FJA Series of webinars “Winning Stories”
October 9th, 2025
Moderator:
Aidan White
Speakers:
Sarah A Topol
Fabian Federl
Anna-Catherine Brigada
Christiana Bedei
Nadezhda Azhgikhina
Full transcript
Aidan White:
Welcome everybody to this latest webinar in a series of webinars called winning stories, put on by the Fetisov Journalism Awards. The “Winning Stories” webinars are really designed to promote the stories of our winners. This is, excellence in journalism is really a high order. And we have just concluded our appeal for entries for this year, and I’m very happy to say once again, we’ve got more entries than ever, and really high-quality entries. So the Fetisov Journalism Awards panel of jury and experts is currently sifting through this superabundance of quality journalism, and will be producing a short list, which should be available in 2 or 3 months time, and we will promote the short list at that time.
So today’s webinar is to actually have a reflection on two things. One is the stories that have been produced by some of our winners, and we want to talk about how those stories were put together, and also a little bit more about the people behind them because the people behind them are very special in terms of the world of journalism. They tend to be, they are freelances, they’re independent journalists. And so therefore, it’s really great to be able to focus on how particularly freelance journalists are able to sort of cope. With the changing world and the changing nature of journalism in this very sort of turbulent times.
Our panellists are excellent panellists who I’ll be talking to in more detail later on, they are Sarah A Topol who is the winner of our Outstanding Contribution to Peace for 2024, who’s joining us. Fabian Fedel was one of the winners in the Environmental Journalism category, also in 2024. Anna-Catherine Brigada is the winner of the Contribution to Civil Rights, a year earlier, in 2023. We’ve also got a couple of really important journalists and editors who are not directly award winners, but are certainly distinguished enough to be sitting alongside these award winners today. They are Christiana Bedei, who’s a freelance consultant and specialist in supporting freelance journalism from Italy. And Nadia Azhgikhina, who is a member of the Fetisov Journalism Awards committee, herself, a writer, and journalist with a distinguished record and was, for 6 years, she was vice president of the European Federation of Journalists. So she knows her way about the international scene as well in terms of journalist rights.
So that’s our panel today, and just before we get started, I wanted to just sort of give us a bit of background about why we chose this particular topic, “The Future is Freelance”. The fact of the matter is, is that we all know that today journalism is not an easy business, and it’s certainly not an easy way to earn a livelihood. We’ve seen over the past decade, lacerating attacks on journalism, not actually just the normal guilty parties from the corporate and the political world who try to massage the message and control what journalists are doing. But actually, the internal problems of the news media system have caused enormous turbulence in terms of the news business being able to survive.
And one of the great casualties has been the number of people who are employed directly in newsrooms to work on journalism. And there have been many, many 100s of closures of news media outlets, and many, many journalists have been forced, actually, into sort of independent living and freelance journalism, just as a result of the circumstances. And it’s very, very difficult these days for journalists to be able to earn a living. And one of the things we noticed is that not only are more people in journalism working as freelances, but actually, they’re producing fantastic journalism, and more than half of the winners of the Fetisov Journalism Awards last year, were actually independent freelance journalists, you know, who are working on their own, seeking commissions for the work that they’re doing, and they are proving that freelance journalism is no bar to the production of the best quality journalism to be found in the world today. So we want to explore how people coming into journalism, people who want to sort of make a career out of journalism, people who are already in journalism, and maybe facing sort of an independent, more independent future than they have, had in the past about, you know, the way that they can make the best of it and so on.
I suppose the 1st point to make is, actually, there’s nothing new about freelance journalism. It’s actually been going on since journalism, itself, was being organized. Indeed, when I started out at the International Federation of Journalists more than 40 years ago. One of the 1st reports I produced was a survey on the changing demographics of employment in journalism. And at the time, we produced a report which showed that there was an explosion in freelance journalism. And the report I even remember was called “The Future Is Freelance”. So even the title of this seminar is not new either as well. And the future is certainly freelance. And if it is freelance, then it’s certainly, I mean, a difficult place to be to earn a living. So, we want to provide some insights today in how the realities of modern journalism are being tackled and are being dealt with by people at the sharp end of it. And these are the freelance journalists. And we hope that the webinar will help freelance journalists and editors to strengthen their work and will provide useful tips. And not just for people starting out on their journalistic journey, but also for how people who are working as freelances are making their way as we go.
There are, I suppose, the important thing to note is that being a freelance journalist requires you to be multi-skilled. It’s not that you can produce a good film or a good report, although that’s essential, journalistic skills are absolutely at the heart of everything that we do. But in order to survive, you need to be able to navigate around a sort of very complicated world of commissioning, of dealing with sources, of building people’s trust to be able to have your stories told. And about being convincing in what you do, not just convincing with the people that you’re talking to in order to make your story, but also convincing in being able to ensure that your story will get published, that editors will trust you, and that they’ll come back to you, and that your name will become automatically associated with high quality, reliable and trustworthy reporting and journalism.
And that’s a tough ask for people, many of those starting out. But it’s also true that the news media today are absolutely reliant on freelances. The fact of the matter is, as newsrooms have emptied, of people who are there and available to do work, news media have been absolutely reliant upon all sorts of niche areas of work — arts, culture, science, social issues, even politics, and other specialities, to go to people who know what they’re talking about in journalism and can report reliably on these affairs. So I’m really hoping that what we will learn today is that the freelance world of journalism is expanding, we know that, it will continue to expand, but also it holds a very positive future for journalism. And I think what we want to do is we want to focus on how that is and how we can see that that is happening.
With that in mind and I hope at the end of it, we will be able to come up with some guidelines and some tips about how people can get organized, how can they make sure that their work is properly recognized and is trusted? And actually, how they can make a living, how they can make a decent living out of it. And that perhaps is the biggest challenge of all.
So let’s get started. Thank you very much, everybody, for joining. Sarah, welcome to you. I’m particularly pleased that you’ve been able to join us. Like all the freelances on this panel, you have awards coming out of every part of your CV, you’ve got a remarkable record of achievement in terms of recognition for your journalism. And the story that you did for the Fetisov Journalism Award, certainly, it certainly blew away the judges. They were extraordinarily impressed by your story. Tell us a bit about it, you know, why was this particular story important? The short part of it is that it’s a sort of story about the Americans who America forgot, which is a sort of short way of putting it. But tell us a little bit about the background about why you chose this story and how it came to be an entry.
Sarah A Topol:
Thank you so much for having me. I chose this story or, actually, I mean, I started thinking about this story a long time before I was able to report it. I started thinking about it during the pandemic. Actually, I read a book called “How to Hide an Empire”, and it got me thinking about, it’s a book by a historian at Northwestern University, about the history of American Empire.
