“It’s a jungle”: Precarity,solidarity,and ambiguity in small conflict reporting ecosystems

Introduction

As I explained to my Middle Eastern friends: … Look, you are Jordanian. Go and bring a story from Bulgaria or the Czech Republic. Will you be able to live by that? Who needs that? … And so, we laughed. We are not major markets, and for not major markets, it’s like this.

The discourse about “crisis” in journalism (see Zelizer, 2015) has engulfed crisis/conflict reporting itself. There is a sense of an end to global conflict reporting; the Golden Age of the field is believed to have passed (Otto and Meyer, 2012; Williams, 2011; cf. Archetti, 2014).

Rather than pointing to an actual end of global conflict reporting, this discourse says much about the limits of scholarship on the issue. In particular, war and conflict reporting scholarship is marked by an Anglophone bias stemming from the Anglophone basis of most investigations into global conflict reporting, including local-foreign collaborations (Blacksin and Mitra, 2024; Plaut and Klein, 2019; Van Der Hoeven and Kester, 2022). Although there are notable examples of research on non(-native)-Anglophone conflict reporters, their practices and outcomes – Chinese (Zhang, 2016), Dutch (Van Der Hoeven and Kester, 2022), Czech (Kotišová, 2017), and Swedish (Springer et al., 2022) – there are still entire regions of the world that have never or seldom received academic attention and whole populations of foreign journalists who work in languages other than English (Blacksin and Mitra, 2024; Mabweazara, 2018). Moreover, even research on non-Anglophone conflict reporting often focuses on Western Europe (Otto and Meyer, 2012), resulting in a lack of granular understanding of intra-European differences and postcolonial dynamics (Kotišová and Deuze, 2022; Shome and Hegde, 2002).

In turn, such bias has narrowed and shaped the understanding of global conflict reporting: it has defined who counts as a trustworthy journalist (Heinrich and Cheruiyot, 2024) and what types of crises and precarity media and journalists face while covering global conflicts (Hamilton and Jenner, 2004; Istek, 2017; Wake, 2016). Finally, it created a lacuna in our knowledge of the field: except for research on freelance war reporters and photographers (Istek, 2017; Wake, 2016), academic understanding of the field is limited to relatively very privileged journalists, travelling to cover remote warzones, or, on the contrary, fixers and local producers who find themselves at the structurally lowest positions in the conflict reporting hierarchy (Creech, 2018; Palmer, 2018; Yazbeck, 2021). To overcome these limits, Van Der Hoeven and Kester (2022, p. 2) note, “it is important to supplement the existing research [marked by a bias towards Anglo-Saxon journalists] with the experiences of other Western journalists and non-Western journalists.”

This study, based on in-depth interviews with 22 reporters, stringers, and photojournalists working in Small Conflict Reporting Ecosystems ¹ (abbreviated as Small Ecosystems or “SE”), looks at conflict reporting as a networked informational ecology (Heinrich and Cheruiyot, 2024) rather than as a binary structure of Western reporters and their non-Western local collaborators. By looking into the ambivalent and ambiguous work of conflict reporters who find themselves in the middle of the conflict reporting hierarchy (see Creech, 2018), it seeks to diversify the understanding of global conflict reporters’ positionalities, broaden the understanding of their precarity and the overall “crisis” of global conflict reporting, and draw inspiration from the diversity of actors and practices creating the current global conflict reporting ecosystems (Blacksin and Mitra, 2024; Kotišová and Deuze, 2022). I address the following questions: What makes the work of SE conflict reporters “bad”? What makes it “good”? How do SE reporters navigate the ambivalence of their work and the ambiguity of their positions? The findings illustrate how SE journalists often turn their precarious conditions and ambiguity into a creative edge and solidarity networks and show how ambiguity (rather than crisis) becomes a key concept helping us to understand current conflict reporting.

