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How to Kill a Journalist
3.2k Plays2 years ago
In the Season 1 finale, we discuss the threats posed to journalists around the world with Dr Mark Grant. Dr Grant is the head of high risk, safety and security at Sky News, and has operated in high-risk environments around the world for nearly 2 decades and has supported and directly managed security for the BBC and CNN. Mark holds a doctorate in security risk management, with a focus on journalism security. His thesis, "Reporting Safety; An assessment of risk management practices employed by news organisations operating in areas of conflict 2009 - 2019, is the first study of its kind, allowing news organisations to learn from the most pivotal decade for journalism, in modern times. Mark is also the co-founder and Non-Executive Director of MiRiskMedia, an app-based solution to ensure news and other organisations have direct access to vetted, qualified and experienced safety and security consultants, with the aim to create consistency of advisors across the industry.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:06
Speaker
Welcome to How to Get on a Watchlist, the new podcast series from Encyclopedia Geopolitica. In each episode, we sit down with leading experts to talk about dangerous acts, organisations and people. We examine historical cases, as well as the risks these subjects currently pose, from assassinations and airline shootdowns, through to kidnappings and coups. We'll examine each of these threats through the lenses of both the dangerous actors behind them and the agencies around the world seeking to stop them.
00:00:38
Speaker
In the interest of operational security, certain tactical details will be omitted from these discussions. However, the cases and threats which we discuss here are very real.
Meet the Experts: Louis H. Passant and Dr. Mark Grant
00:01:06
Speaker
I'm Louis H. Passant, the founder and editor of Encyclopedia Geopolitica. I'm also a doctoral researcher at the University of Loughborough in the field of intelligence and espionage in the private sector. In my day job, I provide intelligence to corporate executives on complex geopolitical and security issues.
00:01:20
Speaker
So today we're going to be discussing a rather gruesome topic, which is how to kill a journalist. And I guess today is Dr. Mark Grant. Mark is the head of high risk safety and security at Sky News, and he's operated in high risk environments around the world for nearly two decades and supported and directly managed security for BBC and CNN.
00:01:39
Speaker
Mark holds a doctorate in security risk management with a focus on journalism security. His thesis reporting safety and assessment of risk management practices employed by news organizations operating in areas of conflict between 2009 and 2019 is the first study of its kind, allowing news organizations to learn from the most pivotal decade for journalism in modern times.
00:01:59
Speaker
Mark is also the co-founder and non-executive of MyRisk Media, an app-based solution to ensure news and other organizations have direct access to vetted, qualified and experienced safety and security consultants with the aim to create consistency of advisors across the industry. So I think really we're talking to someone today who knows more about this topic than anyone else. So that's a really interesting background and thank you very much for joining us, Mark. No, thank you for inviting me on the podcast. I'm excited to chat further.
00:02:26
Speaker
I think the question that your background really begs is, how did you get into this line of work?
Dr. Grant's Journey into Journalist Security
00:02:32
Speaker
Yes, I think the reason I chose this niche part of the security industry was definitely curiosity. Prior to working with immediate security, I'd spent six years post my military service, really trying to find out what I wanted to do. I started floating around the NGO sector, private security contractors and risk management companies.
00:02:51
Speaker
It was in 2015, but I had a conversation in Mogadishu, Somalia with a news crew who were looking to travel to a rather remote and austere part of the country that no one would have, in their right mind, would have went to. We started having a conversation about risk appetite, and I found that extremely fascinating how a group of individuals who didn't come from a security background felt that they could travel to one of the most dangerous parts of the world.
00:03:15
Speaker
And that really got my, you know, sort of pricked up. Previous to this, I'd worked for a number of organizations when the risk got to a certain level, they either closed up shop or turned around. This was the first time in my career that I'd seen a news crew and they wanted to push it way past that red line. And that was their business as usual. So yeah, I suppose you could say curiosity got me here. And Mark, what does the history of journalists putting themselves at risk? What does that history look like?
00:03:44
Speaker
Are journalists today facing a totally different environment than they did, let's say, in the 90s or can we go back even before the 90s? Yeah, I can take you right back Cormac. The first thing to note is that there has always been some form of protection for journalists whenever they've operated. However, prior to 2002, the security offers vary loosely through what's been referred to as embedded.
00:04:10
Speaker
mainly military embed and that in short is a host looks after a journalist or news crew stroke reporter and provides a set level of support whether it be security accommodation logistics medivac and so forth and that's always always sort of been there and the first sort of reports of embed appeared way back in the 1840s where a number of correspondence operated alongside troops in the Mexican war
00:04:36
Speaker
And that's not really changed since then. We've continued to support journalists around a number of different conflict zones, providing what is very loose arrangements and very little formal risk management structures in place. Not all unsuccessful. During the First World War, no accredited correspondents were killed. And that's quite a feat in itself when you consider journalists were deployed on the front line with British forces on the Western Front, the Middle East and through the Gallipoli.
