical information in the U.N. report and spot the evidence — compass bearings for two chemical rockets — that established the attack was launched from a Damascus redoubt of Assad’s military. “Social media isn’t journalism,” Chivers told the Boston conference. “It’s information. Journalism is what you do with it.”
Posted on: Mon, 04 Nov 2013 07:56:17 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015