Embracing the messiness of global conflict reporting

The profound changes foreign reporting, including global conflict reporting, has undergone over the last decades have led to a sense of ending. Foreign news and correspondents are described as “disappearing,” “declining,” and “becoming extinct” (Williams, 2011). For example, Otto and Meyer (2012, p. 205) observed already in 2012 that foreign reporting by Western media organizations had been “in gradual retreat for more than a decade” and lamented that “[w]e are increasingly left with less trained eyes and ears on the ground” (2012, p. 206). The Golden Era of correspondent-based foreign affairs journalism, often situated in the 1940s (Williams, 2011) or the 1990s and 2000s (Otto and Meyer, 2012), is said to have irreversibly passed due to three interconnected processes: economic transformation, globalization/cosmopolitanism, and digitalization (Bebawi and Evans, 2019; Erickson and Hamilton, 2006; Hamilton and Jenner, 2004; Hannerz, 2005; Heinrich and Cheruiyot, 2024; Hellmueller et al., 2017; Murrell, 2019; Ristovska, 2022; Williams, 2011).

However, this crisis discourse in global conflict reporting and journalism is also widely criticized. Zelizer characterizes (current) journalism in terms of challenges, uncertainty, chaos, noise, and continuous change and suggests that the crisis discourse distracts us from these “incongruities, inconsistencies, and local situated particularities that constitute the landscape … Spatially, there is much evidence that makes crisis less relevant than assumed” (Zelizer, 2015, pp. 894, 901). Likewise, Archetti (2014) argues that the apocalyptic views are caused rather by the generalized yet un-situated criteria we have used to assess foreign journalism.

Indeed, the decrease in the number of foreign correspondents is a Western phenomenon (Sambrook, 2010; Williams, 2011). Although there are exceptions (Mabweazara, 2018; Zhang, 2016), Blacksin and Mitra (2024) point out that we still have little evidentiary basis for understanding the relationships and patterns in (conflict) journalism beyond – between and apart from – the Anglophone contexts. Even studies directly addressing the recent changes in the field often epitomize the lack of granular understanding when they distinguish between American and non-American, American and foreign, or foreign and local (Hamilton and Jenner, 2004) or see mainly the West and (or versus) the developing world (Sambrook, 2010; Van Der Hoeven and Kester, 2022; Williams, 2011). As we argue elsewhere (Kotišová and Deuze, 2022), even research on local media professionals covering conflicts – fixers and local producers – often reifies the binaries of West and non-West, “local” and “foreign,” “fixer” and “reporter”. These divisions are too schematic and do not correspond to the messiness of current global conflict reporting (Blacksin and Mitra, 2024; Plaut and Klein, 2019; Shome and Hegde, 2002). The European conflict reporting ecosystems alone – consisting of a diversity of journalists working for a multitude of SEs – show that many spaces and identities are too ambiguous to fit into the binaries (see below).

If we look beyond the Anglo-American context and if we set aside the universalist, binary view and embrace the messiness, diversity, and networked character of conflict-reporting ecosystems (Archetti, 2014; Heinrich and Cheruiyot, 2024; Hellmueller and Berglez, 2022; Mabweazara, 2018), their future may not seem so nonexistent. This paper offers a step in this direction by responding to the call of Hellmueller et al. (2017, p. 61) that “More efforts should be made to include languages other than English or to reach out to regions where English is not the primary language and translate important stories that are happening there,” and to focus on conflict reporters who work in SE and whose native or working language is not English. Even this limited granularization of knowledge of the field points to the ambiguity of reporters’ positions (see the next section) and shows how diverse identities may give rise to or strengthen various dimensions of proximity to the local context, collaborators, and sources (Ahva and Pantti, 2014), how diverse reporters navigate their precarity and defy the apocalyptic discourse on global conflict reporting.

Ambivalence and Ambiguity in small conflict reporting ecosystems

This study investigates the gap in global conflict reporting scholarship by examining the ambivalence of work and ambiguity of positions in SE.

