Journalists and Safety Training: Experiences and Opinions

This report, prepared by an interdisciplinary team of researchers in psychology, occupational safety and journalism practice, from the DART Center of the Columbia University, details the results from a survey that was run with a wide range of journalists around the world about the safety trainings they attended, the skills they acquired and the gaps between these trainings and their professional needs on the ground.

Over the last generation, safety trainings (sometimes known as Hostile Environment and First Aid Training or HEFAT) have been widely embraced by the news industry as a means of preparing journalists to cover conflict, crisis and other potentially dangerous assignments. Yet the effectiveness, relevance and usefulness of such trainings – both generally and in terms of specific content and approaches – have not been independently assessed.

Critical findings, followed by distilled recommendations for the news industry and journalism safety/press-freedom advocates, are detailed in the full report.