Journalist Security

In revolt, freelancers establish Frontline Freelance Register

2013-06-12T21:03:49Z

Finally, there is an organization for freelancers run by freelancers, and it could not come at a more opportune time. As anyone who has been one knows, being a freelance conflict reporter, in particular, can be tricky business.

]]> More than 20 years ago, I was an accredited CBS News radio stringer with several years of experience covering the guerrilla war and related events in El Salvador. In 1991, now from CBS' office in the Sheraton Hotel in Damascus, I called CBS headquarters in New York and told my radio producers that I was planning on going with Kurdish rebels into northern Iraq during the post-Gulf War uprisings against Saddam Hussein.

"Television wants to talk to you," the radio producer said. A television producer got on the phone. "There's a high-8 camera in the office," she said, referring to a Sony handheld "high" 8 Millimeter camera. "We'd like you to take it with you," she added, "on a right-of-first-refusal basis."

In other words, CBS News wanted me to take their camera into the war zone at my own risk without either any insurance, or any guarantee of compensation, with the agreement that CBS News would have the right to be the first news outlet to review any footage I might gather. Then, if they wanted to use it, we could negotiate a price.

More than a month later--after I had spent more than two weeks in prison--CBS News ran several pieces of combat and related footage that I sent from Iraq, and we negotiated, post-publication, a fee of US$12,000. I gave half of it to the mother of my close colleague, Gad Gross, who was killed in Kirkuk.

The news industry has only gotten stingier since, and the treatment of freelancers, if anything, has only gotten worse. At the same time, widespread layoffs of staff journalists mean that more freelance journalists are on the front lines of gathering news from Taksim Square in Istanbul to Tornado Alley in the American Midwest.

The Frontline Freelance Register (FFR) was launched last week in London "to support the physical and mental well-being of freelance journalists," reads the "About Us" page on www.frontlinefreelance.org. Freelancers "also lack organized representation, often leaving them at the mercy of powerful media groups," the page goes on. FFR says it aims to help freelancers by providing both "a forum" and "a representative body."

FFR is a project of the Frontline Club run by Vaughan Smith, a veteran freelance journalist and cameraman and benefactor. Smith established the Frontline Club in 2003 in memory of no less than nine of his late colleagues of the now-defunct Frontline News Television agency who each died in the field pursuing their work. (One of them, Smith's close friend, Roddy Scott, died in 2002 covering the Chechen guerrilla war in Russia. Scott was killed by a bullet that pierced the view-finder of his camera before reaching his eye.)

"Freelancers have a surprising potential to collaborate and organize themselves to improve their collective safety and there is [a] long-established freelance practice in mentoring," Smith wrote in an essay posted last week with other pieces when FFR was launched. "Freelancers lack resources but the very many serious ones have no lack of integrity or commitment."

His colleagues who support the register and its goals seem to agree. Today, freelancers are covering dangerous stories "without financial, logistical and institutional support," wrote three freelance journalists, Aris Roussinos, Ayman Oghanna, and Emma Beals, each of whom also sits on the Frontline Freelance Register initial governing committee.

Freelance journalists "currently working in conflict or foreign reporting" can join the register free of charge as long as they subscribe to the FFR's code of conduct. The code covers both safety and ethics, saying members "are obligated to demonstrate a professional approach to news safety whilst promoting the highest ethical standards in journalism."

The FFR is clearly not oriented toward local freelance journalists. One benefit for international journalists, however, is that the register helps them advertise their services by allowing them to post a short biography detailing their skills, accomplishments, and experience.

Although it is just getting off the ground, one long-term goal of the Frontline Freelance Register is to be able to help freelancers obtain both hostile environment training and insurance when on dangerous assignments, and also try to limit the liability fears that often deter news organizations from using freelancers.

"[I]n the last few years the increasing risk to journalists in the field (both staff and freelance) has forced news organisations to rethink when and why to send people into war zones," wrote Colin Pereira, Head of High Risk for 1st Option Safety, in one of the essays released with FFR's launch.

The high price of insurance remains a major obstacle. But the insurance industry is also changing. "The insurance markets are currently extremely competitive and with brokers and underwriters keen to win new business, the appetite for launching a freelance insurance scheme is there," added Pereira.

No one expects doing something like arranging affordable insurance programs for freelancers to be easy, but the Frontline Freelance Register at least plans to try.

"The freelance community is here to stay and there has been a general shortfall of leadership and guidance to them from the news industry. Freelancers have delivered relatively inexpensive material to news organizations," wrote Smith. "We can surely now collaborate to do more to unlock better insurance options and increase the availability of training to freelancers."

Photographers attacked: Two weeks in southern Africa

2013-06-05T16:39:28Z

From Cape Town to Lilongwe, four photographers on routine news assignments in major southern Africa cities were assaulted by security officials in the past two weeks. The details differ, but the heavy-handed actions in each case reflect a belief among those responsible for security that they are above the law and not publicly accountable. These recent attacks in southern Africa also highlight a wider phenomenon: Every day, somewhere in the world, news photographers are subjected to physical abuse by security and public officials who wish to suppress or control the powerful message delivered by images.

]]> "Photographs provide incontrovertible proof. If there is no photographic evidence it's easy to explain things away," says Greg Marinovich, the Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer and co-author of The Bang-Bang Club, which detailed the work of photographers documenting violence in South Africa during the transition from apartheid. "There's an audible noise when pictures are taken and a breaking of tension when the shutter is released. The subject understands when the picture is taken and I think officials have been told, 'Don't get yourself caught on camera.'"

In risky situations such as street protests or conflict zones, photographers and camera operators suffer disproportionate rates of fatality as documented by CPJ. Photographers and camera operators constitute more than 35 percent of journalist fatalities since the beginning of 2011, a period marked by large-scale civil unrest in the Arab world and conflict in the Middle East and South Asia.

But underlying the fatalities are instances of harassment, obstruction, and assault that photographers face every day in Africa and elsewhere. The recent southern Africa attacks all occurred in countries at peace, with functioning democratic institutions. In the most violent episode, on May 29, a private security guard fired rubber bullets at close range at The Star photographer Motshwari Mofokeng, who was photographing the eviction of people living in an empty Johannesburg factory. Such guards are routinely employed by provincial and local governments in South Africa to evict people occupying buildings or land illegally

Mofokeng, working with a reporter, was outside in a public place, covering a public issue. All seemed fine at first, until Mofokeng photographed security personnel chasing people. A guard turned his attention to Mofokeng, striking him and threatening to break his camera, the photographer told CPJ. In the subsequent melee, Mofokeng said, someone threw a stone at the guards and then a guard in a black uniform began firing. "The first shot was right at me. There were five or six shots after that: pah, pah, pah," said Mofokeng, who was hit in the chest. He continued working, but later sought treatment at a local hospital and filed a complaint with police.

In an editorial, The Star editor Makhudu Sefara said the shooting was an attack on all citizens. "The truth is that media freedom is not a privilege for media practitioners, he wrote. "All of us, as freedom-cherishing South Africans, must realise that every time a journalist is klapped [hit], or shot, or killed, it is not merely about their publication or family, it is about all of us."

In Lilongwe, capital of Malawi, Nation photographer Thoko Chikondi was punched and manhandled by a security guard while taking images of a consumer rights activist delivering a petition to parliament on May 30. "Suddenly the chief security officer arrived and told the activist to get out of parliament," Chikondi told CPJ.

"If the security guard had used force on the activist it would have made a good photo and I would have taken it, but that didn't happen and so I didn't take a picture of the security guard, only the activist," she added.

"But within the blink of an eye," said Chikondi, the guard grabbed at her camera and shouted that she had been photographing him without permission. "I held on to my camera trying to protect it and I was hit in the face. The guard hit me on my head with his hands." Chikondi, who was treated at a local hospital for bruising, filed a complaint with police. Police later lodged an assault count against the security officer, who denied the charge in court this week. "I was lucky there was another photojournalist who took pictures of what was happening to me," Chikondi said. "If not for those pictures, it would have been otherwise."

In two separate episodes in Cape Town, photographers from the Cape Argus--a sister newspaper to The Star owned by the Independent Group--were roughed up and obstructed as they tried to cover the Department of Home Affairs' treatment of refugees and asylum-seekers. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees estimates there are half a million refugees and asylum-seekers in South Africa, mostly from Zimbabwe, Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Somalia, and Ethiopia.