00:05:04
Speaker
this sort of loose structure continued all the way through to the Vietnam War when at the time this was labeled the most accessible war for journalists and they sort of operated side by side by the military counterparts for extended periods of the number of months or in some cases years and when they really operated alongside the military counterparts in the Vietnam
00:05:27
Speaker
They often wore the same fatigues, carried weapons, and in some cases actually used weapons against the Viet Cong. So it really does brought the question, was that impartial journalism, right? Post Vietnam, the US government really tried to curtail the access of journalists, and this was labeled the Vietnam syndrome, in order to create future sort of influence across future wars. And this never just stopped with the US.
00:05:55
Speaker
If you look back to the Falklands War, it was the first sort of large scale accredited war that journalists had to be on certain lists in order to get access to cover that conflict. So previous journalists who had maybe covered previous conflicts were not on the list because they may have, again, pissed the wrong person in government off. Let's continue through the Gulf War.
00:06:17
Speaker
in Saudi Arabia in the build up, a lot of journalists who were accredited were kept there and writ fed information in order to influence public perception of the war. Again, this element of control, which was sort of embedded with the protection element for journalists there.
00:06:33
Speaker
And this sort of continued all the way through to Iraq. And this was quite a pivotal moment, because this was the first time a formal structure was put around the security for journalists. So the UK had what they referred to as the Green Book, and the US had what were referred to as the Public Affairs guidance, US NCOM. And this allowed military to curtail exactly what journalists could and couldn't do, and sort of force journalists into signing the agreement of what they would cover and what they would not.
00:07:01
Speaker
this often came with a number of restrictions which from an editorial perspective just wasn't appealing to journalists. So what this did is this sort of forced a number of journalists to step outside to off this embedded structure and operate unilaterally often at a far greater risk. This unfortunately came in a lot of a lot of casualties including the ITV,
00:07:22
Speaker
employee cameraman Terry Lloyd being killed in 2003 by the US. So there has always been a sort of security structure to support journalists. Some people enjoyed it, some people didn't. With the embedding, only 10% of those embedded within Iraq seen frontline conflict. So it definitely did cartel editorial reasons, which again, pushed people over there.
00:07:46
Speaker
over the line when it came to how they were going to cover the war. And from this point, it sort of got interesting. So journalists no longer wanted to be controlled, they wanted to operate unilaterally. And since then, they have sort of moved into what I would call as the modern security apparatus of user organisations, where they are taking a lot of this on themselves, employing former military personnel, putting people through certain courses before they're allowed to deploy and really improving the competence of journalists to cover foreign conflict.
00:08:13
Speaker
But yeah, to answer your question around the bit, there always has been some form of security, pleased to point you on this, but recently, yeah, it's definitely moved on since the embedding days.
Risks in Investigative Journalism
00:08:23
Speaker
So aside from the kind of war zone reporting, what about investigative journalists? I feel like they probably lack the protection of their war zone colleagues. And by the nature of the job, they're upsetting powerful people. What are the risks to investigative journalists looking at, let's say, organized crime or political corruption? I'm thinking of a prominent recent example, Daphne Carano Galizia in Malta.
00:08:46
Speaker
Yeah, I think there's a significant risk there, right? I think the risk definitely sits more with the local journalists than the international journalists for obvious reasons. Obviously, they are operating a country where you can argue they are more involved and in touch with
00:09:03
Speaker
what is going on from day to day and there has been the question posed, what is the difference between a local general standard and activist? So obviously they're far more in touch with what they are covering in that area. It's very hard to manage that. I think what I would do in that case is prior to that individual actually covering an investigation, there has to be a lot of risk management done in this case. So you would look at what they're covering, what the risks to that individual are, what actual measures are around that individual to limit their exposure.
00:09:33
Speaker
and just set off from the right foot forward. I think technology has definitely not helped us. We've got a lot of journalists who do everything on their mobile phone these days, and social security, information sharing, people being hacked. We've seen it with the Pegasus software. It's very, very easy for the information which you think is secure to get into their own hands. So there is a lot of risk when you are looking at investigations.
00:09:57
Speaker
There are measures you can take. Again, training. I always say training, right? You can sit down with a journalist, ask them how they're going to manage the sources, how they're going to manage themselves, what they're going to look for. Proactively, it's part of our team. We can have things in place. So if there are physical risks detected, we can move them from the current location. We can put measure surveillance measures in place if need be, just to provide that additional level of support.