And I’ve been working in the Middle East for over a decade as a foreign correspondent, and I just had never really thought, I had seen a lot of evidence of American Empire in foreign policy, but I hadn’t really given much thought to our, like empire within our own borders. And so, I started thinking about American Empire in the Pacific, and then I saw a piece, like a news story about the creation of a new marine base — the first base, I think since 1952 — in Guam, called Base Camp Blaz. I read the history was, they were moving Marines from Okinawa, after, over their, the Marines’ treatment of local residents of Okinawa, specifically a rape of a 12-year-old girl in 1992. And I saw that the same thing was happening again — the U.S. government wasn’t consulting with the local population. They just decided to open a base in Guam, and the community had been protesting it. And despite their attempts at protesting, it was going ahead. And as I started thinking about reporting that, I saw kind of more and more evidence of the militarization of all of these islands across the Pacific in this brinkmanship with China, and decided that I wanted to try to report a story about that.
Aidan White:
Well, that’s a really big story. I mean, you’re taking on about, you know, American policy and its relations with China, but you’re taking it down to ground level. That is to say, you’re sort of talking to the people literally on the ground who are affected by it on the spot. How did you get in touch with them, and how did they respond to you?
Sarah A Topol:
Quite, quite cautiously and apprehensively. I tried, there’s been a lot of outsiders who have always written Guam’s history, and so it was really important to me to reach out to as many people as I could before I even got to Guam or got on the ground in any of these places to try to better understand the situation there so that I wouldn’t be taking up as much of people’s time as I could to explain things to me. So I did about like maybe 3 or 4 months of kind of reading and interviewing from home. I tried to read as many like books and firsthand accounts as I could before I got on the ground because I do think it’s really important to at least try to have some background in without asking people to— people already give up so much of their time to talk to you. So to come in with some understanding of the situation.
But I still relied on the kindness and patience of many, many people across the Pacific Islands that I visited, to sit down and tell me from the beginning kind of their perspectives on how things were going. So it started with a lot of academics who were based outside of Guam. And then because of the time difference, it’s also quite difficult to call, uh, from where I’m based, uh, to Guam. So a lot of it had to happen at weird hours. And then I finally got on the ground and was able to connect with some of the people who I’d spoken to before and kind of from there start reporting.
Aidan White:
And this story, you were commissioned by The New York Times Magazine in advance. How did you get the commission?
Sarah A Topol:
I’m a contributing writer at The Times, so I pitched the story, and I’ve been working with them for, I think, nine years now. And so this was, I guess, two years ago. So I think, I know that this story was something that the editor-in-chief signed off on because, I had, I was very passionate about it, and it was not necessarily something that they were as passionate about as I was at the time. So, but I was really, captivated by this idea and I really wanted to do it. So I pushed quite hard for it.
Aidan White:
So you push your part. I mean, already you’ve given us some really sort of quite important things here about ensuring that you listen to the authentic voice of people on the ground so that their experience is absolutely everything, that you do proper background study so you know what you’re talking about when you’re sort of dealing with a topic like this. But I think this last point that you make is really important about pushing editors to accept your enthusiasm for the story. I mean, how important is that?
Sarah A Topol:
I guess it’s the most important. But I mean, but there’s nothing you can – I mean, the pitch goes to a meeting, and you are not in that meeting. So you, at least in my case. But I think there are, there are ways, you know, if you talk directly to your editor to get your editor’s buy-in so that when they go to this meeting, they’re also bought into the story, hopefully.
I actually can’t remember if I spoke to the editor-in-chief directly about this story, or not, prior to the meeting itself, my memory of the hesitancy comes from after. It was commissioned, but I think it’s really important. I mean, the pitch is the most important part of the process for everyone. I don’t know about for staffers, but at least for freelancers.
Aidan White:
Yeah. And also sort of, it’s true who you’re pitching it to as well, isn’t it? So you need to sort of build a good relationship with the people you’re working with.
And, um, your previous stories, you know, reporting from Taiwan and Hong Kong, reporting on the plight of the Rohingya, reporting on the problems in Xinjiang in China as well, all of this showed that you had already established, or you had established a bit of a reputation for someone who was able to take up important social causes and be able to be a reliable pair of hands in dealing with them.
Sarah A Topol:
Yeah, I mean, I guess so.
Aidan White:
Tell me what was the, um, in terms of your sort of position? Did you ever feel sort of isolated as a freelance and lacking in support?
Sarah A Topol:
In my career? Sure. I mean, I think, yeah — I never went to journalism school, so just to, I suppose in every way, to learn from how to learn to write, what is reporting to— to, I’ve never been on staff anywhere. So my whole career has been, um, as a freelancer. But at the same time, I would say that, you know, what ends up happening probably, I would imagine to most freelancers, or at least to me, is that you will meet along the way maybe like a handful of editors who actually care and will support you despite the fact that you’re a freelancer, or they will go the extra mile to help you feel supported in an environment in which that, that’s not necessary.
And so those are the people, you know, who you’re looking to meet in your career. I think that’s kind of, so that’s, yeah.
Aidan White:
So, I mean, I think, again, that’s a really sort of important issue, which is to identify the sympathetic voices in your, in your relations with media, and, you know, and really to play to their strengths. Seems to me to be, really, really valuable and so on.
What has been the feedback from your story? What sort of feedback did you get?
Sarah A Topol:
I was really happy and really honoured that the people that I wrote about reached out and were, felt like the piece captured, a lot of the nuance. It’s a really delicate situation in Guam, and across the Pacific of this kind of relationship of 2nd-tier status, but also a kind of patriotism, that’s been brought about by history and poverty and various other factors. So, I was really, really pleased about that.
And I also heard that the military, that was built, that is continuing to build and has completed some of the construction that was going on while I was there, was at least listening more or making a show of listening more to the people of Tinian, that I had, that I had interviewed for my piece, which felt incredibly important, including things like allowing cattle grazing, in areas that they hadn’t thought that they would be able to graze on. So that’s what I heard after the reporting, which was really great.
Aidan White:
One final thing is that, um, how did you deal with any sort of negative vibes or hostility along the way? From the military or from political institutions or did they give you a free run?
Sarah A Topol:
I think that people were, especially, I mean, the military was a bit difficult to deal with. I’ve never— this was my first time actually trying to get access from the military for dealing with the U.S. military. Uh, and I, in on an individual level, I think people were trying to do their jobs and trying to fill out the bureaucracy and the paperwork in some ways. And then in other ways, um, they also have their own story to tell in their own version of the events that they really want told.