On May 22, photographer David Ritchie and reporter Yolisa Tswanya were interviewing family and friends of refugees who had been arrested for not carrying their identity documents and who had gathered outside the Caledon Square police station in central Cape Town. "As Dave lifted his camera, an official wearing a brown uniform spotted him," Tswanya said. At first the journalists thought the individual was a prison official, but they later came to believe he was with Home Affairs. "He came over and told Dave to delete the photo. Dave refused, the official tried to take his camera, then grabbed Dave by the arm and dragged him into the police station courtyard. They wouldn't allow me to go with him."

The official deleted the pictures and returned the camera to Ritchie--who went back to the gathering and took more photos. The newspaper is considering both a civil and criminal complaint against the official.

The director-general of the national Department of Home Affairs told the Cape Argus that the agency had a policy of transparency and did not support the official's behavior. The department's manager for the Western Cape province said an investigator would look into the reported assault.

Five days later, Cape Argus freelance photographer Thomas Holder was taking pictures of hundreds of asylum-seekers waiting to renew their papers at the Refugee Reception Centre on Cape Town's Foreshore.

When the gates to the center opened, Holder said, the crowd surged and staff turned a fire hose on the refugees. "I moved towards the gate with the crowd, never entering the premises, and shot more pictures closer to the gate of police and Mafoko Security staff pushing people out of the doorway of the centre and battling to close the gate," Holder told Cape Argus reporter Kieran Legg.

Holder said a security guard directed him to stop taking pictures. When Holder refused, another guard grabbed him, pulled him into the reception center, and punched him in the chest. According to the Cape Argus report, the manager of Mafoko Security's Cape Town branch, Newton Mathosa, called Holder's report "implausible" because roughing up someone would have provoked the crowd.

Security personnel and public officials have long known--and often feared--the power of images. And today digital technology and social media have led to the exponential spread of documentary photography.

"Even in the time of Bang Bang (some two decades ago) people were wary of being documented because it could be used as part of cases, or evidence. And the more sophisticated were aware of how images could be used for propaganda," Marinovich said. Referring to the spreading influence of documentary photography, he said: "Perhaps I see a difference now in the effect of photographs. There's a trickle-up effect given the power of the picture to show what's happened."

Medill digital security guide helps fill journalism void

2013-05-23T17:59:20Z

One day, every journalism school in the United States and beyond will offer a full three-credit, 15-week course in digital safety, along with more advanced classes. But that day has not yet come. Only a year ago, Alysia Santo reported in the Columbia Journalism Review that no American journalism school offered formal digital safety training. A number of groups, including CPJ, have tried to fill the void with digital security guides. This week, the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University added to the resource stockpile with the publication of a guide that I've written, Digital Security Basics for Journalists.

]]> One caveat: No journalist should stop after reading any single guide. The pace of technological innovation is only accelerating; intelligence services, criminal actors, and other digital predators are constantly finding new ways to steal, copy, or access other people's information and communications. Even if you were to master all of the concepts and tools available today, your skills will become outdated if you don't make a concerted effort to keep up.

Heightened government surveillance of telephone records poses one kind of risk, as we learned from recent disclosures that the U.S. Justice Department had secretly seized phone records of The Associated Press, and had reviewed the phone and email records of Fox News reporter James Rosen. In both cases, journalists were covering stories the U.S. government considered to be secret.

But threats to journalists today are coming not only from powerful officials with vast resources but from digital predators able to snoop or hack on the cheap. One Russian software firm, using a reseller in Canada, offers the kind of "black" software once out of reach to all but the most advanced intelligence agencies. For just $40, spyware called Blackshades allows anyone with minimal technical skills the possibility to digitally eavesdrop on another person or entity's computer or network.

Information Security: With then-CPJ Internet Advocacy Coordinator Danny O'Brien

The Medill guide is meant as a starting point, helping journalists understand broad tactics and directing them to sources of more detailed information. It builds on the Information Security chapter of the CPJ Journalist Security Guide, which was published in 2012. The chapter was written by my colleague Danny O'Brien, a leading figure in the field who is now with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The new Medill guide directs journalists to sites offering security tools, such as Security-in-a-Box, run by the Berlin-based Tactical Technology Collective and the Dublin-based Frontline non-governmental organizations. Keeping abreast of changes in technology is also essential. The best single source for information may be The Liberationtech Archives. Based on a listserv by the same name, it is hosted by the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. The list is populated by Internet freedom activists, and the conversations often include technical language. But by running a search of any particular software name or brand through the Liberationtech archives, one can quickly discern whether there is an active discussion about the security or vulnerabilities of a tool.

Kenyan press face hostile work environment, study finds

2013-05-15T14:17:45Z

The working environment for journalists and media workers in Kenya is increasingly hostile, with at least 91 percent of journalists at local media outlets having faced security threats in the course of their work, a new study has revealed. The harassment of and attacks against journalists, with nearly 40 percent coming from politicians, indicates a need for urgent attention from both state and non-state actors if press freedom is to be guaranteed in the country.

]]> The study was called "Safety and protection of Kenyan journalists: Is it common sense or common cents?" and was commissioned by the Working Group on the Media and undertaken by my organization, the Media Council of Kenya. Released on May 2, 2013, to mark World Press Freedom Day, the study found that more than 70 percent of journalists in Kenya are dissatisfied with the level of safety and the security measures afforded to them by their media houses.

The study found that more than 50 percent of the 282 participating journalists had received threats more than once in their working life, which, according to the study, was "a confirmation that journalists are increasingly working in a hostile environment in Kenya." At least 27 percent of the journalists said they receive several threats a month, while at least 62 percent said they have received at least one threat every month.

Threats against journalists in Kenya were mostly conducted through mobile phones--mostly text messages and phone calls. One journalist, James Wakahiu, said he started receiving threats after a story he had done on cases at the International Criminal Court. First, he said, they came in "short text messages via my phone, followed by an email to our newsroom." Then, aggressors visited his offices several times, "threatening to bomb it."

The study found that "not many of the respondents were satisfied with the response mechanisms for complaints," and emphasized the urgent need for media houses to put in place safety and protection measures. The study also noted that security agencies in Kenya need to thoroughly investigate cases involving harassment and attacks against journalists.

Among the major challenges cited for journalists in Kenya are poor pay and inadequate working conditions; working under managers who are not trained journalists; and, in extreme cases, taking instructions from editors who maintain political alliances. The study found that journalists feel media outlets lack the commitment to not only investigate violations against their reporters, but to forestall such attacks. The participants also said they felt their complaints would not be adequately addressed because "most editors and employers were ranked very highly as sources of threats to journalists."

The study's findings suggest that there isn't enough public and official awareness of the security concerns of media practitioners. This lack of awareness was reported among both journalists and non-journalists.

The study pointed to a gap between existing support initiatives and the journalists and media professionals' practical needs and challenges. The available support mechanisms were found to be inadequate, ad hoc, and largely unknown to the majority of journalists who needed them. The existing support initiatives seemed to focus more on the upstream journalists who are employed full-time and cover big investigative stories.

Dr. Haron Mwangi, the CEO of the Media Council of Kenya, said the findings are valuable in the sense that they provide baseline information on the safety of journalists, which will form the basis of interventions that industry players can put in place. He said, "We have picked up some of the recommendations from the report and started implementing some at the council. We have already done some training on safety and protection for journalists, set up a safety fund, a hotline and Web-based alert system for journalists in distress in Kenya."

It is important that with comprehensive intervention the media industry enhance the safety of journalists in Kenya. The study makes it apparent that stakeholders should develop a common charter and agree on a national protocol and safety and protection standards; develop a comprehensive national safety and protection training program; engage in public awareness activities on the issue; and mobilize resources to support the implementation of this national safety program.

If not, as the study found, "The concern is that if something is not done in time, the harassment of journalists will become the norm and lead to self-censorship and eventually thwart the spirit of media freedom and freedom of expression."

In Index, a pattern of death, a roadmap for solutions

2013-05-02T19:50:55Z

Gerardo Ortega's news and talk show on DWAR in Puerto Princesa, Philippines, went off as usual on the morning of January 24, 2011. Ortega, like many radio journalists in the Philippines, was outspoken about government corruption, particularly as it concerned local mining issues. His show over, Ortega left the studios and headed to a local clothing store to do some shopping. There, he was shot in the back of the head. His murder underlines the characteristics and security challenges common to many of the killings documented as part of CPJ's new Impunity Index: A well-known local journalist whose daily routines were easily tracked, Ortega had been followed and killed by a hired gunman. He had been threatened many times before in response to his tough political commentary, a pattern that shows up time and again on CPJ's Impunity Index.

