By Savit Vit War is a word that, for me, had always been associated with something tragically distant, forgotten, and unacceptable in the modern world. In my job, I often had to read and write about war. About a war that was once upon a time or somewhere very far away. And each time I […]
Even the most tragic story should be hopeful Read More »
By Ruslan Khalapov On February 24, a call from an employee of our television channel woke me up. At five in the morning. “The war has begun. We are being bombed,” the colleague told me. I was surprised that I knew how to act and what to do. My “emergency suitcase” had been packed a
“We are working on the information front of the war” Read More »
An interview with German journalists Niklas Münch and Tobias Hausdorf In their podcast Hinter den Zeilen, Tobias and Niklas point to the diverse forms of injustice and discrimination in media labour. In late December 2021, they released a podcast about fixers, their role, and their position in the international journalistic ecosystem, for which they communicated
“No journalist is an island”: Transparency, trust, and “radical” conflict journalism Read More »
If you are a journalist planning to go to Ukraine to cover the threatening escalation of the war, you might need to work with local producers, fixers, or translators. Here are a few research-based tips for avoiding unintended harm to your local collaborators and yourself and making your reporting more ethical and transparent. These tips
Are you a journalist going to Ukraine? Don’t be a jerk Read More »
By Jessie van der Broek Johana Kotisova investigates the position of fixers and stringers in conflict zones They are indispensable in journalism, but their work is often overlooked: fixers, the locally-based collaborators who assist foreign war correspondents with their work. Since the outbreak of covid-19, these local contact persons, who are already in a vulnerable
Local collaborators of war journalists are even more vulnerable due to the pandemic Read More »
Before 2014, Iryna worked as a media expert at the Kyiv-based Institute of Mass Information. After the Euromaidan protests broke out, journalists started to ask her for advice. “When the war started, nobody was ready for that, including the journalists. They did not have bulletproof vests and they did not know how to wear them.
“In the early phases of the war, we couldn’t even love” Read More »
Fixers & Stringers: Why should you care? Mass media provide full coverage of conflicts worldwide. However, little is knownabout the locals working behind the scenes assisting foreign media. The EU-funded Fixers and Stringers project investigates forms of precarity experienced and emotional labour performed by mainly fixers and stringers working for foreign media in two conflict
Fixers & Stringers Newsletter 1 Read More »
The myth of the brave war correspondent neglects fixers: locals who help foreign correspondents to make news. But without them, informing from conflict zones is inconceivable – now more than ever before. The popular image of the war reporter – often based on real-life stories, such as the movie A Private War or the book
The outsourcing of risk: beyond the myth of the war correspondent Read More »
