Safety of Journalist

In this study, I examine the perilous conditions facing Filipino journalists covering the Mindanao region, focusing on differences in threats and dangers faced by those who are local to the region and those parachuting in from Manila. Using a qualitative approach, I have conducted one group interview with two local and two non-local journalists, and five in-depth one-to-one interviews with journalists and expert sources, in 2017. The study additionally draws on interviews with fourteen Filipino journalists and editors from 2014. The journalists perceive that safety differ depending on whether they are local to the conflict they cover or not. Safety issues are significant for the ways in which they operate in the field and decisions they make. Extra-judicial killings and impunity for perpetrators committing crimes against journalists perpetuate dangerous conditions particularly for local journalists, while kidnapping for ransom is among the greatest threats perceived by non-local journalists. In situations which non-local journalists can retreat, their local counterparts stay behind and face reprisals. Ethics is imperative to safety particularly for local journalists. Safety training should be tailored to and differentiate between security challenges. Collaboration between local and non-local journalists may improve their safety altogether, but media organisations must adequately compensate both.

In recent decades, women journalists' professional safety has attracted an enormous research attention globally and in Nigeria. Interestingly, often similar findings are likely generated by most of the studies highlighting stiff gender-based challenges. This chapter investigated the safety experiences of Nigerian women journalists to identifying the typology of gender-based discriminations and coping strategy affected women journalists used to manage to work in a male-dominated media industry. Employing a semi-structured interview approach, 37 participants (25 women journalists, 10 men journalists, and 2 human resource managers) were interviewed from 12 broadcast media organisations in Northern Nigeria. The data were analysed using thematic analysis and the findings showed that Nigerian women journalists experience different types of gendered unsafety including discrimination in newsgathering and production and sexual harassment; most of the affected women used risky coping stra...

In recent decades, women journalists’ professional safety has attracted enormous research attention globally and in Nigeria. Interestingly, often similar findings are likely generated by most of the studies highlighting stiff gender-based challenges. This chapter investigated the safety experiences of Nigerian women journalists to identify the typology of gender-based discriminations and coping strategies affected women journalists used to manage to work in a male-dominated media industry. Employing a semi-structured interview approach, 37 participants (25 women journalists, 10 men journalists, and 2 human resource managers) were interviewed from 12 broadcast media organisations in Northern Nigeria. The data were analysed using thematic analysis and the findings showed that Nigerian women journalists experience different types of gendered unsafety including discrimination in newsgathering and production and sexual harassment; most of the affected women used risky coping strategies such as ignoring; most media organisations lacked policies and frameworks to handle such cases.

We want to encourage media researchers and reporters to share their insights in the special edition of Media Research Issues/ Zeszyty Prasoznawcze – one of the oldest scientific journals in Central and Eastern Europe.
The special issue will be devoted to the challenges of journalism and broadcasting in the wake of the global pandemic and the changes in media environment: media management; media coverage; professional hazards and safety of journalists reporting the disease outbreak and aftermath, and many other issues that we want to discuss and find solutions to the problems we are all facing and will face in the future. 
The Media Research Issues (Zeszyty Prasoznawcze) published (since 1960) by the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, is a peer-reviewed quarterly recognized worldwide and indexed in international databases.
In the wake of the coronavirus outbreak the editorial board of the journal is opening its platform of knowledge and experience exchange and welcomes articles, reports and studies devoted to Challenges to Journalism and Broadcasting in the wake of COVID-19. 
The special issue of the journal will be published online in February-March 2021 and will be devoted to two research areas:
1. Media Management (changes to the principles of functioning and financing of media institutions; changes to the methods of developing and perceiving the media content; technological changes and challenges)
2. Media Coverage of Coronavirus Disease (professional hazards and safety of journalists; news stories, media narratives and images; language and rhetoric; social and cultural dimensions of the pandemic, its political aspects and historical background, media coverage of epidemics, etc.)

Journalists are currently facing a multitude of threats. Commonly, these are considered in terms of harassment and bodily harms such as incarceration and murder of journalists. In the Bangladeshi case we argue that the parameters for evaluating what constitutes safety for journalists go beyond conventional wisdom. On the basis of in-depth interviews of 23 Bangladeshi journalists, we argue that the concept of journalists’ safety has three intertwined dimensions. First, journalists’ safety incorporates avoiding bodily harm (imprisonment, enforced disappearance, and so forth), and harassment, as well as economic and career threats. Second, in order to remain safe, journalists undertake various tactics including compromising the objectivity of news in a regime where security apparatus and pro-government journalists work in tandem to surveil and intimidate non-partisan journalists. Third, the tactics used by journalists decrease public faith in the media and the media can no longer play ...