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Getting Away With Murder
• CPJ's 2013 Impunity Index

In compiling its new Impunity Index, CPJ documented murder cases worldwide that occurred from January 1, 2003, through December 31, 2012, and that remain unsolved. CPJ then calculated the number of unsolved cases as a percentage of each country's population, thus identifying the nations where journalists are murdered regularly and the killers go unpunished.

But the underlying cases, put together, offer a mosaic of the situations in which reporters are most at risk. When I took a close look at the murders that occurred in 2012, several trends stood out. All 25 victims were local journalists, and about 85 percent had covered politics. Many of the victims focused on corruption, produced multiple reports on the same topic, and were outspoken in their views. The large majority worked for small to mid-sized radio stations, websites, or newspapers that could provide little to no institutional support or protection.

Because of the public nature of their work, the victims were easily identified and their routines readily tracked by their killers. Among the 2012 victims, six were targeted on their commute to and from work. Nine other victims were killed as they went about their daily routines: giving prayer as Mukarram Khan Aatif was doing at a mosque in Pakistan; drinking tea as Rajesh Mishra was doing at a public stall in India; or having a drink as Décio Sá was doing at a bar in Brazil.

Another seven were killed in or near their home. In Somalia, a gunman killed Hassan Osman Abdi as the radio station director was entering his home. Earlier that day, witnesses said, a visitor had come to the station's office inquiring about advertising but also showing an unusual interest in Abdi's comings and goings.

In its Journalist Security Guide, published in 2012, CPJ highlighted the sustained risk facing local reporters. "Critical journalists working in repressive or hostile environments often face routine harassment and constant threat," wrote Frank Smyth, the lead author of the guide and CPJ's journalist security adviser. (Disclosure: I'm associate manager in Smyth's private journalist security consultancy and have worked with him on previous CPJ projects.)

In the CPJ Journalist Security Guide, Smyth has this to say about assessing and responding to risk:

Do a broad assessment if you are concerned that your movements, communications, and reporting material are being observed or intercepted by third parties. What are you working on that might be considered sensitive? Who might take offense at your reporting? What surveillance techniques are they likely to employ? Are they more likely to have agents follow you, or are they adept at electronic surveillance? Once you've gauged the level of risk and the likely methods of surveillance, you can consider modifying your activities. That could include varying your professional and personal routines, along with your regular travel routes. ... Be aware of unfamiliar people or vehicles outside your home or office, especially if they appear more than once. Detecting that you are being followed can give you time to reduce risk.

My review of the 2012 cases shows that militant political groups were likely to have been behind nearly half of the killings. Such groups include Al-Shabaab in Somalia, Boko Haram in Nigeria, and the Taliban and separatist groups in Pakistan, Government and military officials were suspected in at least three cases, and criminal groups were believed to be responsible in another three. In at least two of the 2012 cases, the evidence points to the use of professional contract killers.

As CPJ documented in its Journalist Security Guide, murdered journalists are frequently threatened prior to their deaths. Nearly half of the 2012 victims had told family or colleagues that they were receiving threats, and at least two had also been the targets of severe physical assault. Brazilian website editor Mario Randolfo Marques Lopes, killed in 2012, had survived a 2011 attack in which a gunman entered his newsroom and shot him multiple times in the head.

CPJ's Smyth says threats have to be taken seriously:

Threats are not only a tactic designed to intimidate critical journalists; they are often followed by actual attacks. Thirty-five percent of journalists murdered in the last two decades were threatened beforehand, according to CPJ research. You must take threats seriously, paying particular heed to those that suggest physical violence. How to respond depends in part on local circumstances. ... Do report threats to your editors and trusted colleagues. Be sure they know details of the threat, including its nature and how and when it was delivered. Some journalists have publicized threats through their news outlets or their own blogs. And do report threats to local and international press freedom groups such as the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Journalists under threat can also consider a temporary or permanent change in beat. Editors should consult closely with a journalist facing threats and expedite a change in assignment if requested for safety reasons. Some threatened journalists have found that time away from a sensitive beat allowed a hostile situation to lessen in intensity. ... In severe circumstances, journalists may consider relocation either within or outside their country. Threatened journalists should consult with their loved ones to assess potential relocation, and seek help from their news organization and professional groups if relocation is deemed necessary.

The Ortega case is still unsolved, as are the others on the Impunity Index. For the past two years, the Ortega family has petitioned for justice, watching as the gunman and his accomplices implicated two former politicians as the masterminds. Recently, the case has become tangled in pretrial motions that have blocked the arrests of the politicians. A conspirator who turned witness was killed in prison, further damaging the case. "We have been told to manage our expectations at the onset. That we did," Michaella Ortega, Gerardo's daughter, told me. "But it is still impossibly difficult to not be frustrated."

In 2 major efforts, journalist security tailored to fit

2013-04-30T15:18:33Z

In the past, donors and groups providing security to journalists in less-developed nations tended to export a Western, military-style of training designed for a war-time environment. But the danger of covering combat is one thing. Being fired upon by a motorcycle-riding assassin is another--as is being sexually molested in a crowd, discovering a video camera in one's bedroom, or having one's phone calls intercepted. And then there is emotional toll of losing dear colleagues, and wondering whether you or your family will be next.

]]> This week in Central America, two major international programs are trying to tailor journalist security to specific regional conditions. A U.S. State Department-led undertaking, being launched in San Salvador today, is intended to provide region-specific training in several spots worldwide. In Costa Rica, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is continuing an ambitious worldwide effort to improve security for the press and combat impunity in journalist murders. To mark World Press Freedom Day, May 3, UNESCO has organized an array of discussions, "Safe to Speak."

Journalists still face deadly combat risks, in Syria most notably, and hazardous street conditions in nations such as Pakistan. There is still great need for hostile-environment training that focuses on risk reduction and emergency first aid, among other topics.

Yet even in conflict-ridden nations, most journalists are killed in targeted murders. And the murderers get away with it in nearly nine out of ten cases, according to CPJ research. Journalist murders have been rampant for years in the Philippines, Mexico, and Pakistan, and they recently begun rising in Somalia, Brazil, and Nigeria. Journalists who face the threat of targeted violence in reprisal for their reporting require particular skills to stay safe, such as how to identify, assess, and reduce risk, or how to detect the surveillance that research shows often precedes violent attacks.

Elsewhere, in places as diverse as northern Iraq, Venezuela, Tunisia, and Bangladesh, journalists covering civil unrest face risk from thrown objects, tear gas, beatings, and sexual aggression. In these situations, journalists should understand how to safely navigate among hostile police and crowds, how to spot the signs of escalating danger, how to work in teams to conduct their work while staying aware of the situation, and how to escape from an assailant's grip without provoking further confrontation.

In other nations, from Azerbaijan to China, journalists often work under digital or physical surveillance. CPJ has documented cases in which state-sponsored spies or criminals have invaded journalists' privacy in efforts to intimidate or humiliate them. More common is the interception of communication or copying of data, which endangers not only journalists but their sources as well. The same broad principles of awareness, risk reduction, and self-protection that are applied in the streets are equally important online. As the Syrian conflict demonstrated, physical and digital security protocols merge when it came to the operation of satellite phones.

Physical and digital training must also be integrated with emotional awareness. That means having the skills to work through a traumatic situation as it unfolds, and understanding how trauma can affect you long after the crisis has passed.

Full disclosure: The organization that I founded and run, Global Journalist Security, has been carrying out some of this training for journalists in Mexico, Syria, and elsewhere, and is involved in the global effort launched today at El Salvador's storied Jesuit University of Central America. That effort is sponsored by the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor.

But my group is just one of many providing this kind of assistance to journalists. And truly enhancing security for journalists goes well beyond training; it requires long-term efforts to improve the societal environment in which journalists work. The creation of professional networks, which enable journalists to speak as one whenever colleagues are at risk, is key to that effort.

The biggest challenge for the profession is reversing the climate of impunity that exists in so many nations, a condition that enables corrupt and criminal forces to impose the most brutal form of censorship. An attack on one journalist breeds uncertainty and self-censorship among dozens of others. An unpunished attack encourages more of the same. Why is this so hard to address? One reason may be that government officials are themselves suspected in more a quarter of all journalist murders worldwide, according to CPJ research.