00:10:22
Speaker
and obviously there's a number of cyber teams out there who can support and do proactive monitoring off our staff if they so feel we need that to make sure if there are any direct threats whether it be from governments and other sources we can hopefully get on top of that and stay on top of that and have triggers in place but if we feel the investigation is moving to a point where there's significant staff threat or individual threat we can put measures to move out there but it is a growing problem technology certainly has advanced the risks to those who are covering
00:10:52
Speaker
investigations, especially anti-corruption investigations against the home countries. Generally, across the board with journalists, across this series that we've been recording, how to get on a watch list, we're often talking about the victims or the assets that are intentionally targeted by the threat actors. But with journalists, what's the mix between journalists being targeted
00:11:17
Speaker
Let's say because they're seen as valuable targets. So threat actors seeking them out, maybe to kidnap them or to do them harm, to use them as propaganda tools, for example. What's the mix of that versus journalists just getting caught up in the mix of high risk?
00:11:33
Speaker
Yeah, so I think it's a bit of both. I think there has been a pivotal switch in journalists being targeted. If you look back to the late 90s, I'm sure everyone can remember the interview with CNN and Osama bin Laden after he tried to file the Twin Cities. I think the interview was in the late 90s. But the fact that you had the access with a terrorist group who were trying to kill a number of Americans demonstrates that actually back in the day, outside of one or two outlier cases, journalists were
00:11:59
Speaker
given an element of protection. I think you could argue that that was brought around by the need of the journalist at that time. So back then there was no social media. You could argue terrorist groups maybe needed media to allow them to get their Saudi story across as a recruitment tool in times and just share their message with the world. So I think there was some element of protection there.
00:12:21
Speaker
The fact that back in the day, even in conflict zones, journalists having a blue vest with press written on it and the press pass, you'd argue that they were not targeted by either side. I think that has changed in the mid-2011-2012, especially with the rise of ISIS and other threat actors.
00:12:45
Speaker
We've seen it with James Foley, John Cantill and other journalists who were actively targeted because they were journalists. I feel they were sort of targeted because, ultimately, journalists will obviously report more on their own B target than they will for, say, an NGO. If you look at David Haynes, there's far more coverage on journalists who were targeted rather than other NGOs and other networks. So it does bring to that understanding where they will get more attention, more media presence. The fact that they're no longer needed to
00:13:15
Speaker
Again, get the message across because a lot of the recruitment campaigns, their own videos are being done, and the messages are put around social media. There's no need to have the journalist as privileged used to help share that propaganda
Freelancers and Local Journalists: Unique Challenges
00:13:28
Speaker
message. It's all done in house with these organisations. So it has been a massive, a massive pivotal switch in the last 10 years.
00:13:36
Speaker
And to put it into context, direct targeting of journalists actually reduced the coverage of ISIS, especially the rise of ISIS. I can't remember who said it, but they're like, we can deal with the bombs and bullets, but we can't deal with the risk of our staff being kidnapped. And I think that is a true statement where, you know, something very inherently visceral about people being kidnapped. And the risk of that posing with the high risk cases we've seen, sort of 2013, 14 and 15, definitely helps cement that.
00:14:06
Speaker
So the phrase you used there was, you know, we can't tolerate this risk for our staff, but that really begs the question, given the increasing use of stringers and freelancers by international news organizations, especially due to the changing financial nature of the journalistic world, are reporters more vulnerable these days, especially these types of reporters, given that they may lack the support and potentially, you know, big insurance packages of a larger organization?
00:14:33
Speaker
Yeah, so this is a big part of my thesis looking at why I coined non-traditional journalists. So that is looking at local producers, local freelancers, and anyone who doesn't come from an international news organization itself.
00:14:45
Speaker
I think the thing to break it down into, sorry, to answer your initial question, yes, they are at more risk. 94%, I think it was the CPG in 2019 stated that local journalists are 94% more likely to be killed or injured simply by carrying out the work in relation to their international counterparts.
00:15:03
Speaker
But if you want to break it down, we can sort of break it down to local and international journalists, right? So from a local level, why would you use a local journalist? One, local knowledge, right? They understand they can get to the heart of the story. So that's a huge advantage for a news organization. I think these days we can all agree that nobody wants to see a middle-aged, middle-class white man on the news in town in Kenya talking about Kenyan problems. We want to see local context to get to the heart of the story.
00:15:30
Speaker
So there have been a significant reason to use local journalists over international correspondence. It hasn't always been based on cost, although you could argue it's significantly cheaper in some environments to use people who live there and work there. However, on the flip side of that, it's not always in the best interest. It does pose a significantly higher risk. And that's what I sort of coined as journalism risk apathy for local correspondence.
00:15:58
Speaker
This is seen where there could be a level of risk inertia. These individuals are based in these environments, high risk environments for an extended period of time. So over time, they become desensitized to the risks that they face. There could be an overconfidence where they're very well connecting the local environment and there's some sort of protection in that. I know the governor of this area, I'm totally fine, but ultimately the risks are there.
