Press Freedom Day

Rodney Pinder is the Director of the International News Safety Institute, a non-profit organisation dedicated to the safety of journalists and other news media personnel working in danger zones around the world. He is a former senior foreign correspondent and news executive for Reuters. He retired in 2002 after four years as global Editor of Reuters Television News and nearly 40 years of covering international affairs around the globe.

Deutsche Welle: You have been covering war and conflict for over three decades and walked out of there alive. What has changed?

Rodney Pinder: Journalists have increasingly become targets. There was a time when journalists were welcomed into many situations because they were needed to tell the stories of all the protagonists. Now we are not needed so much anymore. Everybody can access the internet with their versions of the story, with videos and interviews, with all of their propaganda. And of course they don't like information that might contradict that. They don't like being confronted with arguments particularly, which is the role of the journalists. So the journalists are being targeted by various elements in conflicts.

The other thing is that in so many conflicts now there are no defined frontlines. The attacks can come from anywhere; they literally fall out of the sky. The technology of warfare and the fact that there are often many, many elements involved in any conflict makes the situation much more serious. And finally, I think the status of impunity of journalist killers just encourages more killings. It is a fact that around the world in 9 out of 10 cases of journalists being murdered no one is brought to justice. That encourages the targeting of journalists who might be exposing your criminal activities. You know that you will get away with it. So murder becomes an easy, cheap and risk-free form of censorship.

Meanwhile there is a UN-Resolution calling upon all parties in a conflict situation to protect journalists and to treat them as civilians. The resolution was passed in December 2006. Has it made any difference?

As you may know INSI was instrumental in getting that resolution passed by the Security Council. It was useful in that it was a declaration from the highest international body of the dangers that journalists face and an appeal to people to respect their status. Whether it has had any effect or not is really quite debatable. There are scores of journalists who have been killed since that resolution was passed.

We have appealed to the United Nations without much success to try to put some teeth into the resolution, but of course ultimately a resolution is a declaration of intent. It is an appeal, it has no actual force.

Until there are sanctions on countries where journalists are killed with impunity I don't see really any fundamental effect. We appeal to countries who give international aid, particularly democracies, not to provide aid to countries where journalists are murdered with impunity. After all, why are journalists murdered in so many countries? In many cases they are uncovering corruption and criminality. And you cannot have good governance or security for citizens with crime and corruption flourishing. Nor can you have poverty alleviation nor can you have sustainable development.

If the UN Resolution remains a declaration of content, if countries fail to protect their journalists and if governments are not willing to investigate the cases of journalists killed, who then has to shoulder the responsibility for the security of journalists?

That is exactly the problem. If the international bodies are not heeded, if governments are not willing to shoulder their duties of care toward their own citizens, there is very little we can do - apart from one thing which INSI is doing all the time. All we can do practically is to train journalists in safety precautions, in safety measures, in safer behavior and more ethical reporting so that they can better look after themselves.

They will never be completely safe of course but at least they will be much more professionally aware of the dangers they face. They will be more able to make a proper risk assessment when they embark on dangerous stories. At the end of the day, journalists can trust no one to look after them. So it's better they learn to look after themselves.

So in the end it all boils down to finding the right balance between the story that you want to tell and the risk involved?

Yes indeed. You must be able to professionally assess the risk. No story is worth dying for but plenty of stories for which your life might be in danger are worth going after and need to be told. So you have to be able to professionally assess that risk. So many people who are killing journalists around the world are professional killers. We must be as professional in our risk awareness and our own protection.

Interview by Sandra Petersmann
Editor: Rob Mudge