Model Course on Safety of Journalists

"UNESCO believes that attacks against journalists intimidate everyone, and leave society in a condition of information-poverty. Governments, business, civil society and individuals all lose when the media cannot do its job of bringing reliable information to the public." - Frank La Rue, Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information at UNESCO

A joint effort by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)'s Beirut, Lebanon office and the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), this safety course is designed to be integrated into university media curricula across the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region, where fatalities, injuries, and disappearances are at record highs. Globally, IFJ statistics show that there have been almost 3,000 journalists and other media staff killed in work-related incidents since 1990. Many of these killings resulted from risks of covering armed conflicts such as being caught up in crossfire incidents. But there were several incidents of targeted killings in so-called peacetime, which constituted attempts to suppress the free flow of information that exposed corruption and other criminal activity. Although knowledge in safety alone would not have saved every single life lost, IFJ claims that there is consistent and positive feedback from journalists who have had training in safety who confirm that such training provides life-saving skills, which assist media professionals in conducting a robust risks assessment and adopting proper planning for dangerous assignments.

This excerpt from the introduction to the resource highlights the need for guidance such as that provided in this course: "Reporting violence brings new ethical issues to which journalists need to respond, and sometimes decisions on such issues need to be taken on the spot. For example, should journalists take and publish pictures of dead children? Probably not, but then look at the impact of the picture of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi washed away on a Turkish beach (September 2015). Journalistic decisions - sometimes made by editors who are somewhat sheltered - can cause controversy for a journalist in the field, exposing him or her to attack. It is thus important to have an enduring framework for ethical journalistic decision-making that helps an individual journalist rationalise his/her actions within the context of the larger questions of human rights, justice, safety, etc."

The semester-long course is designed to be taught over a 12-week period in 2-hour blocks. However, the material and the syllabus are flexible and can be used in different ways; instructors can cherry pick components as they see fit to best prepare their journalism students. The publication is divided into 11 lessons. It covers: a broad introduction to journalism safety and threats to media workers; planning for personal safety; personal health care and trauma in hostile environments; risk assessment; travel security; digital security; gender and safe reporting; covering demonstrations and civil unrest; human rights and humanitarian law; ethics; and safety and investigative journalism. The skills and knowledge the course seeks to impart can be transferred to a range of situations and places, including covering natural disasters, outbreaks of epidemics, and other humanitarian crises, as well as local investigative reporting, coverage of religious affairs, and so on.

The pedaegogical method that is recommended is Student-Centred Learning (SCL). This method promotes the autonomy of students and their responsibility for their own learning, with the lecturer acting as a facilitator rather than instructor. The course also conforms to Human Rights Education (HRE), based on the recognition that journalism safety is a human rights issue, given Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which proclaims the protection of freedom of opinion and expression, of which press freedom and journalists' safety are corollaries.

The course is tailored to the needs of various educational systems, contexts, and lan­guages in the MENA region but can be adapted/adopted worldwide.