00:16:22
Speaker
and over familiarity and complacency. It's something which we've seen time and time again, which can increase the risk to local journalists. And with the international sort of correspondent, I think you can argue their risks are lower, they parachute in, they'll do a story for maybe two, three, four days, and then out again, they've not got the knowledge and the connections in country, so they're not at the risk as we spoke about earlier about
00:16:45
Speaker
be targeted by government. And if you've got an international news team in your country, you can argue that certain governments who want to keep an eye on them, they'll be monitored by security services. And the last thing they want is anything to happen to an international team. So again, they're at lesser risk because of those factors. But while you can argue that local journalists and non-traditional journalists do have
00:17:10
Speaker
a lack of support. I think more can be done by engagement by news organisations. I think in 2015, most international news organisations signed up to what's called the 2015 Freelance Safety Principles, which outlines how you should manage your local staff in relation to your international staff, which basically says
00:17:30
Speaker
It's the same level of duty of care. You must provide adequate and commensurate training based on the support that they give you. It's exactly the same for buying material. You have to make sure that no one put themselves in the harms way if you are acquiring material from somebody who's not on your books. So there are things in place.
00:17:49
Speaker
The challenge is how you physically implement that. It's very hard for international news organisations to implement the same level of training that you offer here in the UK than you would in sub-Saharan Africa. There isn't the facilities. There's issues with visas trying to get people across to certain areas to get the training. And there's obviously, like you mentioned earlier, costs involved to get people out there. But more can be done.
00:18:11
Speaker
I think engagement from early on and investment in local resources has been done across industry, and we've seen that over the last 10 years, but again, more can be done. From a local journalist perspective, I think they can engage more. They don't engage nearly enough with the risk assessment process because of the factors of risk inertia, complacency, and overconfidence. They sometimes do not take the process as serious as an international journalist would because they feel I'm from here, the risks are lower.
00:18:40
Speaker
But more can be done from our perspective from a risk management to get the engagement by local journalists in the process. There's obviously barriers with language or barriers with culture, which need to be built into risk management frameworks to ensure that gaps aren't created because it biases that we bring to the table as an international organisation. So yeah, there's a lot that can be done. We are at more risk, but it is getting better.
Industry Risks and Safety Measures
00:19:05
Speaker
The research showed that
00:19:07
Speaker
more organisations are taking this seriously, but there are still critical gaps that need to be closed. Mark, in your experience, what are the things that actually, let's say, most commonly put the life of a journalist at risk? So we're talking about war zones, I'm thinking of soldiers manning the barricades, letting bullets fly, maybe not necessarily targeting that journalist. But I'm also thinking political risk, journalists getting kidnapped, getting executed while being in captivity,
00:19:37
Speaker
I'm also thinking of just accidents that can happen in more zones, like road traffic accidents, the sheer chaos that they'll be surrounded by. What's the thing, if you can name one or two things that are most responsible for putting their lives at risk? I think you hit the nail on the head there, Cormac, when you mentioned about road traffic accidents, that kills more journalists than anything else across the world. And if you're asked the two things which cause more deaths, I would say complacency.
00:20:07
Speaker
not through any fault at all. But because you're operating these environments for a long period of time, it's difficult. It can be very, very challenging. And the second thing I would say that what I've coined is a competitive risk pendulum, where certain organizations will decide what
00:20:23
Speaker
their own risk tolerances are based on their own internal processes, but those may change based on their competitors' actions. So while this cannot necessarily be stopped, I think acknowledging it. So for example, you may have a team who's moved up to a point and went, okay, we are comfortable that we can gather from here safely, we can do the story. We're not comfortable that if we move forward of this point, that we will be able to do it and assure the risk and safety of our teams.
00:20:50
Speaker
all of a sudden to other news organisations who are made to say, you know what, I can do that. We can move forward, they move forward and all of a sudden news organisation, AMBC, they've done it, we can do it. Now, while I'm not saying that is right or wrong, I think acknowledging why you're doing that
00:21:06
Speaker
understanding the risk and what mitigations you have in place and taking that beat would potentially save lives. We've seen that in Mosul, we've seen it in Syria, and I'm sure it's been happening across Ukraine as well. So I do think complacency with the news crews who have operated in environments for a long time is a big risk and, like I say, compared to risk pendulum where risk appetite and tolerance change is based on competitors' actions.
00:21:31
Speaker
So I think you've laid out an environment there where there's clearly a lot of danger and a lot of need to protect journalists. So after the break, we'll talk some more about that, about how we keep journalists safe while engaged in these kind of high risk activities.
00:21:51
Speaker
You have been listening to How to Get on a Watchlist, the new podcast series from Encyclopedia Geopolitica. If you liked this show, don't forget to check out our other content at Encyclopedia Geopolitica, which you can find by going to howtogettontawatchlist.com, where you can find our analysis on various geopolitical issues, as well as reading lists covering topics like those discussed in the podcast. Please also consider subscribing to the podcast on your streaming platform of choice, as well as rating as five stars if you enjoyed the discussion.
