The Rory Peck Trust: Award 1998

The 1998 Rory Peck Award Brochure

Better prepared than repaired

Kate Adie on the need for training in hostile environments

adie.gif (3450 bytes) There’s no foolproof training for reporters – especially when it comes to the nasty places. I’ve survived several major riots in Northern Ireland with no more than the average brick-dent in various tender parts; then went to a minor disturbance in Warrenpoint and ended up flat in the road, unable to see. No-one warns you about the consequences of being hit fair and square between the eyes by a potato.

Reporting was never a genteel occupation. And if you go off to a war, or find that civil unrest, riot and general mayhem are part of your journalistic brief, you can always have expected to be careful. However, some developments in the last decade suggest that being careful is no quite enough.

The world is no longer armed with an ancient 303 rifle. General Khalashnikov saw to that. Cheap, easy to use, and now horrendously plentiful, the AK47 can be used by a child – and frequently is. A small disturbance, a disagreement at a road-block, turns into slaughter within a few seconds.

Reporters are now within range not only of small arms, but of everything else – mortars, bombs, missiles – because they no longer leave the field of conflict to file the story. Satellite technology has taken the press into the action, carrying the sat phone, the mobile ground transmission station. The dishes sit amidst the fighting, and they have engineers and picture editors attending them. Reporting is no longer a series of forays into danger – it can be a lengthy stay.

Competition was always part of the risk equation – but today there are enormous pressures on freelancers to deliver the goods: camera crews especially, with considerable investment to justify.

The “live” component of broadcasting is on the increase: news “as it happens”, with the added risk of concentrating on filing, when all your wits should be devoted to survival. In Sarajevo, during the Balkan conflict, most of the media remained street-wise and alert for about a month, before the defences went down. However, much depended on the amount of sleep, which was directly related to the amount of night-time shelling.

And on top of all these little problems, the apparent growing perception of the media as “players” in the conflict – the supposedly powerful international media able to influence events, particularly through TV pictures. The result is often suspicion and hostility, on top of the traditional attempts to intimidate and manipulate.

The most obvious result of all this – the sight of reporters and crews scrambling around in expensive flak jackets, and driving armoured vehicles – a very rare sight indeed, until the last decade.

The New York-based Committee for the Protection of Journalists has a set of statistics that do not make nice reading. A rising graph of deaths and injuries. So, can anything be done? Most of the factors which are contributing to increased danger cannot be altered by the press. So what’s needed is preparation, and a heightened awareness of what might befall. Any organisation sticking its eggs solely in the basket of “counselling” after the event is not acting in the cast interests of its employees. We need to concentrate on preparing, rather than repairing.

Trouble can erupt in the most unlikely places, never mind the war zones. Becoming street-wise takes some more time than others, however everyone should feel their employer backs them: with insurance, with the right equipment, with an understanding that the reporter/crew goes there in order to come back. And freelancers shouldn’t be excluded: so much front-line coverage comes from agencies and individual freelancers now that it is unjustifiable of the industry to treat them as “independent risk-takers.”

Can you train the media for hostile environments? Well, you can try. You can never simulate the real thing, the unexpected, the bizarre nastiness that arrives out of the blue. But you can at least wake up the quietly-brought-up, college-educated citizen of a peacetime country (genteel lot, the media nowadays), to the possibility of violence, the likelihood of unreasonable behaviour backed by weaponry, and the need to survive. A few helpful tips on a course might at least stimulate some into an examination of their own motives for wanting to report in messy circumstances. To think about why they are prepared to face grisly scenes. And whether they really want to.

And it just might make some contemplate that, when the going gets nasty, you’ll feel scared. If you don’t, you’re probably too insensitive to be in news, or you’re dead. So, back-up, support and the right motivation – and a little training – for everyone, and that means freelancers too. An ability to deal with potatoes is a bonus.

Based on a speech made at Skillset’s Health and Safety Awards, The Freedom Forum, 17th July 1998

The Rory Peck Awards Brochure 1998