This week, though, UNESCO is convening advocates and experts from around the world not only to address the need for more security training but to pursue action in the individual nations where impunity reigns. I'm joining my colleagues from CPJ and many other freedom of expression groups in taking part.

The need for both training and action has never been greater.

Getting ready for contingencies in Afghanistan

2013-04-18T17:49:45Z

Considering the worst-case scenarios for post-2014 Afghanistan, international news agencies should start planning a range of assistance responses for locally hired journalists and media staff. By the end of 2014, NATO troops will have largely withdrawn and the Karzai government will make way for a new administration. If the situation becomes chaotic, Afghans working for foreign and local media could become targets for retribution for their work as journalists.

]]> A similar discussion has already started in Western media about the future of Afghan interpreters who have served foreign governments and militaries. They may find their lives at risk once the dynamics on the ground change. (Here's the New York Times' piece from Monday, and a post by George Packer for the New Yorker. Der Spiegel's story is here. Sweden's government is considering offering asylum to all of its Afghan staff.) Some suggest Afghanistan could become as chaotic as Iraq as the U.S.-led war wound down.

There are some important distinctions. Just as Iraq was not Vietnam, Afghanistan is not Iraq. Important indicators such as numbers and types of deaths among journalists were far worse in Iraq than they have been in Afghanistan, a point CPJ made as early as January 2010. The death toll for journalists killed in the Iraq conflict was by far the largest ever recorded. A total of 151 died in connection to their work, more than 80 percent of them Iraqis and about 60 percent of them in targeted killings. In Afghanistan, 21 journalists died after September 11, 2001, the start of the all-out offensive to drive Al-Qaeda from the country and their Taliban hosts from power. But the majority of those killed, 13, were foreign journalists. Among Afghan journalists, two died in targeted killings, another was beheaded while being held hostage. The others died while on the job, either in bomb blasts or crossfire.

Still, there is serious risk for local reporters. Afghan journalists report they are accustomed to living under constant threat of retribution. More could be killed covering increased violence, or the breakdown in social order could lead to more targeted killings. There is already perfect impunity for the killers of journalists in the country: Afghanistan ranks seventh on CPJ's global Impunity Index.

The vulnerability of local journalists has long been a crucial issue for CPJ. Monica Campbell explored the uncertain future for Afghan journalists in an analysis in CPJ's Attacks on the Press in 2011. Elisabeth Witchel addressed the broad dangers facing fixers in a 2004 report. Most observers, Witchel said, "believe the international media community must do more to protect fixers." CPJ's senior security adviser, Frank Smyth, wrote about the problem as early as 1992 in a piece in the Columbia Journalism Review titled, Out on a Limb: The use and abuse of stringers in the combat zone.

In Kabul in September 2012 while doing research for a year-end report on the future of Afghan media, I met with several foreign news agencies. We discussed what plans, if any, they have for their locally hired staff after 2014. I found some of them had already started to address the problem.

Some of the people with whom I spoke were veterans of Iraq or other conflicts, and they were well aware of the problems of looking after local staff and their needs. Those in charge have had to deal with personal pleas for assistance from the local men and women they had worked with under demanding conditions for years. They know those calls for help are impossible to ignore. In general, foreign journalists in the field want their organizations to meet those responsibilities. Helping local colleagues was a founding principle for CPJ back in 1981.

While there was no denial of responsibility from the people I met with, the question was how far their organizations could go in assisting those who might really need help and how to sort out the most pressing cases.

Conditions vary from country to country, but CPJ's approach to assisting journalists tends toward helping them find a safe haven in their own country whenever possible. The next best scenario is to get them to safety in a nearby country until they can return home. Finding the money to support them and their relatives, which often goes beyond a small nuclear family, has been a steady challenge for CPJ and allied groups over the years. Our Journalist Assistance program is constantly struggling to keep up with the financial demand.

And although we have helped many journalists go into exile, it is usually a final option we try to avoid. We have seen too many talented men and women leave their countries and flounder. Their expertise, so valuable in their own society, is of little use elsewhere. Many find themselves in menial jobs for which they're vastly overqualified. Back home, their country is deprived of their intellectual resources.

Finding financial support for those who do go into permanent exile is a challenge. But once the decision is made to assist them, it is even harder getting them visas into safe havens in North America, Europe, or Asia. In Iraq, it seemed as if official resistance got worse as the situation deteriorated and the demand for refuge rose.

Some of the bureau chiefs with whom I spoke in Kabul said a first step for them was to formalize their relationship with their staff with contracts, and make it clear to them the extent they would be able to help them if the need arose. They had already prepared lists of local staffers who would be eligible for some sort of assistance, the ones they deemed the most at risk. Not all were bylined journalists--some support staff are on their lists too.

At the headquarters end, media organizations should be developing contingency plans or dusting off those they had developed for earlier situations. That includes developing mechanisms to accurately gauge the level of threat their local employees are facing, and winnowing out exaggerated claims. Threats to staff can escalate quickly, and media organizations should start using their political clout to argue for fast-track visas to safe havens. And in this period of shrinking revenues, they should begin setting aside funds to meet their responsibilities.

There is no guarantee that Afghanistan will play out like Iraq. But there is no reason that foreign media organizations working there should not begin planning a range of responses to look after their most vulnerable staff. Leaving it to harried bureau chiefs or senior producers to deal with at the last minute as they're struggling to cope with the demands of a major story needlessly risks lives.

Attacks on Knight Center sites reflect digital dangers

2013-04-05T16:49:15Z

The two websites at the University of Texas at Austin, at first blush, seemed to have been unlikely targets for attack. The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas and its blog cover news about journalism, press freedom and journalist safety throughout the Western hemisphere, with an emphasis on trends in Latin America. The website of the International Symposium for Online Journalism provides information about meetings and other professional issues. Both websites were shut down for two weeks last month in a targeted cyber-attack.

]]> Attacks targeting news, human rights, and free expression organizations "are very common," Eva Galperin, global policy analyst at the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, told CPJ. In fact, CPJ's own website briefly came under attack on February 8, although the hacking did not take the site down. "Many groups encounter such threats on a near-daily basis, and civil society must exercise constant vigilance to protect against these threats," said Masashi Crete-Nishihata, research manager at the University of Toronto-based Citizen Lab, in an email to CPJ.

The hackers of the two UT websites used a method called cross-site scripting to plant malicious code in the sites' hosting computers, according to a Knight Center researcher. The university's information technology researchers tracked the origin of the attacks to IP addresses in Russia. The IT team at UT put the two websites under quarantine while it repaired the damage and addressed vulnerabilities.

The Knight Center deftly moved to other platforms while it addressed the problem. "The malicious cyber-attack was enough to shut our websites down, but not enough to shut us up," Rosental Alves, founder and director of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, said in a posting. The Knight Center put up two temporary WordPress blogs to keep news and information flowing while the websites were down.

The motive for the attack on the UT websites is not known. In the days and weeks before the attack, the Knight Center's Americas blog reported on matters such as an attack on a northern Mexican newspaper, a number of newspapers' opposition to a defamation law in the Dominican Republic, an Ecuador-based non-governmental organization's protest against the "arbitrary" suspension of its Twitter account by the U.S.-based firm of the same name, and the murder of a radio host in Brazil who spoke out against organized crime.

In the strike against the CPJ website, the attacker exploited a vulnerability in the site's Movable Type publishing system to install code that redirected visitors to a third-party site capable of downloading malware to computers running Internet Explorer, and then on to Google.com. CPJ spotted and removed the redirect code within seven minutes and, in the aftermath, took a number of measures to harden its system. CPJ's investigation into the attack, which is continuing, preliminarily traced the attack to a Turkish web server.

Hackers use a number of tactics, noted Crete-Nishihata of Citizen Lab. A common method is the denial-of-service attack, which prevents a website from functioning normally by overloading its host server with external communications requests. In December 2011, a denial-of-service attack took the Mexican website Ríodoce offline for six days. Ríodoce was one of the few publications in the Mexican state of Sinaloa to cover the narco-traffickers operating with impunity in the region, including the powerful Zetas cartel. Defacement attacks are yet another tactic. An entity called the Iranian Cyber Army has defaced the websites of Iranian opposition activists and journalists.

Perhaps more insidious is the infiltration of computer networks, including email systems. In many dozens of documented cases--affecting such major news organizations as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal--hackers have quietly infiltrated computers to monitor sensitive email and other digital communications. In 2011, technologists at Citizen Lab and other groups revealed that that Internet filtering software made by the California-based developer Blue Coat Systems was being used in Syria. The Syrian government is known to be using technology to gather information about activists and citizen journalists. Spyware doesn't even need to be expensive. A Russian software maker produces effective spyware called BlackShades for just $40.