00:22:29
Speaker
So in this part of the show, we're going to discuss how to keep journalists safe from these kind of risks. So the obvious question is how do you keep journalists safe, especially in war zones? How do you go about negotiating access to a war zone for journalists? Or perhaps how do you negotiate talking to an extremist group without putting yourself at risk?
00:22:47
Speaker
Yes, I think there's a couple of questions in that. I think the first thing is how do you keep journalists safe in a war zone? For me, if your start point is how do you keep them safe in a war zone, you're already behind the curve. What we do is we try to make sure as soon as we bring someone on board that we start from that point forward training them and making sure they are competent to operate in that environment.
00:23:06
Speaker
That doesn't mean to say that they're not competent when they come here, but we need to make sure that they've got the right level of training, expertise, and they have the right team around them when they deploy to these environments. Now, as you can imagine, there's a wide range of experiences of young, old, across the industry, especially those who argue battle-hardened with Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and then you've got the new school coming through who are relatively inexperienced and maybe in their first
00:23:32
Speaker
We try to make sure they've all got the same level of training but we build team selection based on that. We also have a robust risk management framework in place where you're looking at from a very holistic point of view and not just throwing people in that environment without considering everything.
00:23:51
Speaker
From from logistics all the way through to crisis management you raise the point there about a local knowledge i think that's extremely critical having good relationship local producers fixes on the ground you can share information of what's going on you've always got that sort of pulse to the ground where allows me and my team to make.
00:24:09
Speaker
better informed decisions when deploying teams to these environments. I suppose the next thing past training and initial deployment is how what we can give journalists to keep themselves safe. The first thing is obviously, not the first thing, it should be the last thing actually is PPE.
00:24:25
Speaker
So we make sure they're equipped well based on their environment. So we have different levels of ballistic vests depending on what the threats are. So for example in Ukraine we would probably issue level four but for some South American countries it may be level three. So we base the PPE around the task itself and make sure they're well kitted out based on the current threats that they may face.
00:24:46
Speaker
The other saying is communication, right? If you can't communicate in a crisis, you can't do anything. So there has to be redundancy in that. We can train our journalists the best way they can, but if they can't communicate and share what they're doing and pass information back to the team, then it becomes completely irrelevant. So we give multiple forms of communication, the ability to raise alarms, to communicate with us, maybe no GSM, 3, 4, 5G coverage, to make sure they're well equipped. The other thing we do is look at the task itself. If we feel there's maybe
00:25:15
Speaker
case where it's a kinetic environment, the team are going to be extremely focused in on what the task is. Each team member say that the camera operators looking down the lens, the producers getting the story squared away, the correspondent is practicing lines. We will often send a security advisor with that team. And that's for a number of reasons. One, situational awareness. We need someone looking out when they're looking in.
00:25:38
Speaker
The second thing is because of the threat level and someone who may be there to help manage logistics, understand the dynamics of a conflict based on their experiences and just provide that extra set of eyes and ears who can focus on what is going around them rather than the actual editorial side of the task. But something which is overlooked a lot in media security is the medical aspect.
00:26:00
Speaker
I'd say more often than not, I will deploy a security advisor with the team simply to act as a team medic to allow the team to push forward and be in remote areas. One of the most challenging tasks I've had in the last few years is strangely operating in Madagascar, which sounds absolutely lovely, but we were in the remote parts and there was no medical support for up to, I think it was 24 hours, if anything went wrong. So we have to go on and provide that support in remote areas when deployed.
00:26:29
Speaker
The other thing to know as well is when on the ground absolutely fantastic even if nothing goes wrong or should be a closed-in process to get lessons learned from the user organisations, use crews on the ground rather. It could be something simple like issues with vehicles with drivers with fixers and if we're not gathering that information and sharing it back in the risk management cycle at the end,
00:26:48
Speaker
you could argue we're not doing our job effectively. So the retention of knowledge, the sharing of information, and gathering lessons learned from the most benign tasks will help inform and keep journalists safe on future tasks.
Journalists, Intelligence, and Cyber Threats
00:27:01
Speaker
What role do those journalists play in feeding the intelligence that you use to protect them? I guess unlike many other disciplines, the person you're trying to protect is often the best intelligence source. So
00:27:16
Speaker
Do you have a very preemptive way of going into before sending a journalist into high risk? And while they're there, are they actively playing a part of some kind of intelligent cycle that the corporate security team is then putting into place?
