“How do journalists keep themselves safe in war zones? They can’t. I was taught we should never think that we are either safe or qualified to recognise all potential dangers,” says Nenad Sebek, a former BBC war correspondent. Although at least when he reported from conflicts in Croatia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Kosovo and Chechnya, he knew he was prepared as any journalist could be. He’d had extensive training with ex-Royal Marines, had all the protective gear, and was fully insured. “Not only that,” he adds, “my salary was guaranteed. I didn’t have to continually sell stories like the freelancers, who are prone to take much higher risks.”
Sebek was speaking as a part of the expert panel on Open Journalism, arranged at the end of September in Vienna by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and drawing participants from across its member states, including Russia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan. Dunja Mijatovic, OSCE’s Representative on Freedom of the Media, has expressed concern for how to safeguard journalism’s ever-growing pool of voices, particularly the untrained citizen reporters and bloggers. Trying to define who are the real journalists, she says, is getting us nowhere nearer to providing greater protection.
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