These are nightmare times for honest journalists.

The Iraq conflict is one of the bloodiest in history for reporters. A camera operator in the Occupied West Bank enjoys one of the most dangerous jobs on earth. A journalist in Colombia almost qualifies as an endangered species.

In trouble spots around the globe, hundreds of reporters and editors simply trying to keep their readers and listeners informed about a host of critical domestic issues face persecution, intimidation, torture and even death.
More than 1,200 journalists and support staff have been killed in the line of duty in the past 10 years.

They died because someone did not like what they wrote or said, because someone did not like journalists or simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
And the situation is deteriorating, perhaps because so few people have been held to account for attacking members of the news media.

In a speech to mark World Press Freedom Day on 3 May 2003 the Director-General of UNESCO, Koichiro Matsuura, said journalists always were killed during coverage of violent conflicts and political crises, but the numbers now were especially worrying.
It appears more journalists have been subjected to harassment, physical threat, kidnapping and direct violence than in previous years, he said. He called for an end to impunity for those who committed crimes abduction, torture, murder to silence the truth.
I call on government authorities everywhere to ensure that crimes against journalists do not go unpunished. And I call on citizens everywhere to make such impunity unacceptable, he declared.

It was no coincidence that 3 May also saw the launch of the International News Safety Institute (INSI), dedicated to safeguarding the lives of all journalists everywhere.
The Institute was created by an unprecedented coalition of media organisations, press freedom groups and humanitarian campaigners concerned by the mounting death toll in the world news community.

The initiative came from the International Federation of Journalists, the worlds biggest journalists grouping, and the International Press Institute (IPI), the organisation for editors, media executives and prominent journalists.
They were backed by major global and regional news organisations, press freedom groups and support organisations.

The Institutes Honorary President is Chris Cramer, Head of International Networks at CNN, who says the 21st Century world news community remains in the dark ages as far as safety is concerned. The Institute marks a new chapter in the history of news media, he said. After years of neglect in the face of increasing violence against media staff, we are putting security and safety on top of the news agenda.

The Brussels-based Institute, led and managed by media professionals, aims to help create a culture of safety in media in all corners of the world. It recognises that brave reporting in the teeth of adversity is vital to free societies everywhere and never can be completely safe.
Intrepid reporters, willing to risk their lives to expose wrongdoing and misery, are vital to free societies everywhere. Their initiative cannot -- must not -- be snuffed out by some overbearing nannyism.
However, there are many things concerned employers and working journalists as well as governments and security forces can do to manage risk and maintain high quality reporting.

INSI has published a 10-point safety code which urges news organisations to consider safety first before competitive advantage. It calls for all media staff to be given appropriate hostile environment and risk awareness training as well as protective health and safety equipment such as medical packs, helmets, respirators and flak jackets.
It calls for adequate insurance for staff and freelancers, counselling for journalists traumatised by the horrors of conflict and freedom for any media worker to refuse an assignment to a danger zone without penalty.

Journalists themselves must contribute to the new safety ethic: they are called upon to behave responsibly and not recklessly endanger themselves and their colleagues.
They are reminded that journalists are neutral observers and should not carry firearms in the course of their work.
No story, says INSI, is worth a life.

To comprehend why INSI was deemed so necessary by so many news organisations there has to be an understanding of the grave danger facing journalists in so many parts of the world of why one authority recently called safety the ultimate press freedom issue. UNESCOs Matsuura argues that whenever one journalist is exposed to violence, intimidation or arbitrary detention because of his or her commitment to conveying the truth, all citizens are deprived of the right to express themselves and act according to their conscience. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says that 76 per cent of journalists who have died in the past decade were murdered, targeted in direct reprisal for their work.
 Ninety per cent of the dead were not international correspondents parachuted into war, but ordinary journalists trying to pursue their daily work at home, in their own countries.
Most disturbingly, in 94 per cent of the murders no one has been brought to justice.

Many experts believe lack of accountability has given a sharp upward twist to the spiral of journalist persecution. Killing a reporter has become a relatively risk-free activity in many nations. In countries where press freedom is under attack, journalists are threatened by authoritarian regimes and their corrupt security arms, crime gangs and other lawless elements that fear the bright light of honest reporting.
The Inter American Press Association, whose members are amongst the most tormented, calls this the most archaic and brutal form of repression against press freedom.