00:27:30
Speaker
Yeah, I think this is the key difference with media security and other forms of security, right? It's engagement over compliance. For me, I want to engage with a producer, a corresponding cameraman, whoever it is, prior to going on the ground so we can gather that information, speak to their connections, speak to the fixer on the ground. If I start saying, we are going to a war zone, you need to provide me ABCD, I ain't going to get anything.
00:27:53
Speaker
You're right, they are a very, very good source of information and having that link with the producer who it normally is or the local producer on the ground will help feed into the planning cycle. We can then corroborate that with, again, other available information, open source, closed source, whatever you want to
00:28:11
Speaker
whatever is available at that time, but definitely as a huge collaborative part there, where it's not simply the security manager as is in the corporate world saying, this is what you should do and what you shouldn't do. It's very much collaborative to get to a point where you are looking at, okay, what are the risks? How can we mitigate those? But more importantly, what is the level of risk acceptance that the team on the ground are willing to take, but also the organization? And that could only be done by engagement rather than compliance.
00:28:41
Speaker
I'm thinking here about the post Pegasus world. We found out in the last year or so that the NSO groups Pegasus spyware had been used by numerous governments to spy on journalists around the world. How common is this kind of thing? How common is it for governments to target journalists that are perhaps investigating them? And is that something you can protect against or is that really just too big a risk?
00:29:06
Speaker
I think it'd be very naive to think it's not happening, right? I think from what journalists has the information, the sources, the connections, even if I'm not doing an investigation, that is extremely valuable information to host nations, to the actors and non-state actors. So I think having robust cyber frameworks around your teams and proactive monitoring and good report around that is definitely very, very valuable. Can you protect against everything? Of course not. I think one of the biggest, the biggest challenges within
00:29:33
Speaker
But not just within media security and news security, I think it's an industry as a whole. Technology is moving so quickly. It's very, very hard to remain abreast of what you need to do to keep yourself safe. And when you add the factor of five into that about journalists looking after sources, how can they continue to keep sources safe, keep that anonymity, and ensure that they are not putting people at harm's way? It's very, very challenging.
00:29:57
Speaker
It's something which is part of my research which came out was, I think it was something two thirds of the journalists that we spoke to did not feel comfortable with the information security support that they get from user organisations across the industry. Now I like to think since I started, since I finished research in 2020, that that has improving. It is a gap. It is something which we are working tirelessly with our corporate security partners to change. We have to work tirelessly with other
00:30:24
Speaker
organisations such as the International Youth Safety Institute to work on best practices and working in a closed network across the industry to share practices within other security professionals. But you're right, it is a huge risk. It's probably one of the greatest risks we're going to face in the next five to ten years and it's only going to get harder to mitigate in combat.
Protecting Journalists from Political and Social Threats
00:30:45
Speaker
So, Murph, we've been talking a lot about
00:30:47
Speaker
higher risk stuff. And I guess we're making the separation between the investigative journalists and those deployed to war zones. But how do we protect journalists in those more benign environments where the very investigation that they're doing is the thing that's putting them at risk? And I'm thinking about journalists that, you know, investigating criminal gangs, like drug smuggling gangs, let's say here in Europe,
00:31:12
Speaker
Yeah, it is a huge risk, but again, take it back to the basic level of risk management and risk assessment, right? When they go on to do that task, we make sure that all journalists... This is pretty much standard across industry. There is a level of training that most journalists will get before they operate in anything which could be classed as a hostile or challenging environment. And within that training, they would be briefed on how to follow the risk management frameworks and what threats they have.
00:31:37
Speaker
I think what I've done in the current organisation, previous organisations, is having an open channel. So when it comes to the planning phase, we can look at it and look at the best case and worst case scenario. Ultimately journalists know if they're going to be covering a story which is looking at government corruption
00:31:53
Speaker
they know they're going to be targeted. They know what likely impact that could be. So we just put it on a scale and go, okay, best case, what's it going to look like? Worst case, what's it going to look like? And what can we do to mitigate those risks? I think it's having a contingency plan. It's having clear understanding of what triggers would allow us to get involved in pulling us out or pause what they're doing. It is a challenge. It's even more challenging than working in a hostile environment, right? Because bombs and bullets, you can see.
00:32:20
Speaker
in certain investigative journalists who when they come out of the work it may be months weeks or even years after it's been released that they get targeted. I think this is where the cyber team really come into their own as well because as we know there's a lot of online threats which
00:32:36
Speaker
permeate a physical attack. So I do think there's a correlation that I'm not saying every time but by having sort of overarching frameworks both physical and cyber will definitely allow us to flag if there are any concerns around investigative pieces either before, during or after the task is taking place.
00:32:56
Speaker
Not an easy one, but again, training is key. Training, understanding risk frameworks, putting triggers in place, having an open communication dialogue throughout, and providing that reassurance to teams. But like everything, journalism, you cannot say there will not be an incident. You cannot say there are no risks. If there was no risks, it wouldn't be interesting. It wouldn't be a story. You wouldn't want to gather it. So it's understanding leverage that is there and deciding are you willing to take that potential risk or is it too great for the organisation or the individual.