So I think that anytime there was pushback or kind of like a closure that the attempt that I made, which was genuine, was like, I still, like, I need to understand what’s happening from your side, like this isn’t just a story about people’s perspectives. This is a story about things that are genuinely happening on the ground, whether, you’ll tell me the official numbers of the budget or not. And so, yeah, that was a bit difficult. There were, I mean, the U.S. Coast Guard, actually, which allowed me to tag along for 10 days with them as they sailed. I was on a Coast Guard boat for 10 days across the Pacific, which didn’t make it into the piece, they allowed me more access than they had to, I think, other journalists…
Aidan White:
Thanks very much indeed. And congratulations once again. A great story, and you’ve touched on a lot of sorts of issues which, I think, get to the heart of the challenges facing freelance journalists. And so thanks very much indeed for that.
Aidan White:
Fabian, I wonder if I can go to you. I mean, a lot of what you’ve heard must resonate with you as well. But tell us a bit about your story, which, I thought, was a remarkable piece of journalism. So tell us a bit about it and the background to it.
Fabian Federl:
So the one thing that might be, a connection is that it’s also the first time I worked with the military, for this story. It’s a very special relationship that you have between military and journalists. I want to start with just a sharing my screen just to give you an idea here. I want to show you something here just to give you an idea. So my story was on the border between Surinam and French Guyana, French Guyana is also just like the Pacific Islands, Sarah talked about, a territory of, in this case, the European Union, far away from the European Union. It is a 2nd grade citizenship and all these things that also apply to Guam. But in my story, the special thing about French Guyana is that it is, basically just rainforest, about 98% of the ground is rainforest, and you have indigenous communities, but you also have gold mining and that was what it’s about. Like, how does this gold from there illegally go to Europe?
And I want to start with these pictures that we took there, this photographer was Yan Shei Boob, the Brazilian photographer was with me. And this is like the typical story that you always hear from these places, which is look at the indigenous, and they live with nature and so on, and then you have like somebody destroying it, here you have prostitution, you have people, bringing in, I don’t know, crime and degradation. And this is true. Like these gold miners bring in degradation, they bring in environmental destruction. But the story that we wanted to tell because it’s a story that is not told, ever, actually, is that these gold miners are basically just as poor. Like these are the poorest of the poor who go to these regions to do like, really like hard, like bone breaking work. And they don’t see themselves as criminals, they see themselves as workers.
So we actually started with this idea of, let’s take, let’s take a story. I always say we because the photographer was there, but like it’s my, I was the one writing it, the photographer was the photographer. But our idea, my idea was, let’s take a gold miner as the protagonist and not tell this story about one indigenous tribe is being attacked by like Western civilization and the greed for gold, but let’s go to the gold people and tell it from their side because most of them are also just locals, who are in need of, uh, work and money. So we found in French Guyana or something that is very special is, is Brazilians mostly, and Brazilians from the region, is just like the other side of the border, who do this kind of work.
There is a whole chain that starts there with illegal gold mining that goes to several countries, through Surinam, to Switzerland and into the European Union, that I tracked. There was a lot of in the field reporting, where you see these pictures coming from, and you see a lot of, we also did a lot of data and a lot of, trying to track supply chains. There was a lot of work also in Switzerland, which you can imagine the difference between working here and working like in Switzerland for the same story was quite something.
Aidan White:
Did you work with the miners?
Fabian Federl:
I did. I didn’t mine gold myself, but I was there, where these things were happening.
Aidan White:
Yeah. Okay.
Fabian Federl:
So yeah, and then, well, the next thing we went with the military to the same place, so there we had both sides, right? Like we went with the gold miners to the gold mine, then we went to the indigenous territories to talk with the indigenous about the gold miners, and then we went to the military, with the military to the gold mines. And you see the difference between the views of the same thing, I suppose. So, that’s just to give a background of what the story was about.
But we’re talking about now, uh, about freelancing and how that influenced the story, I suppose, right?
Aidan White:
I mean, it’s a it’s a really important story. But there are various elements to it. So when you were pitching for this story, what did you focus on? Did you focus on the plight of the people on the ground who are doing the work? Or did you focus on the what appeared to be the sort of, the relationship between people who are profiting from this work in Europe and how this, this really hard work, get digging up gold in South America finds its way through this difficult economic navigable paths to Switzerland, where it's where it’s cashed in and where, you know, great profits are made.
What was the main theme for you? What was the most important aspect of it? Exposing the potential corruptness, corruption in the relationships between the rich North and the South, or actually the plight of exploitation of people in the South?
Fabian Federl:
So there there was more of the second, but there was a third thing that we had at the as the first idea, which is these Brazilian settlements inside of France, like French Guiana, as France, like these Brazilian settlements inside of the territory, a lot of times they come with this frontier mentality. And in the first cohort of people who build a new settlement in these jungles, there’s always a priest, and I mean an evangelical pastor, priest. So we wanted to actually focus on that because they take a tenth, it’s like in the, in the, like 13th century. Like you take, you have the pastors, the evangelical pastors going with the miners, and you pay them 10% of your gold. So this is like that was the idea. First, we take the religion aspect of it, and then when we were there, we saw that this is happening, but this is so normal to the people there, that nobody even like questioned it that much.
It actually went into the story. I think it went into the radio part of this, like we did a written part, a radio part, and there’s also like a spinoff. There are a lot of things happening with this story, but the one that got the award, I think it didn’t make it into the story, the religious aspect.
So, that was how we went in — that’s how we started the idea. But then when we came into these settlements, and we stayed in one of those settlements for seven days and another one for five days. And I think it changed from there to the human exploitation. Not north-south, but actually like the, the drama of like being somebody who lives there, in a European territory, right? This is like these are not European citizens, but they live in Europe, the residents in Europe. The kind of violence that happens that that is just normal there, the disease that is normal there and the misery that is normal there.
And since we don’t make like misery porn in journalism, we wanted to embed this into some kind of question that actually touches the reader. So I just had one look of where does this gold go, and it took us less than about 10 minutes to find out it goes to Switzerland. It was really like something that came when reporting was almost done. And that’s how when we linked it to Europe. And then basically a new reporting trip had to start because we did the whole on the ground thing, and then it opened up a whole new question about the supply chain, so, then I had to go to Switzerland.
Aidan White:
So look, this is a really complicated and difficult story, and it has within it all sorts of elements which are potentially really good stories in themselves. There’s a question of the cultural dimension, the economic exploitation. There’s the political nature of the relationships and there is the risks that are associated with it, with the presence of military as well, and so on. So how did you pitch this story, and how did you get it published? I mean, and did you get a commission beforehand? How did you take it forward, from the idea that you had that this was a story? How did you make it work as a piece of journalism that you get paid for?
