High-Risk News Assignment Support

Overview

Syria remains one of the most dangerous countries in the world for reporters and yet, every day, hundreds of its citizens risk their lives to shoot photos, record video, and file reports on the conflict. Many are trying to reach the international community. Others want to raise the level of awareness on the ground. Most fear that without their work, the conflict’s atrocities will go undocumented.

Since the beginning of the uprising in March 2011, Syrian and foreign journalists and media workers have been targeted, many have been killed in retaliation for their work others have simply gone missing. Early on, the government of President Bashar al-Assad barred the international press while its security forces arrested and brutalized dozens of local news gatherers along with those who opposed his regime.

Situation:

Homs, Syria its people under siege, bombarded for months, picked off by snipers with food and medical supplies running out. The question is how to get a small news team into the country’s most dangerous city. The objective was to get into the suburb of Baba Amr, to reach a handful of of citizen journalists, to see firsthand what’s going on and to tell the world the suffering if Homs.

While no story is worth dying for, it is important to be there and witness the situation in order to accurately report the story. After 4 months of deliberating how, when and if it was possible to get a team in, the decision was made to revise plans.

Solution:

To cover such a high-risk assignment in a complex and ever-changing environment with little to no support from the outside requires the right team with complimentary skillsets, trust in one’s own abilities and of those your working with and a complete understanding of the risks.

The team was selected based on them having worked together for many years in various other environments under similar circumstances. This team had gone through the same training and had a healthy respect for the risks they were going to face, as such they knew they could trust each other.

The risk consultant was selected because of his risk management skills and experience of working with a news organization. He was a former special forces medic and would be responsible for the overall teams safety and security. Knowledge of the team was important but also was knowledge of the decision-making process and editorial requirements within the larger organization, without this holistic understanding it would be difficult to make timely decisions on the ground that could ultimately impact the safety of the assignment.

Along with the direct support on the ground with the team, we provided secure tracking and communications and 24/7 operational support in the newsroom back in the US. This ability to assess developments and interpret the risk context on the ground helped the senior leadership better understand the risk alongside their editorial objectives, as well as other events in Syria that could have a knock-on effect to the safety of the team.

After approximately 12 days inside Syria the team made it safely back into Lebanon after achieving all of their editorial objectives. Tragically, others that had been co-located with the team were caught up in an ariel bombardment that killed several and severely injured others including many of the local citizens that had provided assistance while in Homs.

When covering a complex story such as the conflict in Syria it is sometimes hard to step away when there is so much more to report on. Despite the demand on the ground no ‘story’ is worth dying for, what is more important is that you are able to tell the story. Decisions have to be made intelligently, based on a thorough understanding of the risks and the potential consequences. For this particular assignment we were able to provide all of the right elements to support the client in what was a very complex situation in a compressed time period.

For more on this story visit - https://youtu.be/5iYJUl0tzLM ‘CNN’s 72 Hours Under Fire’