So what can journalists, human rights defenders, and others do to protect themselves? Education and awareness go a long way to helping keep individuals and groups safe, both Crete-Nishihata and Galperin told CPJ. Open-source tools such as those offered by Metasploit allow groups to test potential vulnerabilities in their digital systems. Citizen Lab--which focuses on the convergence of digital media, global security, and human rights--offers a number of other simple, but important self-protection steps. Vigilance is the first step to staying safe.

CPJ launches Somali Security Guide

2013-04-01T17:01:02Z

Last week, two gunmen waited near the home of a young Somali journalist, Rahmo Abdulkadir, who had recently returned to the capital from the Galgadud district in central Somalia where she worked as a reporter for Radio Abudwaq (Worshipper). According to local journalists, 25-year-old Rahmo had just left an Internet café in Mogadishu around 9:30 p.m. on March 24 with a friend when she was shot and killed. Her companion was not harmed.

]]> This narrative is tragically repetitive. Unknown assailants continue to target Somali journalists--courageous, often young, reporters trying to make a name for themselves--with total impunity. Many veteran reporters and editors have fled into exile from conflict-ridden Somalia, leaving behind young, sometimes inexperienced reporters on a vitally important but extremely risky beat. Last year was the deadliest year on record for a country with a long history of press killings: Twelve journalists were killed in the line duty. The success of government and allied forces in ousting Al-Shabaab militants from Mogadishu and a key port town, Kismayo, has not curbed the number of attacks against the press nor increased the likelihood of arrest and prosecution for the perpetrators.

CPJ does not want to see these depressing statistics repeat themselves in 2013. In a bid to help our colleagues improve their personal safety, we have translated our Journalist Security Guide into Somali, with the support of Google Africa. While the guide is designed for a global audience, CPJ enlisted a veteran Somali journalist to review the material for local relevance. It is our hope that many Somali journalists will find it useful in their day-to-day work. The entire Somali guide can be read, printed, and downloaded here.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Subsequent to the publication of this report, questions were raised about the veracity of Rahmo's death. CPJ has published two follow-up reports detailing those questions, which raise doubts as to whether a killing took place as described. CPJ continues to monitor the case.

Cpj Waxay bilawday Agaha Amaanka Saxafiga oo Somali ah
Tom Rhodes/La taliyaha Bariga Africa CPJ

Horaantii toddobaadkan labo dabley ayaa waxay kudileen Muqdisho, wariya Rahmo Abdulkadir, kuwasoo kusii sugaye goob gurigeeda u dhow, Rahmo waxay ahayd wariya da'yar ee Somali ah, waxay Muqdisho kusoo laabatay ayaamahaas ayado katimid degmada Abudwaaq oo katirsan gobolada dhexe ee Somalia, halkaas ay kahayd wariya usoo tabiya wararka radio abudwaaq. Rahmo waxay jirtay 25 sano sida ay shegeen wariyaasha kale ee gudaha, Rahmo waxay kasoo baxday goob intarneet abaarihii 9:30pm fiidnimo waxaa wehliyay saaxibtayd, Rahmo waa la toogatay goobtii ayay kudhimatay markiiba, qofkii lasocday waa ubad-baaday.

Dacdooyinka nocaas waa kuwa soo lalaabta. Gacan kudiig la yaal aan heebtooda la aqoon ayaa waxay bartilmaameestaan wariyayaasha Somaliyeed, kuwasoo naftooda huray kuna shaqeeyaan xaalad adag si geesinima ah. Wariyayaal iyo tafaftirayaal badan oo caan ah ayaa ka cararay wadanka ayagoo door bidan inay kunoolaadaan wadama dibadda, waxay kudhaafeen wadanka wariyeyaal da'yar, mararka qaar ah wax qibrad lahayn, waa loo baahan yahay balse xaalada ayaa ah mid halis ah. Sanadii hore ayaa ahaa sanadka ugu dilka badnaa oo soo mara taariiqda saxaafada caalamka. Labo iyo taban wariye ayaa la dilay ayagoo shaqa kujira. Guulaha dowlada iyo ciidamada xulafada la ah, kasaarida ururka lashabaab goobaha muhiimka ah sida caasimada iyo magaala xebeedka Kismayo, ma noqon mid joojisa weerada wariga wariyeyaasha lagu hayo, balse waxay kor uqaaday tacadiyada iyo xabsi loo geesto suxufiyiinta Somalia.

Ururka difaaca saxafiyiinta CPJ madoonaayo dhacdooyinka nocaa inay soo laabtaan sanada 2013ka. Si aan u caawino saaxibadeen (saxafiyiinta somaliyeed) on kor ugu qaadno amaankooda waxaan Somali ku tarjumnay hagaha saxafiyiinta (Journalist Security Guide), waxaa naga kaalmeeysay si deeqsinima ah Google Africa. Ayadoo loogu talagalay loona qaabeeyay heer caalami ah, CPJ waxay la kaashatay qabiiro kutaqasusay saxaafada Somalia si ay ugu salayso heerka guddaha Somalia. Waxan ku rajawaynahay inu noqon mid aad iyo aad ucaawiyo saxafiyiinta somalida. dhamaan hagaha ama guideka, waxaad ka daabacan, aqrisan ama ka download garysan kartaa halkan riix here.

Iraq war and news media: A look inside the death toll

2013-03-18T20:24:51Z

The U.S.-led war in Iraq claimed the lives of a record number of journalists and challenged some commonly held perceptions about the risks of covering conflict. Far more journalists, for example, were murdered in targeted killings in Iraq than died in combat-related circumstances. Here, on the 10th anniversary of the start of the war, is a look inside the data collected by CPJ.

]]> At least 150 journalists and 54 media support workers were killed in Iraq from the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003 to the declared end of the war in December 2011, according to CPJ research.

Fatalities in Iraq far surpass any other documented war-time death toll for the press. CPJ, founded in 1981, recorded the deaths of 58 journalists during the Algerian civil war from 1993 through 1996, another 54 fatalities in the undeclared civil conflict in Colombia, which began in 1986; and 36 deaths in the conflict in the Balkans from 1991 to 1995.

Freedom Forum, a nonpartisan foundation dedicated to free press, has compiled lists of journalists killed in conflicts prior to 1981. The organization lists 89 journalists killed in the Central American conflicts from 1979 to 1989; a total of 98 killed in the Argentine conflict from 1976-1983; another 68 killed in World War II; and 66 killed in Vietnam from 1955 to 1975.

More recently, CPJ has documented the deaths of 35 journalists covering the Syrian civil war, a toll that includes a reporter who died across the border in Lebanon, and a journalist injured in Syria who later died in Turkey. The war in Afghanistan has taken the lives of 21 journalists from its beginning in 2001 until today.

In Syria, and to a lesser extent Afghanistan, combat-related crossfire has accounted for a large proportion of deaths. But in Iraq, at least 92 journalists, or nearly two out of every three killed, did not die in airstrikes, checkpoint shootings, suicide bombings, sniper fire, or the detonation of improvised explosive devices. They were instead murdered in targeted assassinations in direct reprisal for their reporting. Many were targeted because of their affiliations with U.S. or Western news organizations, or their connections to news outlets seen as having sectarian connections.

Iraq's impunity rate--or the degree to which perpetrators have escaped prosecution for murdering the journalists--is the worst in the world. It is 100 percent. Even today, as Iraq has moved beyond conflict, authorities have shown no interest in investigating these murders.

Among the murder victims is Atwar Bahjat, an Iraqi journalist working for the international broadcast network Al-Arabiya. After reporting on the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra in February 2006, she was abducted by armed men who said in front of witnesses that they were looking for the "on-air correspondent." Her tortured remains and those of two crew members--cameraman Khaled Mahmoud al-Falahi and engineer Adnan Khairallah--were found the next day. CPJ posthumously honored Bahjat with its 2006 International Press Freedom Award.

At least 117 journalists killed during the war were Iraqi, constituting about 85 percent of the overall toll. Iraqis constituted all but one of the 54 media support workers who were killed.