Fabian Federl:
I have been a freelancer for most...I’m 38, I’ve started like maybe 12 years ago freelancing and I did 2 years on staff before. So I have a little bit of an idea of what it is on staff, but I was on staff at a daily, it changed a lot. So in these 12 years, I have worked on commission. In the beginning, I have worked always, like, I do my thing, and then I sell it, and it always worked. Then I started to work on commission, but in the last like 4 years or something, I usually do not do any stories that are not backed by a grant before. This was backed by a Journalismfund.eu, Environmental Grant, which was enough money to get me there and to pay the photographer. And then the second part of it was paid by the magazine when I had to do some work in Switzerland.
I mean, I have an ongoing relationship with that magazine and with 2 magazines in Germany and one in France that is like an ongoing relationship where I basically have carte blanche from them to pitch to grants. So, they give me just a paper – “Hey, we take the things that Fabian does”, and then I go to the grant, and then they have like the security that I have the contacts, the letter of interest of the magazine, and then, if I get the grant, I go back to the magazine and say: “I got it” – and then they take it, or they don’t. But they usually take it. And then we see if there’s like some overhang budget where I need more of a travel budget or something and the fee, the normal writer’s fee, is paid by the magazine.
Aidan White:
So there are two really important aspects, this part of your story, which is the ability to use grants that are available for investigative journalism. And there are, there are quite a few sources that will provide with grant support that’ll give a bit of seed money to journalists to go and do their stories and so on. That’s one aspect of getting access to those funds and how one does it. But the second thing is this question of the letter of interest, that is to say, establishing a relationship with a media organization, and then relying on them to at least give you some credibility with the potential grantee, the grant-making organization, that you’re reliable. How does one build those relationships to get them to work?
Fabian Federl:
It’s just like everything, like in the beginning, it’s hard, and then it gets easier because in the beginning, nobody knows you, and they have to like, put faith in you without knowing you, but now the people I have been working with for 12 years, they know me. So now it’s easy, I don’t even remember the time when it was hard, but I remember that it was.
Aidan White:
That’s true. Most of us don’t remember the hard times, particularly as life gets better as we get older.
Fabian Federl:
That’s true.
Aidan White:
But it is hard. That sort of that question about how, and to what extent, do you rely upon advice and guidance from people who are swimming in the same pond as you are? You know, fellow freelances, fellow correspondents who are, you know, seeking support and so on. How much networking and sharing of information is there, and how valuable is it?
Fabian Federl:
It very much is. Like, I’m also like an immigrant, I’m half German, half French, but I live in Brazil. I move countries and of course, the first people, apart from personal friends and so on that I met here, are other journalists or other correspondents from other countries that are here, and then starting to get to know the local journalists and so on. But, I got my, first assignment at The New York Times because I knew the New York Times correspondent. I got my first assignment for like some German outlets there because I met the German guy living in Brazil, to get like a connection to that magazine in Germany and so on. It’s super important. And also something that I recently got more and more aware of is that a lot of correspondents and a lot of foreign journalists do not use all of the possibilities that we as freelancers have to get funding. A lot of people I know here only work, like, on commission, and they send it to all the magazines, but they have, like, reporting costs of $10,000. So no magazine wants to take it.
And when I told them, there’s like: “There are funds, there are grants, there are scholarships who can help you with that”. “Oh, which ones and how do I apply and so on?” So, it’s also good to, to exchange to, with other freelance journalists in the region where you live, if it’s the same case as me with like a regional thing, to exchange these ideas.
Aidan White:
Look, thank you very much indeed. I think that last point is really, really important. And that is a sort of, we need more of a recognition that there are funds available for journalists to do good work. The question is making the connections. And I know that the investigative journalism organizations, both in Europe and North America, are tremendously important in identifying where one can go to get support for this sort of journalism. But I think it’s a very good idea to try and get a way of sort of sharing this information about grants that are available, how journalists need to sort of follow them up and how they can interact with the organizations providing grants and at the same time establish good, trusting relationships with potential publishers of the work that they’re doing.
And I think you seem to have, you seem to have sort of worked out that sort of particular problem extremely well. And congratulations on that and also, again, congratulations on your award. What was the follow-up to it, was there any sort of positive outcome for this story?
Fabian Federl:
Well, yeah, you’re going to see it in the inbox of the next awards. I’ll, I actually got the Pulitzer Center’s fellowship because of it, so I got like a year of financing because of the story. And then, a four-part podcast series went out and another centrefold spread in a newspaper in Germany. I’m currently, actually working for, Her Majesty’s government on a report on Surinamese gold trafficking.
Aidan White:
Oh, wow. Congratulations to that. But actually, that’s another important lesson, which is good journalism, good stories open more doors. And so, you know, it’s great. So you need to build upon the successes and so on.
Thanks very much indeed for that. That’s fantastic.
Anna-Catherine, can I turn to you? You’ve heard two fantastically positive stories about our winners. You yourself were a laureate for the FJA in 2023. And I remember your story. It was fantastic, really very interesting story, very difficult story as well, with political sort of background as well. How do you feel about what you’ve heard? And tell us a bit about your story and also a bit about how you got started.
Anna-Catherine Brigada:
Yeah, I think a lot of what has already been said, resonates a lot with me about just some of the challenges of pitching and also, you know, when you want to do those bigger stories and finding that support because I think, you know, as you mentioned at the beginning, there is a lot of great work that’s being done by freelance journalists, but I think it takes a while to build that trust.
I freelanced for about 7 years from Central America. I actually am no longer freelancing, I’m now, working for the AP as a text editor here in Mexico City. But this was kind of, award story was kind of mine, one of my final stories from Central America. And I do think that building up that trust with editors was very helpful. But basically for my story, so my story was about surveillance technology that was used in Honduras, particularly under the government of Juan Orlando Hernández, who is currently serving a sentence for drug trafficking in the US. And so he left office, I believe, early 2023, I hope I’m getting my dates right, which is around, or no, 2022, I believe. So I was doing this investigation throughout 2022 basically right after he had left office, and he had been extradited, but hadn’t been convicted yet.
The story was kind of a long time in the making. I basically was doing another investigation in Honduras, and I was reviewing some court documents, and I saw that this company Palantir was mentioned, which I recognize because they have a lot of contracts with the US Army, the US military, with ICE, and kind of controversial company. So, seeing that and they also very, you know, have like a very distinct name, so I was like: that’s gotta be that company! That kind of caught my eye because I thought, you know, what is this government that, you know, is alleged to be drug trafficking and, you know, surveils a lot of their, you know, activists and protesters and opposition within the country, like, what are they doing with this technology that, um, you know, basically, they don’t say much about what their technology does, but in the process, you know, I learned that basically they kind of take a lot of information about people that comes from, sometimes public sources, but they kind of, you know, from that, do like an analysis and create sort of like a profile on a person. And with that, you can really, you know, that can just be used, you know, to track people, to track their family members, to get a sense of, you know, their whereabouts and their patterns of where they go and things like that.