To mark Press Freedom day, the CPJ last May listed the worlds 10 worst places to be a journalist.

At the top of the list was the West Bank where Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharons government has used extraordinary force to deter journalists from covering its military activities. Two cameramen have been shot dead in recent weeks despite years of pleading by world news bodies for the Israelis to restrain their troops.

The others in this bloody Top Ten were Colombia, which witnesses violent reprisals against the media by all sides in the civil conflict, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Belarus, Burma (Myanmar), Zimbabwe, Iran, Kyrgyzstan and Cuba.

Another twist to the vicious spiral has come from a widespread disregard of the old rules that used to help protect journalists in conflicts.
In the old days when wars had distinct sides and were played largely to conflict conventions, reporters were mostly seen as impartial observers. In todays often swirling and confused conflicts, there are no set rules. Reporters are seen as belonging to one side or another.

Israeli soldiers and officials seem unable to comprehend that a Palestinian cameraman can be as honest a reporter as an Israeli. An Islamic fanatic can regard Western journalists as being on the side of global war on Islam. An anti-globalisation rioter sees a photographer as an arm of hated capitalism. An American military media officer cannot accept that an Arab TV station can be unbiased. At the very least those committed elements do not care very much whether a reporter lives or dies on the bigger battlefield. At the most extreme end, the reporter is a target for their anger.
INSI has recorded 20 news media dead journalists and their support staff such as translators and drivers -- in the Iraq conflict, plus two missing believed killed.
Analysis breaks this down to 12, or 14 if the missing are counted, claimed by acts of war.

Of eight who died from other causes, five were in road accidents one of the major causes of journalist deaths in conflict zones two succumbed to health-related afflictions and one stepped on a mine.

Many critical safety issues have arisen from the Iraq conflict and need to be addressed by journalists and assigning editors. Health is important. A journalist must be physically fit and mentally robust not only to endure the extreme stress of modern combat just the noise of modern gunfire can be terrifying but the physical torture of sitting cramped up, knees to chin, in the back of a bouncing APC for hours at a stretch.
Embedded journalists were by and large safer than non-embeds, or unilaterals as they were called. They had a measure of safety provided by being protected by the most powerful side.
But some wore uniforms. Did that make them safer by blending into the crowd around them or make them targets by appearing to be soldiers? Unilaterals had more freedom to report all sides. But they were owned by neither. Did that make them no ones responsibility?
Chillingly, Coalition media managers made clear that the safety of unilaterals would not be guaranteed.

INSI wrote an open letter to both sides before the war began urging them to respect journalists neutrality and to avoid targeting civilian buildings where journalists might gather.
Yet journalists were killed when American forces fired on the Palestine Hotel, well-known as the Baghdad base for most of the international media, and the Al Jazeera bureau. The US explanations for these assaults have been less than convincing.

Conflict reporting of course can never be completely safe. But the danger can be reduced.
Far too often, journalists still head out towards trouble, whether war or violent protest, without the most basic preparation.
They charge into situations about which they know little, without proper safety equipment or health awareness, when a little homework could make a huge difference to their safe return. Many were appalled at the spectacle of hundreds of foreign journalists arriving in the Iraq war zone effectively naked.
Malaysian journalists said they didnt even have gas masks when most experts were predicting chemical or biological warfare. One Japanese correspondent politely inquired of a Western reporter the purpose of his flak jacket.
Few were protected by proper insurance, if they had any at all. One reporter told me that if he had been killed the insurance money would have gone to his employer.

Only a handful of major networks and newspapers sent experienced staff that had been trained to cope with hostile environments and were adequately equipped with helmets, respirators, armoured vests even, in some circumstances, armoured cars.
Some companies provided their teams with specialist ex-military personnel who would advise on the safest methods of operation to and from and on and around the battlefield.

Not all news organisations can afford the resources deployed in wartime by the global giants.
But relatively simple measures can achieve a great deal. The first step is recognition of the dangers and the second a decision to do something. The pressures are persuading an increasing number of journalists to behave more sensibly in conflict and better educate themselves on the people and conditions they will encounter in danger zones.
Employers too are becoming more aware, not least because of the fear of litigation. British law, for example, says the main responsibility ensuring the health and safety of workers rests with the employer. Not only the company but individual directors or managers can be proceeded against in cases of neglect.

Neglect can be costly.