Two journalists who died were from the United States. Michael Kelly, editor-at-large of The Atlantic and a columnist for The Washington Post, was embedded with U.S. forces just two weeks into the invasion when he was killed. Kelly and a U.S. soldier died when their Humvee came under fire near Baghdad and went out of control. Freelance journalist Steven Vincent, who had contributed to The Christian Science Monitor and National Review and who was working on a book, was abducted and killed in Basra in 2005. His body was riddled with bullets, his hands bound with plastic wire.

Insurgent forces of one kind or another were responsible for the deaths of 110 journalists and 47 media workers. The actions of U.S. forces, including checkpoint shootings and airstrikes, were responsible for the deaths of 16 journalists and six media workers. Iraq military forces led by Saddam Hussein were responsible for the deaths of three journalists. Post-invasion Iraqi forces were responsible for the deaths of two journalists. Responsibility is unknown in the rest of the cases.

One of the journalists killed by U.S. forces was Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana. A veteran conflict journalist and a 2001 CPJ International Press Freedom Award winner, Dana was filming an approaching U.S. tank outside Iraq's Abu Ghraib Prison in 2003 when a U.S. soldier on the tank fired at him without warning. A U.S. military investigation later concluded that the incident was "regrettable" but that the soldier "acted within the rules of engagement."

Pakistan's new effort to improve safety, combat impunity

2013-03-15T14:34:16Z

Representatives from 40 Pakistani and international press groups, development organizations, and media houses came together in Islamabad last week to discuss ways to better protect local journalists at risk of violence, and means to combat the virtually perfect record of impunity that assailants enjoy in this country. It's none too soon. Three journalists have died already in Pakistan this year, and more than 40 have been killed over the past decade. About two dozen have been targeted for murder. On the eve of the March 6-7 conference, members of an ARY Television news crew were shot and beaten by thugs in Hyderabad. The attack attests to the dangerous situation in Pakistan where journalists routinely face threats from an array of sources; where reporters working on dangerous beats have little protection; and where law enforcement response to anti-press attacks is nearly nonexistent.

]]> Can this climate of fear and injustice be changed through combined national and international efforts? That was the question posted to participants in the International Conference on Safety & Security of Pakistani Journalists. "Or have we decided we have failed?" asked Adnan Rehmat, director of Intermedia Pakistan, the event organizer.

The challenge goes beyond Pakistan, of course. The conference, supported by Open Society Foundation-Pakistan, International Media Support, UNESCO, and International Media Support, represents one of the first major steps conducted as part of the new U.N. Inter-Agency Plan of Action for the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity. What happens in Pakistan will be the first real test of the U.N. plan's effectiveness on the ground.

The U.N. plan outlines more than 120 measures to improve safety and combat impunity through the coordinated responses of states, NGOs, media, and intergovernmental organizations. The plan will be deployed in Pakistan, Nepal, Iraq, and South Sudan initially, with countries in the Americas following. The plan was developed by the U.N. educational wing, UNESCO, in consultation with a range of groups including CPJ.

From the Islamabad meeting, two alliances were created, one national and one international. Local participants agreed to set up the Pakistan Coalition of Media on Safety (PCOMS) to promote a unified agenda on safety for journalists. A committee of prominent journalists that includes former CPJ International Press Freedom Award recipient Mazhar Abbas and Geo Television anchor Hamid Mir agreed to be the public face of the coalition. The International Friends of Media Alliance on Safety, a group of more than a dozen international organizations, including CPJ, will work in support of the Pakistanis.

The two groups will expand and strengthen programs already under way in Pakistan. The Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists, for example, operates safety training programs, assists families of killed journalists in financial need, and is documenting government inaction in more than a dozen murders of journalists. Intermedia gives emergency help to journalists and is building up a legal assistance program, among other activities.

Building alliances requires debate, as it did in Islamabad. Journalists argued that media owners need to do more to protect staff and freelance contributors. "Those cameras you see are insured, but the people behind them are not," said Intermedia's Rehmat. A discussion of whether journalists should carry guns for their protection ended with the consensus they should not. "My computer and my voice are my weapons," Abbas said.

Other proposals surfaced, such as seeking the appointment of a special prosecutor for the murders of journalist and creating regional safety centers. Representatives from other parts of the world outlined the strategies that have been used in their regions: Mexico, for example, federalized crimes against free expression; Colombia maintains a program that directly provides security to journalists at risk.

"The discussion ends, but the work begins," said Guy Berger, director of freedom of expression and media development at UNESCO. Certainly much needs to happen for these proposals to succeed, but the conference laid the foundation. There was a hint of hope in Islamabad, as reflected in the tweet (#impunityPK) posted by Sadaf Baig of the Intermedia team: "Perhaps we WILL get somewhere soon."

[Reporting from Islamabad]

In tense climate, Kenyan press can draw on solidarity

2013-03-11T19:57:34Z

Amid a tense presidential election, Kenyans have avoided a repeat of the deadly violence that followed the vote in 2007, when half a million people were uprooted and more than 1,000 people were killed. Still, the situation today is fraught. Ethnic identity dominates the nation's political divisions--and those same loyalties can undermine solidarity in the press corps.

]]> I've learned of the importance of solidarity from colleagues in nations such as El Salvador, Mali, Turkey, and Brazil. They stress the need to overcome ideological, regional, and sectarian divisions so they can speak as one when a journalist or newsroom is attacked. I explored this critical issue last month in an essay, "Lessons From El Salvador: Security Begins With Solidarity" that was published as part of CPJ's new anthology Attacks on the Press.

But forging solidarity can be challenging in a nation where an increasing number of media outlets are reporting in different languages. "The growth of ethnic language radio stations has resulted in a huge listenership growing for them," wrote Maina Kiai, former chairman of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights in a 2010 paper for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. "There is a tendency to trust more 'our own' news" than coverage in other languages.

In Kenya, presidential candidate Uhura Kenyatta won just over 50 percent of the vote last week in what was largely a three-way race. The runner-up, Raila Odinga, claimed the vote was "tainted" but has pledged to take his case to the courts rather than the streets. (Kenyatta faces an indictment by the International Criminal Court on charges that he orchestrated post-election violence in 2007.)

In the days before the voting this year, paramilitary police attacked journalists in different areas of the nation. Another journalist was threatened after he wrote a story about candidates bribing voters. In the months before, numerous journalists were harassed, intimidated or assaulted in politically inspired attacks.

In the face of such ongoing tension, reporters in Kenya might take a cue from Shaka Ssali, a Ugandan-born journalist and host of the Voice of America program "Straight Talk Africa." Ssali describes himself as belonging to the "tribe of journalists." Journalists on other continents have put it in much the same way. Forging solidarity in the press corps is among the best ways for journalists to stay safe.

Do news blackouts help journalists held captive?

2013-02-26T16:44:34Z

At any given time over the past two years, as wars raged in Libya and then Syria, and as other conflicts ground on in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, a number of journalists have been held captive by a diverse array of forces, from militants and rebels to criminals and paramilitaries. And at any given time, a small handful of these cases--sometimes one or two, sometimes more--have been purposely kept out of the news media. That is true today.

]]> News organizations have invoked the captives' safety in seeking media blackouts. But do the blackouts really benefit the individuals being held captive?

Different actors hold journalists for various reasons. Ransom can be one, as captors have demanded cash for journalists in Colombia, Somalia, and Afghanistan. Politics can be another, as captors have used journalists like the late Daniel Pearl in Pakistan to communicate a political message. Influencing coverage can be another motive. This month, five employees including three non-journalists of El Siglo de Torreón in northern Mexico were held for over 10 hours before being released.

Extracting information can be another motivation. Last June Mining News editor Franck Fwamba was abducted in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and interrogated for 11 hours about his finances, sources and relationships. Concerns over espionage can be yet another motive. In 1991, a French photojournalist and I were held by Iraqi government forces who, for a time, accused us of being spies.

The key tests are whether press coverage will work for or against the captive individuals (whether they are news personnel or not) and how the captives' interests are balanced against the public's right to information.

"This is not a uniform thing. Each case is different," said David Rohde, a Thomson Reuters foreign affairs columnist and a former New York Times correspondent who was held hostage for seven months in Afghanistan.

It's a divisive issue among the press corps, whether to honor a request not to report about a journalist in captivity. In December, Turkish news outlets and the U.S.-based website Gawker, whose slogan is "today's gossip is tomorrow's news," broke a blackout sought by NBC News on the kidnapping in Syria of correspondent Richard Engel and his crew.