I actually had been pitching the story for a long time: I pitched it to the Pulitzer Center, they have a special AI grant, and they were interested, but ultimately ended up passing. I think I kind of had this struggle, the freelancer struggle at the beginning where I was like, I know this is a story, I think I should do it well, I think I should do, you know, the bigger version, not just the sort of watered-down version, but I need someone to invest in that. And I can't be just, you know, pitch it to someone who’s going to pay me a few hundred dollars for it. So I was trying to get a grant. And then I saw this grant opportunity or special fellowship from CODA, which is that, that eventually published the story, and they focused specifically on tech and authoritarianism. So I was like, this is perfect, perfect fit. And they had their own fellowship. And so basically it was, I pitched to them, it was a little bit easier than some other grants because I didn’t need to get the partner outlet. You know, they were the outlet that was going to publish it.
And then that was when it finally came together, and I got the go ahead and got to spend months digging into it. And started with one company, ended up kind of spiralling and realizing it’s actually a whole web of companies that the country was using. That’s how my story came together.
Aidan White:
You did a story which contributed to actually the overthrow of a regime and someone in power being brought to justice. By any stretch of the imagination, that’s powerful journalism holding people in power to account.
To what extent were there risks involved in that process?
Anna-Catherine Brigada:
Yeah, I mean, as I mentioned, Juan Orlando Hernández, he is now in prison in the US, but I was doing this investigation basically, you know, right after he left office, I covered the election, you know, that led to Xiomara Castro, who’s the current president, coming into office. She’s from an opposition party, and so the country was kind of going through this big transition. But at the same time, you know, some of these power structures don’t just disappear overnight. So, you know, a lot of people who are still higher up in, you know, the police, the military, still operating.
And I think at first, you know, at first, I got a lot of access, I think that they maybe didn’t expect that I was really like what I was really digging into or, you know, thought it was going to be some smaller story. And I think at first, you know, they were kind of open, they gave me a tour, they showed me the Palantir unit. And their discourse was like: “Well, we need this to fight drug trafficking, and this is helping us to fight drug trafficking”.
I think as they started to, you know, realize a little bit more of what I was digging into, that relationship got a little bit more tense. I was also doing an investigation on surveillance technology, so I don’t know how paranoid I started to get, but, you know, you start to – everybody’s telling you all these things that happen to them that, you know, indicate that they’re being surveilled, and then you start to see things that you’re like, “Mm, that’s a little bit weird”.
I remember one call where I called like a human rights agency, and I was like: “Oh, I’m sorry, I can’t hear you that well, there’s this echo”. And they were like: “Oh yeah, it’s because they’re listening to us”. And it was like this weird moment. Then afterwards I was like, what line is tapped, is it my line or is it their line? So that was like very weird. So, it’s kind of weird things like that started to happen.
Aidan White:
I mean, that does raise a question of cybersecurity – to what extent, when you’re dealing with stories like this, I mean, how do journalists protect themselves from snooping? I mean, how do you ensure that your work, your confidentiality, which is one of the ethical values of journalism, how you maintain that, and ensure that, you know, your work is not being compromised?
Anna-Catherine Brigada:
Yeah, I mean, I think it’s tough, I tried my best. There’s, you know, different things that you can use, like, you know, trying to use Signal, you know, and if you think that your phone is compromised, you know, not taking it into certain areas. I don’t use my phone for my recordings. I know a lot of people do that. But just knowing all the ways that people can get into your phone, kind of has made me a little bit more sceptical of that. So I think there’s, you know, there are ways that we try to protect ourselves, but also, you know, from doing this investigation I also realized, you know, there’s a lot of really powerful technology out there. And so it’s really difficult.
I do think that, you know, I’m really grateful for all the people who spoke to me, a lot of them, most of them on the record. Um, you know, just because that they want to talk about what’s happening in their country, and they think that it should be made public. And I think, you know, that’s a decision that, you know, have many conversations with people about, I think that, you know, they came to that conclusion themselves, but, you know, when people are wanting to conceal their identity, then it is difficult. You know, you have to be more careful to make sure that there’s not a way that, you know, people, bad actors can continue.
Aidan White:
I mean, I think that, I mean, you’re highlighting something which is really important, which is the need for some security, that journalists need to be aware of the need to be, to use secure methods for communications, but also they need to protect their data, and they need to make sure that, you know, that they’re not exposing themselves or, you know, all their sources. And in today’s world, that is more difficult than ever.
One other thing I wanted to ask you, you’ve been a specialist as well on migration reporting, and migration is one of the big stories in the world today. Every part of the world, the whole question of migration is a story, which is told, and very often it’s told in very politically charged terms, and it becomes a sort of instrument, one way or another, of political policy, and it’s very difficult sometimes for journalists to navigate through that sort of particular problem.
I mean, how do you sell a story, for instance, about migration, when there’s a very hostile environment politically, to any sort of positive reception of these stories?
Anna-Catherine Brigada:
Well, I do think, as you mentioned, migration is a big story, so I do think that, you know, editors and readers want to read about it. And so when I was freelance, I do think that, you know, those were some of the stories that people wanted to hear. I do think that, I mean, my approach has always been, you know, to focus on the people to tell those experiences. I think when you find people that illuminate, you know, all of the challenges that people go through, explain why people need to leave. I think the conversation sometimes, especially in the US, can just leave that out in terms of, you know, just cracking down on immigration, but not understanding all the factors that lead people to leave. And why, you know, its migration has been very dangerous for many years, through Mexico, through many different countries, and yet people still do it. So why do people still do it? What’s happening? And I just try to find those stories that can connect with people.
Aidan White:
That raises a sort of question about, you know, is there a tendency to steer away from stories that are potentially politically difficult? Because there’s a lack of enthusiasm for commissioning work in that area.
Anna-Catherine Brigada:
That is a very good question, you’ll have to ask the commissioning editors for some of that. But I do think, um, as a freelancer. I mean, you, it’s a business, right? So you do start to learn, you know, this is a story that editors tend to be really excited about, this is a story that I’m kind of getting some pushback from. And so, yeah, I mean, you do have to kind of make that calculation sometimes of what you invest your time in, and yeah, it’s unfortunate that some stories probably don’t get told for that reason, but…
Aidan White:
I mean, one of the problems about the migration story just is that it’s a story which is often told in two ways. Either it’s told as an emotional story, as a human interest story, focused on people, that are the people who are part of the process, or it’s told as a numbers' story. So it’s a sort of dehumanized evaluation of the issue as an economic factor and, you know, as a political story, as distinct from being a human story.
