Managing Risks on Assignment
ACOS Standards
https://www.acosalliance.org/safety-management
FOR JOURNALISTS ON DANGEROUS ASSIGNMENTS:
- Before setting out on any assignment in a conflict zone or any dangerous environment, journalists should have basic skills to care for themselves or injured colleagues.
- We encourage all journalists to complete a recognized news industry first aid course, to carry a suitable first-aid kit and continue their training to stay up-to-date on standards of care and safety both physical and psychological. Before undertaking an assignment in such zones, journalists should seek adequate medical insurance covering them in a conflict zone or area of infectious disease.
- Journalists in active war zones should be aware of the need and importance of having protective ballistic clothing, including armoured jackets and helmets. Journalists operating in a conflict zone or dangerous environment should endeavor to complete an industry-recognized hostile environment course.
- Journalists should work with colleagues on the ground and with news organizations to complete a careful risk assessment before traveling to any hostile or dangerous environment and measure the journalistic value of an assignment against the risks.
- On assignment, journalists should plan and prepare in detail how they will operate including identifying routes, transport, contacts and a communications strategy with daily check-in routines with a colleague in the region or their editor. Whenever practical, journalists should take appropriate precautions to secure mobile and Internet communications from intrusion and tracking.
- Journalists should work closely with their news organizations, the organization that has commissioned them, or their colleagues in the industry if acting independently, to understand the risks of any specific assignment. In doing so, they should seek and take into account the safety information and travel advice of professional colleagues, local contacts, embassies and security personnel. And, likewise, they should share safety information with colleagues to help prevent them harm.
- Journalists should leave next of kin details with news organizations, ensuring that these named contacts have clear instructions and action plans in the case of injury, kidnap or death in the field.
FOR NEWS ORGANIZATIONS MAKING ASSIGNMENTS IN DANGEROUS PLACES:
- Editors and news organisations recognize that local journalists and freelancers, including photographers and videographers, play an increasingly vital role in international coverage, particularly on dangerous stories.
- Editors and news organizations should show the same concern for the welfare of local journalists and freelancers that they do for staffers.
- News organizations and editors should endeavor to treat journalists and freelancers they use on a regular basis in a similar manner to the way they treat staffers when it comes to issues of safety training, first aid and other safety equipment, and responsibility in the event of injury or kidnap.
- Editors and news organizations should be aware of, and factor in, the additional costs of training, insurance and safety equipment in war zones. They should clearly delineate before an assignment what a freelancer will be paid and what expenses will be covered.
- Editors and news organizations should recognize the importance of prompt payment for freelancers. When setting assignments, news organizations should endeavor to provide agreed upon expenses in advance, or as soon as possible on completion of work, and pay for work done in as timely a manner as possible.
- Editors and news organizations should ensure that all freelance journalists are given fair recognition in bylines and credits for the work they do both at the time the work is published or broadcast and if it is later submitted for awards, unless the news organization and the freelancer agree that crediting the journalist can compromise the safety of the freelancer and/or the freelancer’s family.
- News organizations should not make an assignment with a freelancer in a conflict zone or dangerous environment unless the news organization is prepared to take the same responsibility for the freelancer’s wellbeing in the event of kidnap or injury as it would a staffer. News organizations have a moral responsibility to support journalists to whom they give assignments in dangerous areas, as long as the freelancer complies with the rules and instructions of the news organization.
How to complete a risk assessment and corresponding action plan
Scenario #1:
It’s April 2015. You’re a Mumbai-based staff photographer for a wire agency hearing early reports of catastrophic damage and major loss of life after an earthquake struck northwest of central Kathmandu. You call your editor, who tells you to get there as soon as possible.
What are 1) some of the risks here, and 2) how will you mitigate them?
Put together an action plan: How will you get in? Are airports open? How will you move around once you get there? What information/contacts will you require before you arrive? Where will you stay? How will your editor know you’re safe? What do you need to bring with you? How much is all of this likely to cost? Once you’re there, how will you get back out again?
To clarify: Risks don’t don’t always necessarily mean risks to your physical safety. They can also refer to financial risk, risk to access, risk to your sources, risk of arrest or deportation, risk that your presence could make a bad situation worse, risk that once in you won’t be able to get out, risk that communications will be down and you won’t be able to file your material, risk to your gear, etc.
The Rory Peck Trust has a helpful and very thorough breakdown of what a risk assessment might include: https://rorypecktrust.org/resources/safety-and-security/risk-assessment
Scenario #2:
It’s 2017, during the uneasy span (August-October) between a Kenyan presidential election surrounded by rumors of fraud, a Supreme Court decision annulling the results, and a re-run that would lose all legitimacy due to an opposition boycott. Protests have started up in the Nairobi slums of Kibera and Mathare and in the western city of Kisumu. Police are cracking down violently; there are reports of live bullets and civilian deaths, and of skirmishes between supporters of opposition leader Raila Odinga and incumbent president Uhuru Kenyatta. You’re a Nairobi-based freelancer and you’ve scored an assignment to cover the ongoing story for VICE News.
Put together a risk assessment and action plan. Ask yourself the same kinds of questions as above. What are the unique risks of this story?