00:33:26
Speaker
Something you said there really prompted a question for me, which is this idea of social media threats to journalists. I got to think about the idea of political polarization. Is that something that's changing the risks, especially as we're seeing various media ecosystems kind of bubble off into their own polarized environments and journalism becomes more of an us versus them thing for certain extremist fringes? Is that something that's changing the game?
00:33:51
Speaker
100%, right? I think in a previous organization, I had a producer who was extremely experienced. She probably operated in every single conference room you could think of. Some really, really punchy stuff. And she was covering the Brexit protests in London. And she came back to make sure that, look, I do not feel comfortable here. So I think the sort of polarization, even a political sphere, has definitely created this challenge for journalism where if you're trying to cover it,
00:34:19
Speaker
Depending what the protest is could be a greater risk than conflict zones. We have tried to make it the best we can by making sure journalists are on public order courses. We have yuki bike watches for protest, but again,
00:34:32
Speaker
The risk is there. It's even more challenging when it's on your doorstep, right? We've seen the protests in the UK, protests in the States, where they do a ton of violence. We've seen the insurrection in 60 July. These are things which 10 years ago, you'd be saying, I don't need to send security. We don't need to consider this. So yeah, the rise of social media and the polarisation of political actors has definitely created greater risks to user organisations and to management, right? I think the sort of flip of a switch, you could be in central London,
00:35:02
Speaker
covering a nice peaceful protest and two minutes later it could be carnage, it could be like you're anywhere else in a more dangerous environment than some conflict zones. So yeah, it's definitely something which we are seeing more of. It's something we are trying to mitigate the best we can across the industry by providing training, by providing equipment and again, monitoring through intelligence platforms is definitely something which could be a disappointment to keep our adrenaline safe and not
00:35:29
Speaker
One lesson I'm definitely taking away from this conversation is the importance of training for the journalists
Training and Awareness Programs
00:35:35
Speaker
themselves. And I guess for the teams that support them, particularly going into high risk areas. So what does that training look like? What does a journalist get? And I guess I'm asking as well, does it get very tailored? Like does a journalist going into high risk conflict zone in Ukraine get the same training as a journalist going into conflict zone in Afghanistan?
00:35:56
Speaker
Is there a difference between what they get? Is there a difference then between what an investigative journalist might get versus those going into the war zone? Do you rely on specialists for this training? Do you have to use the journalists themselves? Because I guess often they're the most experienced.
00:36:12
Speaker
I think if you look back in the history of training, the sort of early training course in the late 90s was pretty much a bunch of ex-military chaps like myself going in and waxing the miracle about what you've done in service. Now that has come on leaps and bounds since then. There is a sort of industry-wide standard which your listeners will know about hostile environments awareness training.
00:36:32
Speaker
or HEAF, Hostile Environment First Aid Training, which is seen as mandatory across industry for anyone who's likely to put their staff in harm's way. Now, that's not just international staff, that's local staff. Anyone who's working for you will generally get the same thing. Now, although it's seen as mandatory by about 75% of the industry, only 25% of managers have stated that they would stop
00:36:58
Speaker
team is deploying, all members never had HEFA. So unloading is mandatory, people will still deploy without it, which is quite a challenge in itself. Regarding the types of training, the HEFA course is a five-day course. They're not four or five days, and it's a very broad brush. That is to ensure that journalists are competent to a level where they can operate in these zones. Now, you'd be very naive to think that as soon as you've done that course, you can jump on a plane and go to Donbass and be in back mood in covering that without additional support. And that is why
00:37:27
Speaker
we try to manage the experience level of teams with that training as well. So we never send four people straight off the bat without any experience you cover in that. So I think that supplements the training.
00:37:39
Speaker
Regarding specialist training, I think Ukraine is a prime example. Speaking to my peers across industry, I would say most news organisations have put in place additional trainings to support this conflict. If you asked me three years ago, was I really concerned about the Russian weaponry and the distance off a grad rocket system? No interest to me. We're in Iraq, we're in Afghanistan, Syria, that's my concern.
00:38:02
Speaker
Because that's changed, we've had to put supplementary training on to advise and provide that level of competence to teams who are deploying. So it is quite a flexible model where everyone must have the bare minimum, but there are additional trainings put in place depending on what the story is. And you can take it away from conflict zones, right? You can take it away and look at things like wildfires. You could argue that's a significant risk to news teams. And that happens in the States. It's happened in Europe this year.
00:38:31
Speaker
making sure journalists are aware of how to cover that in the safest possible way. Investigations, if you're doing secret filming. I ask any listeners to put a camera on someone and try and watch them walk around the room when they're trying to secret film. It's very difficult. So a lot of training needs to happen with that as well. So they do not look out of place if they are in a marketplace somewhere and trying to record. So a lot of individual training which is bespoke to the task.