And that’s a difficult choice that journalists have to make, and very often, there will be media that are prone to go for one angle rather than another angle. So that’s one of the difficult. So to what extent do, you know, you feel that you have to stick with your own values in terms of how you promote your stories?
Anna-Catherine Brigada:
Yeah, I mean at the end of the day, it’s our names, it’s our credibility, you know, you have to do what you feel comfortable with, what you feel like, you know, your ethics tell you is the right way to tell the story and to be true to the story. I do feel like all the freelancers I know have like a very strong sense of what they believe is, you know, the right story and the way to tell stories and stick to that. So I do respect a lot of freelancers for that reason.
Aidan White:
Thanks very much. I mean, and I think it really, it also, that’s, that really echoes what Sarah and Fabian have been talking about as well, about the question of its personal values are very, very important in determining the strength that you give to a story and whether or not you fight for it and push back against editors who are perhaps a bit more intrusive than they ought to be, in terms of trying to shape and message the story into their own vision of how it should be. So that is really a very important sort of part of the process of, you know, working out how you will survive and behave as a freelance journalist.
Congratulations again, Anna-Catherine, your work is just fantastic, and another great story, which, you know, we’re really proud to promote.
Cristiana, can I turn to you? You heard that heard, you know, our writers talking about some fantastic stories and really how they sort of dealt with it, and I've been taken with this sort of idea that freelancers in order to survive have to be brim-full of certain qualities. One is self-confidence and the other is commitment to the story. And if they're not brim-full of these values, they're not going to get very far. Tell us a bit about the work that you've been doing in supporting freelancers and about your own work and and and how you know is the world of journalism a better place or a worse place for independent journalism these days?
Cristiana Bedei:
Sure. Thank you for having me, and obviously, I’m super impressed by the talent of my fellow panellists. It’s kind of hard to follow that, but I’ll try. I have actually a short presentation, just because I want to share some resources. So that’s the main reason. I can promise it’s short. I can’t promise it’s not boring, but let’s see.
I’m Christina Bedei, and I’m a freelance journalist from Italy. I’ve been freelancing by choice for over ten years, writing for national and international media, but especially since 2018, I’ve been contributing to the International Journalist Network in the U.S., mostly focusing on freelancing. So on top of having my personal experience as a freelancer, I’ve also interviewed dozens of editors and experts about everything from AI tools to pitching strategies, from finding story ideas to turning them into multiple commissions. I’ve also trained hundreds of journalists or aspiring journalists, often on how to make freelance work more sustainable. And I’m also the founder of Senza Redazione, which means Without the Newsroom in Italian. It’s a free platform and community for freelancers in the media and communication sector in Italy. Running it obviously gives me a lot of insights on what freelancers may actually need.
As we know, the biggest challenges are probably around pay and finding work, which is why the platform includes resources like guides for freelance rates, a weekly job-listing newsletter with over 8,000 subscribers, and even an archive one of successful pitches that people can see. You can find other initiatives similar to this in other countries, at least in English-language, I am sure, there are many. Basically, one of my focus, whether through writing, training, or spending my free time on Senza Redazione, has really been on providing practical tools, information, and resources that can help freelancers succeed. Because I think learning the craft of journalism is one thing, and finding your place in the industry is another – especially today.
But I wanted to open with an encouraging line from Tim Herrera, a former New York Times editor I interviewed. He told me: “Editors need freelancers as much as freelancers need editors.” I think this is really important to remember because we’re not really outsiders knocking on the door. We’re on the same team, with the same goal which is trying to tell great stories. I know that approaching editors can be intimidating because to freelancers, editors are sort of gatekeepers, especially at the beginning. But I would really encourage anyone who’s thinking about starting to write, to be a journalist, to go for it. At the beginning it’s kind of hard to know how to go for it, so I’ve tried to put together some basic tips to get started.
The first one, obviously, is: you need to learn how to pitch. A pitch is usually a brief presentation of a story sent via email. It doesn’t say, “I’d like to write about climate change,” but it presents a clear angle, context, and why the story matters now. Editors want stories, not topics. It’s important to include potential sources, it’s not an editor’s job to look for them for you. You can find online a lot of archives of successful pitches to browse for inspiration. For instance, I know resources like Journal Resources in the U.K. has one, or The Open Notebook in the U.S. I’ve created one in Italian for Senza Redazione.
The second step would be, you need to find the right contact. Especially if you haven’t gone to journalism school or aren’t familiar with the journalism industry, this can be unclear. You need to look for commissioning editors or section editors, and not for reporters. These are the people you should send your pitch to, and you can check social media, look for email addresses, in the past there have been more, but there are still going around now a lot of or open calls on social media like Bluesky, LinkedIn or X, and there is also newsletters you can check, you can sign up to that send out these call for pitches.
Obviously, reliability is important. Editors value freelancers who file on time, follow the brief, and deliver polished work. Reliability kind of makes you memorable and can lead to repeat commissions. And I remember, especially at the beginning of my career, I found it more effective to go back to editors who had already trusted me, that's what my colleagues were saying already before, like this idea that sometimes rather than constantly chasing new outlets because you want to widen your portfolio. It can be worth it to insist with the editors that already commissioned you so that you can build relationship and also at one point maybe be assigned stories without pitching, which will save your time and will save your energy. And also the whole cycle of pitching and writing can be rather exhausting.
I wrote a niche with a question mark because I don't think that the niche should be essential, but I think that at the beginning, especially having an area of expertise, can really help you to come up with more story ideas because you’re probably going to read more articles about that topic. So you can think of different angles, and it will also help you build credibility in that field. For instance, I started with art because I have an academic background in history of art, and then I moved to gender issues in the arts and then gender issues in the health sector, and then health in general for instance right?
And then, I mean freelancing can be rather isolating especially I think if you’re not living in a big city like a big media center you know where there are a lot of other journalists around which is for example my case. I lived in London in the past, and now I live in a small town in Italy. So it’s entirely different. I don’t have many journalists around me. But you can still find a community of peers, even just online. And I think as a freelancer that can make a huge difference, and it will also make it easier not only for you know as Fabian was saying before for instance like you can share tips and resources, but I don’t I also think at the very beginning it makes it easier for instance to deal with rejection because you will realize that it happens to everyone it’s not you.
And one more thing I wanted to add was, you know freelancing based only on pitching and writing as I said can be very exhausting. So many journalists nowadays diversify. In my case, for instance, I also work as an editor as a media trainer and I run a newsletter with its own little revenue. So I’m still 100% a freelancer, but I do different things. I think journalism gives you many transferable skills that you can ethically use in different ways also so that you can focus on the projects that you really care about like you know.
