May 9, 2020
No, really, you with the camera, listen up. Your life may depend on it.
Violence towards the media is on the rise, tensions are high, and the constant pummeling of the “Fake News” mantra doesn't help calm the already turbulent situation.
The first week of May has been particularly bad. On May 4, a colleague working in the Quad Cities, IL / IA was assaulted and his camera smashed while the photojournalist was in the area getting video of local businesses. Luckily, law enforcement was able to identify and arrest the 45-year-old suspect. On May 5, a photojournalist in Indianapolis was assaulted and robbed at the scene of a crash. The suspects left the scene and have not been apprehended.
These are just two incidents that we know of that occurred last week along with the many other confrontations, sometimes physical, between members of the public and the media over the past few years.
While there is no immediate solution that you or I can implement to make our job magically free of danger, nor will it ever really be that way, what you can do right now is use some skills and tactics to limit the probability of a violent encounter or reduce the severity of an encounter should one occur.
I'm never going to say that if any of the above photojournalists did this or did that, nothing would have ever happened to them. I refuse to pass judgment and say they did something wrong because, well, I wasn't there. I don't know all the dynamics of what happened in any of those situations. But what I will do is talk over and over and over again about the foundations of personal safety.
When I worked in EMS, I survived 20 years of frequently hostile situations because I had the best training. All those years and many courses later, they helped me understand how to deal with conflict and to be proactive to not only advocate for my own safety but also to try and avoid any situation that would cause me harm.
Let's talk about the foundation for working safely, the concept of Situational Awareness. The idea of situational awareness is that if you are paying attention to your surroundings, looking for things that seem out of place or unusual, you can make changes to what you are doing to avoid conflict or danger. No, this is not some Jason Bourne spy trick, it's actually something we do in our lives, every day.
As an example in the non-newsgathering world, you are at the beach laying in the sand on a large towel. When you initially arrived at the beach the water was far away from you and not a problem. An hour goes by and you are awakened from a nap by a wave crashing on you, soaking you and your beach towel. You were not situationally aware of the tide coming in and completely vulnerable. Had you been paying attention to your surroundings you may have chosen to proactively relocate your towel and belongings to an area away from the water.
It's easy to miss something if you aren't looking for it. Fighter pilots use something called the “OODA Loop” to do this. OODA stands for Observe, Orient, Decide and Act. These two systems can help you be more ready to respond to hazards by making critical decisions on the job. Being aware of our surroundings is key to all of this.
In the 1970s, a self defense advocate came up with an escalating system for being ready to fight or run away if needed. The “system" is actually conditions or levels of situational awareness. I want you to be in condition PREPARED. You might be thinking, how does this apply to me? Let’s talk about the conditions and why I want you to be prepared.
All right, let's take these skills you just read about and apply them to a newsgathering situation. What would you do?
OK, at this point what do you do? Do you report the incident to your supervisor? Do they kill the live shot and tell you to come home? Do you say nothing and go back to working on your pak?
OK, NOW what do you do? What are your options in a scenario like this? Each of you will come up with a different strategy for dealing with a situation like this based on your personal experiences and known limitations. How can you harness situational awareness, the OODA Loop and the Color Codes to manage this incident?
I know this is a lot to digest, it's a heap of information to process. Here is a link to my web page where you can watch a few videos that I selected because I feel they show these concepts really well.
Talk to your employer about what to do and how to report threats if you receive one on the job. Gear can be replaced if smashed to pieces by a disgruntled person; you can't be replaced!
There is no perfect solution to any of this. Learning the concepts of safety I mentioned above will help you be smarter and make better decisions, it's a skill that takes practice and application. Try it! Next time you are in a restaurant, in your office or walking in the park, look around, think about vulnerabilities and strategies, what would I do if?
Please don't hesitate to reach out to me if you have questions about any of this. I am always available to answer questions about journalism safety.
Chris Post, Chair, NPPA Safety & Security Committee
[email protected]
Twitter & IG - @ChrisMPost
Cell - 610-972-1963
*Update/clarification: the circumstances of the May 5 assault in Indianapolis are not completely clear. We will update information as we learn more.