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It is easy to complain about the deficiencies of modern journalism (like the Prime Minister did yesterday, even though he was very keen not to use the word “blame” when calling journalists “feral beasts” – see further commentary on his speech here), but sometimes these complaints need to be put into perspective. Today John Owen, Honorary Visiting Professor of International Journalism at City University, gave a seminar presentation at the Reuters Institute on the subject of journalism safety training – reminding us in a forceful and moving way that in many parts of the world, journalism is a high-risk occupation that might well get you killed. Owen has worked with the International News Safety Institute, an organisation that provides safety advice and helps with safety training for journalists, as well as tracking violence against journalists across the world – their recent report is depressing but necessary reading. According to this report, around one thousand media personnel around the world have been killed in the last decade while trying to cover the news. The numbers reported by INSI are significantly higher than those normally reported by Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists. This is because INSI also includes fatalities among stringers, fixers, translators and similar personnel in their study, in addition to reporters and cameramen – in my view the better way of representing this issue as these “news assistants” are as much a part of a newsgathering team as the reporter(s): many stories could simply not be covered without the help of local journalists and other assistants (some interesting comments on this can be found here). One would perhaps think that it is the very visible TV faces reporting from war zones that run the greatest risk of getting killed (Iraq tops the list with 138 fatalities in the last decade), but the INSI report clearly shows that it is local journalists working in peacetime that are most at risk: second and third on the most-dangerous-list are Russia and Colombia. Covering local corruption and crime is more dangerous than covering war. Safety training can help, according to Owen, but the problem is of course (as always) cost: safety training is expensive, and news organisations are not always willing to pay (and many smaller news organisations would have a difficult time paying even if they wanted to) – and nor are they necessarily willing to pay for proper insurance for associated staff like local assistants. According to Owen, some news organisations will send freelancers to places where they will not send their permanent members of staff – thus avoiding the cost of safety training and insurance. I count myself lucky to be living in a nation where you merely complain about journalists when you don’t agree with them.