14 key safety guidelines for journalists

Participants at a two-day Media Capacity Building Workshop on Safety/Security Consciousness and Mechanisms in Investigative Reporting and Coverage of Conflicts or Dangerous Assignments have suggested fourteen ways journalists can ensure their safety.

They made the recommendations at the workshop organised by International Press Centre (IPC) for Journalists in Anambra, Delta and Edo States on Wednesday, June 29 & Thursday, June 30, 2022, in Asaba, Delta State.

The recommendations are as follows:

Journalists should take their safety and security seriously, especially by continuously investing in skills development and tool acquisition and usage to enhance data and digital security.

Journalists should at all times uphold the ethics of the profession, particularly by exercising the discipline of verification and presenting news and reports in a fair, balanced and objective manner.

Journalists should ensure that their reports are based on facts rather than assumptions so they could have good professional defence in case of threats or attacks.

Journalists should be conflict-sensitive and refrain from presenting news or reports that are prejudiced, undermine the facts of a conflict and are capable of inflaming passions thereby escalating violent conflicts.

Journalists should not only limit themselves to negative issues in conflicts but also report positive things that happen during conflicts as the reporting of such can help prick the conscience of combatants and convince them to embrace peace.

Journalists should be abreast with the laws of the land and various regulatory mechanisms to avoid running into avoidable danger.

Journalists should scrutinize and follow up on media-related legislative bills right from their formative stages and expose threats to journalists’ rights and press freedom before such bills are passed into law and become instruments for muzzling the media.

Journalists should be resilient, build support groups, raise alarm when threatened or intimidated, report incidents of attacks and seek legal redress for any violation of their individual and professional rights.

Media professional bodies and associations should be proactive in defending journalists under attack while they should ensure that media organisations provide maximum support and protection for their employees, particularly through enhanced welfare.

Journalists and their professional bodies and associations should build some level of relationship with the legal profession, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and professional bodies both local and international towards enlisting their support whenever journalists and media outlets come under attack.

Journalists should undertake a risk assessment of every story in order to anticipate different scenarios and take necessary precautions to avoid exposure to danger.

Journalists should understand that security is personal and should therefore regularly devise suitable means of protecting themselves.

Journalists should seek the help and intervention of relevant health experts whenever they are exposed to physical danger or face challenges to their mental health particularly if they notice such symptoms as anxiety, persistent low mood, depression, phobia, suicidal thoughts, etc.

Journalists and their professional associations should ensure that media employers put in place work-based intervention programs that enable mental health experts to provide support for their employees.

The recommendations were made based on the following observations in presentations and discussions by participants:

Journalists sometimes ignore the key elements of a good story including accuracy and verification and therefore open themselves to the accusation of lack of objectivity, fairness and balance;
Opponents of press freedom do hide behind allegations of lack of fairness and diversity in reports to threaten and or attack journalists;
Journalists lack adequate knowledge of the frameworks especially laws guiding the practice of journalism and therefore often get exposed to pitfalls;
Journalists often fail to take legal actions and pursue them to logical conclusion whenever their rights are violated through molestation and attacks;
Journalists often do not embark on acts of solidarity whenever some of them are attacked;
Media employers do contribute to the threats against journalists through job insecurity occasioned by low pay and nonpayment of salaries and general poor welfare packages.

The two-day workshop was held against the background of increasing attacks on journalists and other media professionals by state and non-state actors with negative consequences for their physical and mental well-being.

The theme of the workshop, therefore, was ‘Safety/Security Consciousness Mechanisms in Investigative Reporting and Coverage of Conflicts/Dangerous Assignments’.

Four resource persons that made presentations at the workshop included Mr Peter Nkanga, investigative journalist and press freedom advocate on ‘Data and Digital Security & Related Security Issues in Investigative Reporting and Coverage of Dangerous Assignments’, while Dr. Majority Orji, Associate Professor of Mass Communication at Delta State University, Abraka on ‘Investigative Journalism or Reporting: Understanding the Challenges & Possible Dangers’, Dr. Uzo Israel, represented by Mr. Moses Tingir, a Clinical Psychologist took the journalists through a presentation on ‘Attacks on Journalists, Mental Health Challenges and the Imperative of Effective Management and the Executive Director of IPC, Mr. Lanre Arogundade facilitated a session on ‘Stages/Phases of Conflicts, Roles of Journalists and Safety Challenges’.

The participants according to the communique signed by Media Monitoring Officer, IPC, Adeola Olanrewaju expressed gratitude to the Shehu Musa Yar’adua Foundation, Ford Foundation, Luminate and OSIWA for providing the resources for the project on ‘Contextualizing and Publicizing Real Costs & Mobilising Against Increasing Violation of Media Freedom, Journalists Rights and Freedom of Expression’, under which the workshop was held.