The effect of breaking that blackout is largely unknown; the NBC crew was freed within hours of the first public reports. But John Cook's report in Gawker, in particular, provoked outrage from journalists and human rights defenders who often work alongside each other in conflict areas. Human Rights Watch's Emergencies Director Peter Bouckaert encouraged members of a closed, war correspondents' group on Facebook to bombard Gawker with emails demanding the website remove the story.

"Yo @johnjcook, ever put yr life on line in hostile country to report story 4 Gawker? Don't 2nd guess @NBCNews if you havent," tweeted Rajiv Chandrasekaran, a Washington Post senior correspondent and associate editor and CPJ board member.

Cook said he spoke with NBC but decided not to go along with the network's request. "No one at NBC made a case to me that reporting Engel's situation might cause anything concrete to happen to him, because they didn't know anything about his current circumstances," he wrote. "And as a more general question, it's not clear how publicity as a rule increases risk to kidnapping victims."

Research by the Committee to Protect Journalists does offer some insight. Engel later said that his captors seemed most interested in getting a ransom. The captors, Syrian militiamen, executed the news crew's Syrian rebel escort but acted to keep the Western journalists alive. "I didn't think they were going to execute us at first," Engel said in an on-camera interview after their release. "They clearly wanted us as hostages. This was a hostage-taking scenario."

Many observers maintain that publicity in ransom cases complicates efforts to secure the captive's safe return. "Negotiations with kidnappers could be more difficult if they become aware that they're holding a 'big fish,'" noted the Canadian Association of Journalists after the CBC requested a media blackout in 2008 during correspondent Mellissa Fung's four-week kidnapping in Afghanistan.

"My kidnappers had a delusional idea about the kind of ransom they could get for me," Rohde told CPJ, saying that press would have only worsened his and a colleague's chances of survival. The New York Times requested a blackout after an initial report by Al Jazeera about his abduction, and all but a few isolated news outlets honored it. As his ordeal dragged on, Rohde and a colleague eventually managed to escape.

Robert Young Pelton, an author, journalist, and publisher of the Somalia Report, is skeptical of news organizations' motives behind blackouts. "In many cases, these blackouts are just a bald-faced attempt to buy time, mitigate bad publicity, reduce financial impact, and hide corporations' incompetence in their ability to get their employees back," he wrote in a piece for Gawker on the NBC case.

The blackout in Rohde's case went as far as to include sites such as Wikipedia, which erased user-editor posts about his kidnapping a dozen times before finally freezing the page. New York Times journalists also altered Rohde's bios on the Times' website and, using a pseudonym, also on Wikipedia, as the paper later disclosed in a story once Rohde was free. Colleagues removed the name of his prior employer as it included the word "Christian" along with Rohde's investigations of groups like Al-Qaeda, while emphasizing his investigation of the Srebrenica massacre of Bosnian Muslims.

Some were disquieted by such widespread manipulation. Poynter Institute ethicist Kelly McBride said she was "really astounded" by the media blackout. "I find it a little disturbing, because it makes me wonder what else 40 international news organizations have agreed not to tell the public," McBride told NPR.

Journalists do have a duty to report the news. It was one thing to withhold information about the kidnapping of Rohde, who is very prominent in the field but is not a household name. But would it have been practical or ethical for dozens of news organizations to withhold information for many months about Engel, whose face is seen in millions of homes on a regular basis?

History and context provide some guidelines. Withholding information so as not to endanger individuals, including U.S. soldiers, has been an accepted journalistic practice over time. In 1994, all four major American network television news divisions voluntarily withheld information that U.S. war planes had lifted off from Fort Bragg, N.C., to support a planned invasion of Haiti, only to report the news after the invasion was cancelled.

But some critics complain that news organizations don't apply media blackouts to non-journalists. "Stopping the flow of information about a kidnapped foreign correspondent suggests that media outlets value the lives of their own personnel above those of other people they report on," wrote Blake Lambert, a Canadian freelance journalist for the Christian Science Monitor and other news outlets, on the website of the London-based International News Safety Institute after Fung's Afghan ordeal.

For news outlets to give fellow journalists special treatment would seem indefensible. But it's not clear-cut that is happening. More than 1,000 people, virtually all non-journalists, have been held hostage in Somalia every year, for example, according to news reports. Only a handful of them receive press attention.

Some news organizations have maintained that journalists held hostage receive no special treatment. Back in 1994, at least 15 news organizations honored an AP request not to report the kidnapping of its correspondent, Tina Susman, who was released after 20 days of captivity in Mogadishu. "We would withhold news of a kidnapping of anyone if we felt that it was not already in the public domain, and if we felt that coverage would further imperil the person's life or the prospect of an early release," AP's then-International Editor Tom Kent explained to American Journalism Review after the ordeal.

Another matter concerns freelance journalists. Several analysts point out that the abductions of freelance journalists are not subjected to the same level of pre-publication scrutiny as those of staff journalists who are kidnapped. Some cases of freelancers are publicized even when they appear similar to those involving staff journalists that are kept quiet. Other cases of freelancers receive little press attention even when coverage of their status would help them.

I know from my own experience how corporate interests can work against journalists held captive. In 1991, during the post-Gulf War uprisings against Saddam Hussein, colleagues and I crossed into Iraq with anti-Saddam rebels. A European colleague, Gad Gross, was executed along with our armed rebel escort. A French colleague, Alain Buu, and I were captured an hour later and held captive for 18 days. We were missing as far as our editors and family members knew.

A longtime, accredited CBS News radio stringer, I was also carrying network video equipment that CBS television producers asked me to bring in once the radio desk told them that I was going into Iraq. Once my colleague and I went missing, my family still had to push the network to report the case. A debate ensued at the network, with CBS lawyers arguing that giving our story press could be perceived as implying network liability, CBS colleagues later told me. Having CBS News step up to confirm that I was a journalist was key, as Iraqi authorities were accusing me of being an intelligence agent. In any such case, press coverage can help by convincing suspicious captors that the captives are independent journalists, and by underscoring that any actions to harm them would also not go unnoticed. Conversely, sometimes keeping the kidnapping of a journalist -whether a freelancer or not-- out of the press can help persuade captors to release the captive and still save face.

There is no single template showing how to handle such cases, as each deserves its own careful examination. But a few guidelines come to mind:

Each case is unique, but standards should be consistent. News organizations need to apply the same test of balancing the captive's interest against the public's right to know. That is true whether the captive is a journalist or not. And the scale can tip the more any hostage is well-known, whether he or she is a journalist or not.
Evidence suggests that publicity can fuel ransom demands for anyone held hostage, although more research needs to be done. Publicity can put captives in danger if it leads to higher ransoms that family members or news organizations are unable to meet.
The motive of captors must be scrutinized in each case to determine whether their goal is ransom, political gain, media influence, or something else. This may be difficult to determine. But it should nonetheless help guide any decision weighing whether press would be more likely to help or hinder the captive's well-being.
The decision over whether or not press is desirable should be made by a coalition of stakeholders led by family members, who should independently evaluate the recommendations of news directors and security advisers. (This is especially important in the case of freelancers.) And they should remain open to changing their decisions as a situation develops.
Keeping a case out of the public eye is increasingly difficult today due to the Internet; the challenge increases if the captive is a well-known public figure. News organizations may be able to persuade other major outlets to keep a case quiet, but they face extraordinary challenges in scrubbing information posted across the Web. It may be more practical to release limited information about an abduction early, then manage the flow closely.
If publicity is desired, close management of information is essential. Colleagues and family members may decide it best to release some information, but still try to keep the case relatively quiet. Advocates may also decide to shape the narrative of a journalist held captive--highlighting one nationality over another, for example, in the case of a person with dual citizenship. Or by highlighting stories captors might see favorably. Or by downplaying information about matters like financial holdings.
Journalists do deserve special treatment in one respect. In the case of media blackout or manipulation of information, the public trust must be maintained and readers or the broadcast audience should be informed afterward what was done and why, and the record should be set straight.
Do no harm should guide decisions. Claiming that there is no evidence that harm would be done by publicizing a case is not an argument in favor of publicity. Instead, every news outlet should consider whether press is likely to help or hinder the interests of not the news organization or any other entity, but the individual --whether they are news personnel or not--at risk in captivity.

The matter is hardly an academic one for journalists and others either known to be in captivity or still missing today. Freelance journalist James Foley, a contributor to Global Post, was kidnapped in northwest Syria late last year; his family waited six weeks before deciding to make the case public. He remains missing. Austin Tice, a freelance journalist for McClatchy newspapers and The Washington Post, was seized in Damascus in August, and what appears to be a staged video of him in captivity leads observers to suggest that Syrian government forces may be holding him. His parents recently traveled to Beirut to try and appeal to whoever may be holding him.