But there’s another thing I wanted to point out and that is that uh freelancers freelancing doesn’t only depend on what we do as individuals, but it also depends on how newsrooms treat us. And one important resource that I didn’t create but that I covered for IJ NET, and then I also translated into Italian for my platform, is the Best practice guidance for organizations working with freelance journalists. So these guidelines actually show how newsrooms can work with freelancers more fairly. They were developed in the UK by journalist Donna Ferguson for the organization Women in Journalism together with Elma Wilkinson and Lily Canter from Freelancing for journalists which is a podcast and a platform for freelancers and Anna Codrea-Rado who’s the author of You're The Business which is a guidebook on freelancing. Some of the references in the documents are UK-specific, but most recommendations can easily be adapted worldwide, and you can check the guidelines at the QR code on the screen or on the women in journalism website.
They mainly cover three areas which are payments and fees, pitching and writing and freelancers rights. And they give freelancers a tool to advocate for fair treatment, and obviously, they give editors a framework to build more respectful collaborations. Of course, they’re not rules or laws that newsrooms need to abide by, but I think, and I mean the people that created it created them think the same. They can be a first step toward rec recognizing that some practices are really unfair and really harmful. So for instance uh some of the key recommendations are about timely payments, you know even just like, payment should begin once the work is submitted and not after publication. This is a huge problem in freelancing because sometimes an article will only be published months later you’ve filed it, you know, especially maybe with magazines. So then you will have to wait months to be paid for work that you’ve already done. Or other recommendations are around transparency. For instance, organizations should publish and regularly review their minimum rates or standard rates or clear pitching guidelines. There should be clear instructions on how to submit a pitch, and there should also be contacts to send that pitch to. It would be so much easier for everyone, even people starting out, just as you know even just find the confidence to pitch. And you know, other tips about I don’t know clarity on pay structure, for instance like whether it’s per word commissioned or published, or even safety and insurance, you know, the guidelines advocate for freelancers on risky assignments to have the same protections as staff.
And I want to stress that if all these things sound like common sense to you, it’s because they are. But yet, they are still not applied consistently, which, I think, is which is why I think it’s important for freelancers to remember that sometimes it’s not you, it’s the industry. But having at least a document that can tell you: “Okay, what you think should happen it’s actually right.” The fact that it’s not happening doesn’t mean that you’ve not identified a problem in the practice. So, and with that, I think I’ve finished my presentation.
Aidan White:
I mean Christina, thanks very much indeed. I mean, I think you’ve really focused on something which I think our presenters here have established reputations, they’ve actually been able through the good work that they’ve done, be able to sort of consolidate their positions. They’re serious journalists, they’ve got a track record, they’re award winners. That that’s clear. The real sort of problem is that the ones who are having the most difficulty are the ones starting out, are the journalists uh who are trying to make their way in the world. And it is certainly true that not all employers are good. That actually a lot of employers are bad payers. That actually some news media outlets tend to shift the responsibility for the lack of revenues onto the people that they employ. They’re always looking for ways to cut corners in terms of how they spend their money and very often it’s the people who are the most powerless in that sort of uh supply chain of work which is the freelance journalists who actually suffer as a result of it.
So I think the work that you’ve been doing and highlighting these problems is absolutely fantastic, and it seems to me to be extremely important. And one of the things I think that we will do is we will circulate your guidelines and try to make them um much more available.
I mean I’m interested in how important is the network of freelance journalists itself, freelance journalism is based on the principle of qualities such as entrepreneurship, commitment, attachment to values, a work ethic, you have to work harder, and you have to work longer hours and so on. You have to be patient in always believing that in the end the story will get through one way or another. But it also can be lonely unless you’re in touch with people who share these values and are working like you around these issues. International journalism networks of freelancers are very important, particularly I think, and I make this point because you’re speaking from Italy, particularly in areas where traditionally journalistic institutions or media institutions have not properly recognized freelance journalism. In fact, it’s only in recent years that Italian journalism has really given free-range to freelancers, genuine freelancers to be able to work freely because you’ve had systems of organization of journalists through your ordinary and through in state institutions, a constitutional definition of who is a professional journalist, for example. All of these get in the way of identifying you know and helping freelancers themselves.
And there’s another issue I just wanted to sort of put into the pot here: a lot of People these days coming into freelance journalism are not only working in journalism. Sometimes they’re working as lawyers, sometimes they’re also working as teachers. Sometimes they’re also working you know in other professional areas, and they want to be journalists but because they cannot make a livelihood out of journalism they’re having to sort of mix different uh ways of doing things which is a very big challenge. And I know this is true also in the online world because you have today a lot of people who would like to be regarding themselves as journalists but are not journalists, but they’re information sharers like for example people called “influencers” on the internet.
And I noticed last year for example that UNESCO, the United Nations Cultural Agency started putting up training courses to help influence to become real journalists by introducing influences on the internet to such interesting ideas as codes of ethical journalism about the core values of journalism and how one needs to sort of develop. So you live we live in a very complicated information and communications environment, so making journalism distinctive is a big challenge. How do we do that?
Cristiana Bedei:
Sure. I mean as you mentioned Italy is a very kind of peculiar case because as you said we have the ordinary. For instance, I’m a professional journalist with the ordinary. So that means they need to abide to certain rules. For instance, while an influencer can do, for instance sponsored content or ads you know a jour a professional journalist cannot do that so that also. I mean of course it’s a way to kind of you know like make sure that your work is ethical and that what you produce is of high quality but in a reality like today, where often, and I’m not talking about ads here. But in general, you know that you may have to use your skills in other ways to make a living because the reality is that most freelance journalists really struggle to make a living, you know.
It can make it really hard. But in general, I’ve worked and lived in the UK, and I think that some, you know, practical barriers, like I said, maybe were not there in the UK. But it’s still I think for many people it’s still hard to understand how they can apply different skills to other industries or to other roles for instance. So well that’s that’s one of the challenges they face.
Aidan White:
Look, thanks very much indeed for that, and thanks for all the tips and advice, and we will circulate that, and we’ll certainly promote it.
Last but not least among our speakers is my good friend Nadia Azhgikhina, who is with me a member of the Fetisov Journalism Awards Committee.
Nadia, you know better than anyone the challenge of working in a difficult journalistic environment. It’s not just for freelance journalists, it’s actually for other writers and people who are working in journalism generally. So I mean tell us from your experience you know, how do we make the best of freelancing and how do we ensure that you know if the future is going to be freelance, it’s going to be a freelance world in which values such as ethics honesty, transparency are absolutely paramount in the way that we do our work.
