Strength and weakness of freelancing in the shocking news media market

I closed the phone call with a sense of inadequacy. I had just submitted a pitch on the stories of Muslims in Italy. The editor had said: “Nice, interesting. But we don’t have one foreign fighter, we don’t have one jihadi-bride. I’m sorry but there’s nothing strong, nothing shocking”.

How many times do journalists who cover stories about Islam or the Middle East hear such answers? How many times have we been asked to “create” the shocking news, making up some elements of the story? How many times has a massacre become a genocide if Isis committed it, while somewhere else a genocide became simply armed resistance and vice-versa? How often was and is it the goal of our companies to bombard the audience with stories that contain shocking elements, where there is no silent room for understanding but only an arena for surprise, disapproval, condemnation, or talk shows in which pundits clash, shout, and react instinctively using verbal violence? The answer is: many, the majority. For some of us, all.

It’s increasingly clear that the media has left behind the era of the representation of reality. We are in the era of its over-exposure and militarization: any breaking news is an artillery strike and the battle takes place in the media, using boots on the ground and journalists in the field.

Two examples bombard us every day and, paradoxically, are similar but opposite phenomena. The American primaries are an arena which shake only after receiving the vibrations of shocking statements. Only the most absurd and provocative of them have space, reaction, echo and consolidation in the media, reaching the audience very quickly and creating public opinion. This race for the presidency of the most famous democracy in the world by a tycoon like Donald Trump, becomes theater, representation, fiction and a battleground, as he expected, while he’s spreading social turmoil and preparing for the end of democracy. This collection of shocking statements, fired and relayed one after another, is not funny. Especially if it reaches the election. They thrive in land fertilized by the fear and the anxiety of Western governments regarding security issues. The media simply amplify the needs of the governments: to cut the access to rights for the majority of the world population.

In this race for the shocking news item — a mechanism that Trump has understood very well — every outrageous statement is comparable to the dreadful vision of very well-known Isis videos. Men beheaded, orange jumpsuits, children ready to turn into bloodthirsty criminals: those images spread fear, use media as a war platform and justify violent reactions in people and in the media itself.

In this war-communication game, freelancing activity is the only guarantee of reliability — even formally — that media companies have. Despite the lack of sustainability, freelancing is a good solution at a cheap price due to the high risks freelance journalists face in the targeted areas; last but not least, there is the difficulty to find insurance companies that guarantee the minimum support in the event of injury, kidnapping or death.

A freelancer is almost the only resource, at the cheapest cost and the most convenient one for companies. As freelancers, our activity allows us to have many customers, to differentiate the offer to multiple media, to earn money easier. But the biggest advantage of this type of work — autonomy and relative freedom, with the ability to engage in long-term guaranteed investigative projects, or in slow journalism and in understanding of the facts, risks a clash with a media climate polluted by conflicts; by the need to be for or against someone; by the propaganda of the clash of civilizations; by the double standards in the media; by an offensive disrespect for our work.

Being a freelancer from crisis areas in times of double standards in the media means always having to expose our wares as if we are at the butcher’s. Who has the bloodiest side of beef will have success because the market likes hot items. In doing so, the most valuable parts of the “sacrifice” are no longer visible: it doesn’t matter that you have in your hands a good, slow deep story that is equivalent to a quality piece of meat. You have to show the offal and the carcass to shock the market.

What many freelancers don’t understand is that this media butchery has a special knife in its hands. Freelancers are destined to become carcass and offal themselves, having never been a quality cut in the newsroom. How? The moment comes when, after hundreds of articles, radio or TV reports, shipped from somewhere “pleasant”, freelancers themselves become the news. When they are kidnapped, arrested, tortured, killed. That’s the place and the moment where the shocking news game plays its most dirty.

The media black-out occurs in three steps,which are very profitable for companies. First the witness (the journalist) becomes the main character of a media feature (this is the decline of the value of the witness in journalism). Second step: the main character becomes the victim (the shocking news is served on a silver plate), even better if in captivity, or subjected to torture. Third and final: the victim becomes a hero for the media for which he’s working and, at the same time, he is the anti-hero (often with the accusation he was serving in some kind of secret service role) for the media competitors. One of the best recent examples is the story of the young Italian researcher and journalist Giulio Regeni, brutally murdered in Egypt: a media case-study.

From this point of view, the position of freelancers in the era of shocking news becomes absolutely weak and serves only the media-horror-market. The only reason for freelancing’s existence and sustainability is to promote cooperation in the understanding of the present, through the lens of the past, offering a view for the near future. This interpretation needs to look far and technically it is so-called storytelling, the kind of journalism that counts, slow journalism of a kind not requested at the fast-food-news table.

It’s time to abandon the media butcher’s room. We no longer need to exhibit sides of beef but rather bodies and minds which are still alive, alert and restored by dignity. This is our only — slow, proud and thoughtful — power.