Neither is the risk limited to Western correspondents. Mohamed al-Saeed of Syrian State TV was kidnapped last August in Damascus and he, like many others, remains missing. Bashar Fahmi of the U.S.-government broadcaster Al-Hurra and his Turkish cameraman disappeared in Syria reporting in Aleppo. The Turkish cameraman was captured and released almost 90 days later. But Fahmi is still missing, and his fate remains unknown.

The over-riding guideline: Every captive situation requires the same degree of care and balance of interests as any story where lives are in peril, whether the captives are journalists or not.

As Kenya votes, journalists must take precautions

2013-02-25T17:27:16Z

Election-related violence is a worry for journalists in many countries, but perhaps nowhere more so than Kenya, where presidential polls will be held March 4. In the aftermath of the nation's last presidential elections in 2007, over one thousand people were killed in ethnic and political violence, live news broadcasts were banned, and the press faced a torrent of threats, leading to widespread self-censorship. Already, in recent weeks, some journalists have been harassed and their equipment confiscated, while media houses have been threatened in relation to coverage.

]]> Compounding the problem are recent findings that some media were partisan and even overtly complicit in the 2007 outbreak of violence. As the fresh election nears, journalists should commit themselves to professional standards, at the same time that they watch out for themselves and each other over the weeks ahead.

During the party primaries in January, security agents critically injured two journalists attached to the Daily Nation, while the National Alliance Party attacked Royal Media Services reporters in Nairobi. Also recently, Robert Wanyonyi, Osinde Obare, and Paul Gitau of The Standard; Walter Barasa and David Wainaina of Mediamax; Mathews Ndanyi of Radio Africa Group; Suleiman Mbatia of Nation; Vincent Musundi of Royal Media Services, and others have reported nasty experiences at the hands of either political activists, security agencies, or criminal thugs. Since November 2011, the Media Council of Kenya has received about 30 cases of harassment, intimidation, and violent attacks on journalists. None of the cases has fully been investigated or prosecuted by the authorities in Kenya.

Some parts of the country have become no-go areas for journalists who are perceived not to represent local politicians, activists, business barons, or their interests. This geographical zoning is a dangerous trend for media freedom and freedom of expression.

In addition to the physical threats and attacks against journalists, there are some reports that the judiciary has levied huge fines in civil cases related to defamation, while some media houses have failed to respond to court summons and still others have ignored the plight of their journalists' altogether. The concern is that if something is not done in time, the harassment of journalists and resulting self-censorship will become the norm.

Increasing attacks against journalists as the elections in Kenya approach are not without rationalization. CPJ and other monitoring groups noted the Kenyan media's partiality along with even, in some cases, evidence of incitement in the 2007 post-election violence. Near the start of the current electoral campaign, more than a quarter of news reports presented only one viewpoint, according to the Media Council of Kenya (MCK), which also noted that some news outlets were "reporting unconfirmed rumors and publishing sensational headlines add[ing] to the unnecessary heightening of tensions."

Indeed, the government's own Independent Review Commission on the General Elections and the Commission of Investigation into the Post 2007 Election Violence were categorical on the media's role both overtly and covertly in stirring up and abetting the violence by their performance, or lack thereof, during the country's most trying period since independence.

Finally, the confirmation of charges against former radio journalist Joshua Sang at The Hague for crimes against humanity in connection with the violence that followed the 2007 elections was a sobering indictment on the media and belatedly served as a wake-up call to the entire profession in Kenya. The case is poised to come up in April. Sang has denied playing any role in drumming up tribal hatred through his broadcasts in the run-up to the 2007 election.

The recent harassment and attacks against journalists are violations of Kenya's Constitution as well as international treaties to which the country is a party, including the African Charter on Human and People's Rights, U.N. Security Council Resolution 1738, and UNESCO Resolution 29.

As the statutory body mandated with protecting journalists and promoting their rights through the Media Act of 2007, the Media Council of Kenya is concerned about increasing cases of attacks and intimidation against journalists and media houses. The council has taken several steps, including meetings with media owners and senior editors beginning in September 2012, as well as countrywide training on safety and protection for journalists.

The council has proposed the following measures on the issue:

1. Implement the recommendations of a baseline survey that was commissioned by the Kenya Media Programme through the Media Council of Kenya to map out the restrictions, attacks, harassment, and intimidation against media workers and improve awareness of the problem.

2. Carry out a study on journalists' working conditions, including remuneration, and establish how this relates to safety and security.

3. Establish a common fund to deal with issues of safety and security. Media houses should be among the contributors.

4. Adoption by media houses of a more actionable approach to the plight of journalists, including by providing life insurance and protective gear as well as counseling for those who have covered traumatic events.

5. Training journalists on their personal responsibility in matters of safety and security.

6. Sensitize individual journalists and media houses to raise awareness and escalate issues of safety crises, including identifying and shaming the culprits.

7. Develop a binding resolution from industry players including media owners, editors, Kenya Union of Journalists, and Kenya Correspondents Association on a safe working environment for journalists in Kenya.

8. Reach out to other constituents involved with security in the country, including police, the director of public prosecutions, political parties, and the judiciary to raise the issue of safety and protection of journalists.

In Syria, the quandary of freelance news coverage

2013-02-06T15:07:56Z

Forces on all sides of the Syrian conflict that have tried to censor news coverage through violence have won a round. By sharply increasing the risk for reporters covering the civil war they have forced news organizations to think twice before sending their staff to the battlefields. In a worrying development they even have led a leading UK newspaper, the Sunday Times, for which Marie Colvin was on assignment when she was killed last year in Homs, to refuse photographs submitted by freelancers.

]]> According to the UK Press Gazette, seasoned photojournalist Rick Findlar has been told by the Sunday Times' foreign desk that the paper could not buy his pictures because they "do not wish to encourage freelancers to take exceptional risks."

"This is not a financial decision. It is a moral one," said Graeme Paterson, deputy foreign editor for the Sunday Times. "In the light of what happened to Marie Colvin we have decided we do not want to commission any journalists to cover the situation in Syria. The situation out there is incredibly risky. And we do not want to see any more bloodshed."

News organizations are obviously nervous about being accused of enticing freelancers to throw the dice and plunge recklessly into war zones. They are also known, however, to be wary of being called to account if a freelancer who gets into trouble claims that he or she is working for them.

The Sunday Times' announcement has fanned the long-running debate on the status of freelancers on assignment for news organizations that no longer dare to send their own staff to particularly perilous destinations. What forms of support (insurance, protection, exfiltration) should these freelancers expect from the media that have commissioned them? To what extent are these news organizations accountable if a freelancer is taken hostage or wounded?

"The Sunday Times lost one of their best, and I can understand that sending back someone to Syria is a tough decision to take," award-winning photo-reporter Bruno Stevens told CPJ, referring to Colvin's death. "Too many young photographers leave for extremely dangerous theaters without enough experience, and it is reasonable to try to slow down the movement. But the absolute refusal to publish even after these freelancers are back seems to go too far. They are right to condemn the general hypocrisy of using uninsured freelancers instead of staff or of freelancers for whom they are ready to assume the risks involved. But if that leads them to just take photos from the wires quality journalism will be hurt."

Agence VU photojournalist Cédric Gerbehaye said: "If the Sunday Times wants to deter rookie and unprepared journalists from going to countries of immense risk, that's understandable. But there have always been and there will always be young freelancers who will try to make their debut in a particular conflict. If a major actor like the Sunday Times withdraws from the market it will become more difficult for the younger generation that was born with the Arab Spring to make its mark and move ahead by, for instance, publishing a two-page spread in Paris Match or securing a slot at the Visa pour l'image festival in Perpignan [France]. This generation has demonstrated its hyper-reactivity and sophisticated use of technology and social networks, and it deserves a chance to be published."

The Sunday Times policy raises another crucial issue: Who decides what is news? The freedom to cover particularly brutal conflicts is at stake if thugs from security forces or rebel groups are able to turn away journalists. "I understand that news outlets are anxious about the risks, but it strikes me as alarming that a major newspaper has taken the decision not to take freelance copy from Syria," said Jamie Dettmer in a comment posted to the Press Gazette article. "If other papers follow the Sunday Times, then we will get even less media scrutiny of the civil war."