Freelances like James Foley are all we have to face the horror

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/aug/24/freelance-reporters-james-foley-horror-war-coverage

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For once, forget the inevitable, wittering debate about whether this or that appalling video should have filled a slot on Twitter – or seeped malignly across other social media. It seems too smugly self-absorbed to meet the James Foley case. Who cares if such vile horror frightens the horses in polite society? There's a bigger problem here.

This is the age of the world wide web, a time of instant images and instant shock. James Foley died, horribly, on one small patch of our interconnected globe. Yet the obvious need for more concern, more understanding, which he sought in his own small, brave way to meet, has never been so feebly addressed. Only ghoulish revulsion gave his death the resonance to drag David Cameron back from holiday and prompt Barack Obama to rediscover his eloquence playbook.

Foley was 40, a teacher in deprived communities who turned full-time freelance reporter a mere six years ago. He didn't stop in the US and look for a conventional newspaper job. He set off alone where the danger was greatest: to Afghanistan, Libya, Syria. He always put himself in harm's way by choice.

And that, in turn, is why he mostly worked for GlobalPost, a good online deed in a bad, contracting media world that could no longer cover faraway places because that was expensive – and the audience wasn't there anyway.

Here's Hannah Storm of the International News Safety Institute, lamenting Foley's end like that of the 80 or so other journalists and media workers already killed in 2014 action. "He is not the first freelance journalist to be killed this year, and he will probably not be the last… With a dearth of jobs in newsrooms, and overseas bureaux being cut by major news organisations, many freelances have turned to conflicts to cut their teeth".

In short, some of the most perilous places on Earth are chronicled today – if at all – by courageous or heedless young men and women, some trained, some neophytes, without the backup that Big Media can provide. "Stripped down, pared-back journalism has created opportunities for those who dare, but it has also allowed outlets to hide behind flaky bottom lines as a means of abdicating responsibility", says Martin Chulov in the Guardian.

And remember what one freelance, Anjan Sundaram, wrote in the Observer and New York Times last week. "The western news media… are turning their backs on the world… Where correspondents were once assigned to a place for months or years, reporters now often handle 20 countries. Bureaux are in hub cities, far from many of the countries they cover… As the news has receded, so have our minds… Huge swaths of the world are forgotten or shrouded in myth."

GlobalPost is a brave startup from Massachusetts, struggling for a funding formula six years after it started. The idea is to put a dozen or so full-time correspondents in spots that America doesn't cover very well – Bangkok, Lima, Nairobi, Seoul, Brussels and more – and back that coverage via 50 wide-scattered freelance stringers. Foley was one such. His Post line editor reputedly told him not to go to Syria after a frightening kidnap ordeal in Libya. He went nonetheless.

That's the wonder of the freelance life. You do what you feel you need to do, not what the office tells you. It is also the peril of a stringing existence. The tiny Post formed an alliance with the mighty NBC News last year, providing some of the coverage to swell NBC's offering. Ken Doctor, one of America's shrewdest media analysts, wrote about that narrow-eyed.

"What NBC News needs is more high quality international news content, at a low cost. Staff-produced content is expensive, and NBC, like its network peers, has seen significant cutback in staffing for years… The GlobalPost deal is an extension of a commitment [NBC's head of newsgathering] made long ago: produce more content than ever before to feed the multi-platform beast – at a lower budget than ever before."

Let's be clear. Staff journalists – such as Daniel Pearl of the Wall Street Journal – can be kidnapped and killed, too. Marie Colvin, a hero for the Sunday Times, stands high on the Syrian death list. Nevertheless, and even so, there is added risk when you're obliged to fly virtually solo – and one additional reason (money) when that's so.

But then there's the dreadful link to Foley and Twitter and White House eulogies to "Jim", this "journalist who was a son, a brother, a friend". The money we spend on covering international news has plummeted in the quarter-century since the cold war ended. We, the reader, the viewer, have lost our fear of nuclear oblivion. We've turned the page. The world is a much bigger, more distant place: but also far smaller, more immediate. Twitter can bring terror to our smartphones in seconds. A few hundred deluded Brits in masks can hold presidents and prime ministers in thrall.

Perversely, GlobalPost will gain traction from this tragedy – and Foley, in death, will be professionally honoured as he never was in life. Isn't it time for the giants of news gathering to see what they've let slide?

Which therefore poses the greatest dilemma of all: not just the question of funding news in a digital age that wrecks revenue streams, but a chilling question for editors – and most of all for you, the audience. Do you want to know what's happening in this world, the world you live in? Do you want to see how bestial forces arise? Do you want to click off Twitter, shiver and blame the messenger? Or will you – paying for some of the privilege – seek afresh to comprehend the threat and the challenge, emotionally closer than ever before?