Nadezhda Azhgikhina
Oh, thank you. You know, first of all I would like to congratulate again our winners our participants because they are real heroes. They do a fantastic job, they show what journalism could be, and what it is today in our difficult times, and it is very important. It’s very important to listen to their experience, and the fact that at least one half of our winners and shortlisted authors are from freelance part of uh our professional field, it’s also a sign of the epoch. So it is also a very important trend, and we should analyse it. And I think that FJA could help us to understand what is going in our media development, in our field of journalism as it is, and show some trends what are appearing in our time.
You know that when I was a young journalist, my dream was to become a freelancer because freelancers, it was not a definition those years in my country. All journalists had regular job, but they were so-called independent writers, well-known authors, they could write what they would like to do, they have been well-paid, by the way, and everybody wanted to publish those interesting texts. And they had no obligations in their editorial offices. But today is very different, today freelancers are the most vulnerable part of our media professional field as we were talking about, they have no insurance, they have no protection, and they underpaid, and in many countries they are not paid at all, and you know it’s very flexible what is going on with payments. And they uh are not invited into the professional organizations, as you know, some organizations arrange now special units for freelancers, but not all of them. And freelancers are well-used during conflict coverage, especially freelancers from the field, not from big media from big international companies, but from the ground. And many of them, as we know, they’re becoming victims of the conflicts.
And I do remember uh big conference, arranged by UNESCO 10 years ago, 2015. It was devoted to some protection and some safety trainings, and some programs for freelancers. I do remember that owners of big media BBC, Al Jazeera, many others top managers participated in it and nobody could come to any conclusion. So it was just general discussion but nothing has been uh decided finally. By the way, at the same time, they couldn’t agree that for example all those media could devote it could devote one page, one part of the page of their publications to killed journalists during The Day of Killed Journalists, November 2nd. So it was a question raised by Guy Berger, he was a chief of department of free press in UNESCO, and nobody could answer those people around the table. They were silent. They were very shy. They were responsible for publication, but they didn’t decide to do that. I do remember it very well.
So freelancers are you know uh they are the most exploited underpaid and the most used part of the profession. It is fantastically that freelancers are the best part of the journalism community today because they are not dependent on their editorial politics. Many people in mainstream media, and I know, I don’t know that exactly, that they are very shy. They cannot do what they think they must do because of some, you know, some situations, because of politics and so on.
Freelancers have the right and the ability to focus on the most hot issues today. They could penetrate in the most serious, dangerous, and problematic fields, and they do. Freelancers develop our profession and group of freelancers because we see that in the Fetisov Journalism Awards winners and shortlisted texts we see groups of freelancers, freelancers together with sometimes journalists from mainstream media, sometimes with experts and NGO representatives. They create those teams, and those teams of freelancers, led by freelancers, are very efficient, and freelancers promote journalism as a public good. So it is a very new phenomenon, and I do think that freelancers could do their best. It is important to understand that freelancers do a critical job, and it is important to understand also that freelancers should and must be supported by professional organizations and the community because solidarity of our professional field and support of the main values of our professional field is our everyday job.
As soon as we could help honest and courageous freelancers all over the globe, I think networks of freelancers and organizations like the Ethical Network of Journalists or some other organizations could focus on those issues and consolidate efforts of freelancers together with regular journalists.
I think that we could support freelancers on a regular basis as workers. The Italian experience is very important. We were talking about Italian experience. I do remember there was an idea to arrange the minimum honorarium for freelancers monthly in Italy. I don’t know if it was successful or not, but practically, you know, owners do their best not to pay enough for any journalists. But to support freelancers as people on the front line, I think it is very important. I think we could elaborate a strategy to do that, to support the efforts of courageous and, as I said, honest journalists all over the globe. And I do hope that the Fetisov Journalism Awards could do something important in this case.
Aidan White:
Thank you very much indeed, Nadia, and you are absolutely right. I think we really need to think about what more we can do. We have heard from some very inspirational freelance and independent journalists about the work they have been doing, and what we would like is to make sure that this community continues to grow and prosper.
We’ll have to say, is there anyone who wants to pose a question or make a comment on anything they’ve heard before I wind up?
If not, thanks very much indeed for participating, but I wanted to just say a couple of words in winding up. We’ve heard some really tremendous statements today about particular stories and how they were dealt with, and I think we’ve shown that, despite all of the problems that exist, there are good reasons to be optimistic about the future of journalism and actually the future of freelance journalism. I mean, I think that’s right. Cristiana has particularly highlighted how there are networks and that information is being made available, and we do need to name and shame media employers who treat their freelancers badly. We do need to call them to account within our own sort of profession. We do need to encourage journalists themselves to be cautious, to be ethical, and not to put themselves unnecessarily at risk, very often freelance journalists do.
And we see that in very recent times with the terrible events that have been going on in the Middle East, where the whole world has been relying upon a set of freelance journalists, if you will, to actually broadcast and put out information about one of the most terrible and challenging stories of the times.
But one of the reasons why I think we have a degree of optimism is that people still believe in journalism. I know from my own experience that the journalism schools of the world are full. They’re bulging with young people who want to be something in the media, who believe actually that journalism is worthwhile. And you know, these are not people who are just following some sort of dream of becoming a big thing on TV, although a lot of people would like to be a big thing on TV if they could do it, but who actually believe in the ideas of truth-telling, of seeing journalism as a public service, being able to tell the truth, hold power to account, and tell stories that are not being told. And I think that this is wonderful.
I think that those young people who are in the journalism schools, when they emerge, will be coming into an environment that is potentially very hostile. There are not many full-time jobs available. It’s very difficult to get yourself onto the first rung of the ladder of a career in journalism, and it’s absolutely inevitable that you will begin as a freelance one way or another. So, we need to make the conditions for the transition into journalism as easy as possible by providing good information, pointing people towards networks of support that they can build upon, and encouraging employers to respect freelancers, respect their rights, and provide them with the maximum amount of support that they can.
We’ve heard that from Nadia and from Cristiana as well, and I think the example that Fabian, Anna-Catherine, and Sarah have shown, about what can result from good, open, transparent journalism and a straightforwardly honest relationship with your commissioning editors and the people you rely upon to tell those stories, particularly your sources — are absolutely the key to the future.
So, I want to say thank you very much indeed to all of you for participating. It’s been absolutely marvellous, and we’ve learned a lot in this exchange. It’s made me think again about what more we need to do to strengthen freelance journalism.
Certainly, we need to highlight once again through the Fetisov Journalism Awards that when a freelancer is working and winning awards, we do need to promote the success of the work that they have achieved. It does a great honour to us to be able to promote the work that freelancers are doing and journalists generally, but also it really gives us a lot of hope for the future.
Thank you all very much indeed for taking part in today’s session. Good luck for the future, and I hope that we’ll meet again soon. Bye-bye.
AI-generated transcript