00:38:57
Speaker
Does it always happen? Of course not. Is it budget restricted? Of course it is. But I would say over the last decade, or since 2009 anyway, there has been this awareness by risk owners, basically heads of news gathering, senior leadership teams, that
00:39:12
Speaker
they've got a duty care. And ultimately, if they're putting people in harm's way, it's them who will be liable if anything happens. So there's a far more awareness at that level and higher across news organizations that we should only be deploying people to these environments when they are trained, when they are competent, but also making sure that competence is assessed, and I don't mean physically assessed,
00:39:35
Speaker
But having the ability for people to reach out to my team, having the ability to reach out to other members of the team and go, actually, I'm not comfortable with this. I'm not comfortable with this level of risk, because ultimately, we need to make sure that we're not putting people in harm's way and applying pressure with doing things that they don't want to do. So long ways in. Training has improved. It is very bespoke. There are gaps. And like we mentioned before, cyber is one of those gaps. But I think it is
The Future of Media Security
00:39:59
Speaker
improving. And I think Ukraine has definitely demonstrated that across industry,
00:40:03
Speaker
used leadership and security teams are taking this seriously and bespoking it based on the evolving threats. And that brings us on really nicely to the final question from me, which is, you know, there's a lot of risk out there. It's clearly a very, very dangerous environment. You know, what keeps someone like you up at night when you think about the threats, journalists?
00:40:24
Speaker
I think for me, I touched on it earlier, which is compared to risk pendulum. I think as individuals back in London managing risk, building risk frameworks, we can put things in place to understand the tolerance of a particular news crew and obviously that change from news crew to news crew.
00:40:40
Speaker
We can put frameworks and mitigation in place to protect our team based on the existing threats. We can have triggers in place and say, okay, we're comfortable with this. But the realities are, if competitors do switch their risk appetite,
00:40:54
Speaker
the story is there, the appetite is there, then whatever we put in place may not be enough. We may move forward, and it's not undue risk. It's risk to get the editorial story, which that's why risk owners make those decisions. But for me, it's when we operate in places such as Ukraine in the early days, it's operating in Syria in 2018. When you've got conflict zones which are so kinetic, conflict zones which are ever evolving, sometimes hourly, not daily,
00:41:24
Speaker
and you've got this sort of competitive environment which is very challenging and all it takes is for one competitor to move together a story and the dominoes will fall. So that's what keeps me awake at night is I can do whatever I can but ultimately it's journalism and there's always an element of risk. It's a challenging environment to work in both from a physical perspective but also a mental perspective. But yeah it's definitely what keeps me awake because I've got lots of teams on the ground.
00:41:50
Speaker
Mark, what have we missed? What questions should we be asking someone like you? That's the million dollar question. I think it's not really a question, it's more of an observation and something which I think the industry can learn a lot. I think the fact that my thesis was the first piece of work which was carried out on
00:42:08
Speaker
risk management practice across the industry when you can argue that this is probably one of the top three high-fast roles that anyone can do in the world. The fact that you put people in harm food deliberately, but there's no studies done into how you can protect them better until this piece is, it's unreal to think that's not happened. When you compare it to other similar industries such as humanitarians, there's so swath of information, of studies
00:42:32
Speaker
of risk frameworks. There's every aspect of the risk assessment framework has been looked at in minute detail and there's a lot of support for user organisations. The media security industry is learning through experiential learning. That's what it is. There's nothing in place which has really been put there because it's been a detailed study. It's been done through experiential learning, which is not necessarily bad.
00:42:56
Speaker
But when you're marking your own homework, sometimes you should take a back seating goal. How can we improve this? What can we be doing better? Are we getting the best out of security advisors? Are we learning lessons? Is the engagement with the risk assessment process there? Is the training up to standards? Now, if you're marking your own homework and basically saying, we think we are safe, then it's not necessarily the best approach. So I think for me, it's how we can take it forward.
00:43:22
Speaker
how we can use the expertise which has significantly grown in the last two decades, both in security and safety, but also in news management, and how we can better build a framework and engage, collaborate across the industry to close the gaps which are constantly highlighted through after action reviews rather than doing it prior to incidents taking place. So yeah, I'd say that's the one thing I would like to see more of, and I'm sure we'll get there.
00:43:50
Speaker
So Dr. Mark Grant, thank you very much for joining us. You've been listening to How to Get on a Watchlist and today's episode we've been discussing how to kill a journalist from Dr. Mark Grant. Our producer for this episode was Edwin Tran and our researcher was Alex Smith. Thank you very much for joining us.
00:44:08
Speaker
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00:44:51
Speaker
911, what's your emergency?