Strengthening Safety and Security Resources for Visual Storytellers and Journalists

"Safety and security of visual storytellers and journalists is closely linked to overall respect for rights and the extent to which the countries in which they work tolerate independent voices. As respect for rights declines, the overall safety and security situation of visual storytellers and journalists deteriorates."

Visual storytellers - filmmakers, visual artists, and visual journalists, among others - whose work demands change are increasingly vulnerable to online and offline risks at the hands of those whose wrongdoing is exposed through stories. Commissioned by the International Resource for Impact and Study (IRIS) and the Ford Foundation, this study looks at the safety and security needs, resources, and environment of visual storytellers and journalists, with a focus on independent documentary filmmakers. Its purpose is to make concrete recommendations as to how donors and other stakeholders can better resource storytellers so they can continue to speak truth to power.

For the study, the researchers carried out a series of 120 interviews with artists, filmmakers, journalists, funders, activists, academics, and others, along with desk research. The study is global in scope, but in-depth research was carried out in Central America, the Andes region, and Brazil; to that end, the report highlights contextual factors, practices, and recommendations identified as priorities in these regions, along with "seed" organisations or initiatives that were identified in the research as having already begun work on safety and security issues, or that would be well-placed to do it.

The report is divided into three main parts:

I. A discussion of the safety and security needs of visual storytellers and journalists
A worryingly large number of documentary filmmakers and funders have low awareness of the strong and growing international trend of attacks against the safety and security of visual storytellers and journalists. Similar attacks and violence against human rights and environmental defenders and activists reflect a general backsliding in respect for human rights. Among the dangers filmmakers are exposed to are the following:

• Physical and psychological harm: physical threats/attacks; threats to psychosocial well-being; health threats (e.g., working during the COVID-19 pandemic); and threats against protagonists, families, and communities.
• Social and legal harm: threats of legal action/imprisonment; digital threats (communications security, integrity of recorded materials); reputational threats/smear campaigns; trolling and other attacks; and financial/economic threats.

Gender, socioeconomic background, sexuality, geographic origin, and race are factors in the levels of threat experienced. For example, female visual storytellers are at a much higher risk than their male counterparts, a seldom-acknowledged fact that few organisations are effectively responding to. As reported here, much can be learned from feminist groups, who often have strong safety practices that are grounded in collective safety and protection as well as in conscious self-care.

The research found that visual storytellers and journalists who are safety-aware often cannot afford to invest in sufficient resources required for their protection. Organisations that work to protect human rights and environmental defenders could in theory offer protection resources to visual storytellers, but these organisations are under-resourced and mostly fail to reach them.

II. A discussion of existing resources for safety and security of visual storytellers and journalists under threat, including a mapping of connections between the various stakeholders
Resource and response categories covered include:

• Legal assistance, including: risk assessment; legal issues concerning news gathering or filming; pre-publication legal assessment; post-publication issues including (threats of) lawsuits; rights clearance and protection of creative rights; and administrative, employment, tax, and assorted other legal issues;
• Public relations assistance;
• Security planning and risk mitigation assistance;
• Financial assistance for emergency threat response;
• Digital security resources, including secure communications, secure storage, and secure hardware, or single-use equipment such as phones/laptops - as well as sustained training to build knowledge and experience in how to use secure digital tools appropriately;
• Medical assistance;
• Psycho-social assistance; and
• Relocation or safe havens.

The safety practices of visual storytellers and journalists interviewed for this study ranged widely. Even among experienced visual storytellers and journalists, there was no consistency: Some had excellent safety practices, while others didn't. Some consulted existing field guides; a few practices from these guides that stand out, particularly for visual storytellers and journalists in remote locations or who work with communities, are as follows:

• Visual storytellers and journalists who work in or are part of networks (even in the form of WhatsApp groups) find strength in these solidarity networks.
• Filming or working in communities requires respecting these communities and their agency, treating them as partners, and adopting their safety and security practices.
• Transparency is crucial: Crew, protagonists, and communities should be made fully aware of the risks involved in a project.
• If a project is likely to have aspects of significant risk and threats (for example, reporting on far-right activists), it is important to integrate self-care and well-being opportunities throughout the project for the entire crew and protagonists.
• Protagonists' and community wishes should always be respected, even if they decide to pull out and if that means that (extensive) footage cannot be used.
• Budgets must be flexible and have cashflow to allow for a quick response to emergencies.

III. Suggestions for how protection and access to resources for visual storytellers and journalists under threat can be improved
The global findings, conclusions, and recommendations are applicable to the specific focal countries, and they are relevant to all funders, not just those who fund journalism and the arts. They are based on four guiding principles:

1. A culture of safety should be nurtured among visual storytellers and journalists and their funders, employers, and other stakeholders, centred around feminist and holistic principles of protection, equity, fairness, and respect. This culture is characterised by: connections, solidarity, and support for networks and safe spaces; an encouragement of collective efforts to define and create protection practices; skills-building of visual storytellers and journalists; expansion of the social recognition of their work; and self-care, mutual respect and support, and wellbeing.
2. Awareness-raising, training, and education should be made available to visual storytellers and filmmakers as well as to funders and other stakeholders.
3. The agency of visual storytellers and journalists should be respected - e.g., they should be empowered to invest in their own safety and security, and that of their crews and any protagonists or communities potentially at risk. In principle, safety resources need to be built as close to the ground as possible.
4. Funders should support efforts to develop an understanding of, and to respond holistically to, the heightened threats and risk to safety faced by female visual storytellers and filmmakers, as well as by visual storytellers and journalists from indigenous groups, (sexual) minorities, and others who are at a position of disadvantage or at heightened risk.

Overarching recommendations include:

• Fund key organisations at the international, regional, and national level to engage in a strategy to raise awareness of safety and protection issues through events (high-profile as well as side events) at established gatherings such as film, journalism, arts or human rights festivals and conferences, and, as funders, take active part in that strategy.
• Empower visual storytellers and filmmakers to have control over and invest in their own protection, such as by ensuring the availability of expertise and resources to counter legal, physical, reputational, psychosocial, and digital threats.
• Invest in resources for visual storytellers and journalists in need of urgent assistance, such as by funding outreach by protection organisations to ensure that those at risk and in need of emergency assistance, including those outside of urban centres and those who work in languages other than the main national language, are aware of the existence of protection mechanisms and are able to place their trust in them.
• Support hub organisations and solidarity and protection networks of and "bridges" between communities of artists, filmmakers, and human and environmental rights defenders at the local, national, regional, and global levels.
• Support the few fledgling efforts to provide protection specifically to documentary filmmakers, such as the International Coalition for Filmmakers at Risk and the Sisterhood Foundation.

To the Ford Foundation, as the instigator of this study, the researchers recommend, for example, using the Foundation's convening power, status, and experience to bring together key organisations from its human rights, social justice, arts, and free expression programmes (including those that specialise in protection) to build bridges and foster connections with the world of visual storytellers and journalists.

In conclusion: "While little can be done about the immediate external threats - we live in a world where human rights matter less week by week - the position of those who stand up to defend rights must be strengthened. This includes storytellers, whose work can be such a powerful catalyst for broader change. A first step is acknowledgement of the issue, among funders as well as among visual storytellers, followed by a constructive dialogue to discuss what resources are needed."