Live News - A Survival Guide - International Federation of Journalists

Chapter 7Fighting back: whatthe IFJ and journalists’organisations can doWhen ruthless and determined enemies of press freedomset out to do harm to journalists, there is often little tostop them. Each year scores of journalists are targeted,assaulted and even assassinated. But this does not mean that journalists,their unions and media organisations are powerless todefend themselves. Far from it. Over the past 15 years a sophisticatedand increasingly effective resistance movement has evolved tominimise the risks to media staff, to isolate the killers and thosedirectly responsible for attacks on media, and to hold governmentsto account when they neglect their responsibilities to protectmedia or when they create political conditions that endanger thework of journalists. This chapter looks at what is being done, whatmore journalists can do and what developments are taking placeto put safety of journalists at the top of the media agenda.Simple acts of solidarity are often the most effective antidote topersecution of reporters. Take the case of Viokan Ristic, a freelancejournalist from Serbia. In 1999 Ristic was covering the conflict inKosovo for a number of clients, including BETA News Agency,Danas and Deutsche Welle Radio. As an independent Serbian journalist,he was targeted by the Milosevic regime, and when theNATO bombing began he was arrested and put in jail.After 30 days his jailors released him. They also gave him a messagefrom Aidan White, General Secretary of the IFJ. It was a copyof a telegram that had been sent to the then President Miloseviccalling on him to set Ristic free. Ristic has no doubt that internationalpressure played its part in securing his release. It made thosewho had arrested him and imprisoned him without trial realisethat there were people outside the country who knew he was indetention and who were taking an interest in his welfare.The telegram was part of the routine campaigning practiced bythe IFJ, by individual journalists’ trade unions and by a network of98