In 2001, the family of reporter Larry Lee sued his employer, the US-based financial news wire BridgeNews, claiming its negligence had led to his death in Guatemala.
They alleged the company had failed to provide adequate training and protection for its employee.
The suit was settled out of court in favour of the family.
Experts in journalist safety believe further suits will follow, not only in cases involving the death of a reporter but also in situations where journalists suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

INSI urges employers not only to provide physical protection but also armour for the mind -- free counselling for journalists who witness wars horror.
The heavy-drinking, volatile, morally-challenged war correspondent is an international cliche. But there is no divine law that says people who cover conflicts have some inbuilt urge to abuse drink or drugs or unleash their demons on their loved ones.
A major study of 150 war journalists has established that conflict reporters have significantly more psychiatric problems than journalists who have never been in danger.
The rates of PTSD in war reporters were found to be remarkably similar to soldiers who had faced combat, and higher than police. Yet while soldiers and police routinely receive extensive training to deal with violence, conflict reporters as a rule do not.
Generally, of all the professionals in a modern conflict only the journalists have had no training.

And it is not only journalists in the field who may need help. A British TV producer had a breakdown because she had to edit thousands of gory images from a battle zone pictures the public were protected from by editors like her.
Fortunately she worked for an understanding and sympathetic organisation that ensured she got immediate and effective counselling.

Sometimes good can come out of bad. The deaths of two journalists, Kurt Schork of Reuters and Miguel Gil Marino of Associated Press Television News, in a guerrilla ambush in Sierra Leone in 2000, prompted the creation of the London-based Broadcast News Security Group the following year.

Founded by CNN, the BBC, ITN, Reuters and APTN, it quickly expanded to include several other networks.
It drew up a common charter of best safety practice (which provided a basis for INSIs Safety Code).
And uniquely in our business, these otherwise uncompromising and toughest of rivals agreed to share operational information in danger zones and put competitive issues aside when the lives of their people in the field were at stake.

Group members agreed that no one would be assigned to cover a conflict unless that person had been through a professional Hostile Environment training course. They have spent millions of dollars to back up this commitment, paying for the training of hundreds of staff and stringers.
Training by specialist security companies commonly includes battlefield first aid, safe driving, education on the power of modern munitions and how to behave if taken hostage or threatened by wild-eyed gunmen.

Modern competitive pressures especially among 24-hour news channels -- fuelled by technological advances which permit live battlefield reporting, are feared to be driving many journalists to take more risks.
Successful war reporting can enhance a career like little else. But more journalists and bosses are coming around to the view that no story is worth a life.
They are reining in some of the wilder impulses that can prompt home desks to drive field journalists deeper into danger to match or outstrip a competitor.

Dead journalists, after all, dont tell tales.

Terry Anderson, the former Associated Press bureau chief who was held hostage in Lebanon for nearly seven years, has said: Always, constantly, every minute, weigh the benefits against the risks. And as soon as you come to the point where you feel uncomfortable with that equation, get out, go, leave it. Its not worth it. There is no story worth getting killed for.

INSIs purpose is to address all of these issues in effective and practical ways. It is not a reactive advocacy grouping, but a proactive organisation that aims to help try to prevent the event that leads to a clamour of protest and condemnation.
It will serve principally as a global safety network for journalists, whether international staff who parachute into trouble spots or locals under threat at home, providing the information and advice they and their employers need to do their jobs better and survive.

• Support and develop safety programmes for all news media workers
• Encourage agreements on health and safety matters between employers, staff and freelancers
• Disseminate information through practical training, advisories and literature
• Promote industry best practice for training, equipment and field work. It will raise funds for projects that provide training for those who cannot afford courses.
• Investigate, develop and promote safety services including affordable insurance
• Establish a global network of organisations committed to risk-reduction

UNESCO Director-General Matsuura, discussing crimes against reporters, said: The debt we collectively incur when journalists suffer on our behalf must be repaid in practical ways. He was calling on governments to do more. But his words apply to us all, for now and for our futures.
And that is what the International News Safety Organisation is about.

Rodney Pinder is former global editor for Reuters Television and was an international correspondent and news executive for 35 years. He covered the aftermath of the 1967 Middle East War, Northern Ireland, the Rhodesia War, the Iran-Iraq War, the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan, South Africas war of attrition in Southern Africa, the first Gulf War and the violent transition to black majority rule in South Africa.

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