The focus on ambivalence (Kotišová, 2019b; Taylor and Karen, 2016) points to a discussion in the scholarly literature on creative labour on the love-hate relationship of creative professionals to their work and the exchange of self-precarization and self-exploitation for self-realization (e.g., Banks, 2007; McRobbie, 1998; Perreault and Bélair-Gagnon, 2022). When this approach is applied to conflict reporters, their work can be seen as truly “bad” (for a thorough conceptualization of “bad” and “good” work, see Hesmondhalgh and Baker, 2011): it is dangerous, stressful, and poorly paid (Istek, 2017; Stupart, 2021; Wake, 2016). One of the most discussed issues is risk, which – while being a part of general labour precarity in media industries – is unequally distributed among staff reporters, freelancers, local journalists, fixers, and stringers (Creech, 2018). Like in other journalistic beats, the work is also erratic and unstable and can result in overwork. On top of that, its products can be ethically controversial and do not always contribute to the well-being of others, which can lead to moral dilemmas/injuries and feelings of guilt (Flannery, 2022).

However, there are reasons these media professionals engage in this work: it is also a “good” job (Hesmondhalgh and Baker, 2011). The reporters are motivated by the desire for adventure, personal ambition to self-realize, moral feelings, and the urge to serve the public interest (Creech, 2018; Pedelty, 2022; Van Der Hoeven and Kester, 2022). Indeed, Creech (2018) notes that seeing journalists’ working relationships as directly exploitative fails to capture the complexity of risk and labour intertwined with the notion of serving a public interest. Likewise, Van Der Hoeven and Kester (2022) quote a war journalist for whom creativity is a remedy for insecurity and that gives meaning to their life. As I also illustrate in the analysis below, many of the characteristics of the work experienced as negative are also attractive and lead to rewarding solutions, thus turning the job into an inherently ambivalent endeavour.

Relatedly, as this article aims to illustrate, the reporters participating in this study embody the ambiguity inherent to current conflict reporting. In journalism, media, and communication studies, ambiguity has been studied as a structural feature of communicated content (Broersma, 2010), as a strategic way of communication in organizations (Eisenberg, 1984), and as a mental state of audiences (Wenzel, 2019). It has been defined as indirectness, vagueness, and unclarity of communication (Eisenberg, 1984), as uncertainty among audiences (Wenzel, 2019), or as journalists’ transparent acknowledgment that it is impossible to know certain things (Broersma, 2010). However, related to the ambivalence of conflict reporting work (which is experienced as having self-contradictory value and meaning, as both “good” and “bad”), ambiguity is another defining feature of reporters’ position in contemporary international journalism (Bromley, 2012). It points to reporters’ volatile, unclear, and uncertain position along the continuums of “foreign” and “local,” “here” and “there,” “home” and “abroad,” “proximity” and “distance,” “reporter” and “fixer” – and, in our case, West and non-West. This paper explores how taking this ambiguity – together with ambivalence – into consideration can help us conceptualize contemporary global conflict reporting, namely, journalists’ positions, while enhancing our understanding of how newswork can be precarious and privileged at the same time.

The analysis presented below identifies the ambivalent work and ambiguous positions among conflict journalists operating in SE. While no official numbers prove the relatively low conflict reporting budgets in SE, previous research suggests that SE ecosystems and journalists might be structurally more vulnerable than (journalists working in) Anglophone ecosystems (Van Der Hoeven and Kester, 2022). The largest group of media professionals interviewed for this study is those working in Central and Eastern European (CEE) conflict-reporting ecosystems. Research on the media in this region often focuses on media concentration, oligarchization, journalistic autonomy, the role of media in illiberal drifts, and mistrust of legacy media (Kotisova and Císařová, 2023; Stetka and Örnebring, 2013; Surowiec and Štětka, 2020). For example, in the Czech Republic, the region’s long-term isolation in the past and the recent exploitation of the media industries for domestic political and economic goals by local oligarchs have reportedly resulted in relatively little money allocated to foreign news desks (Kotišová, 2019a; Kotisova and Císařová, 2023). Global conflict reporting in this part of Europe depends largely on public service media with limited budgets, organizations using creative and non-traditional funding models, such as news start-ups like Outriders (n.d.) in Poland or Voxpot (n.d.) in the Czech Republic, or individuals self-funding their travels (see the analysis below).

While other non-Anglophone European global conflict reporting media markets may have longer traditions and bigger budgets, they are also linguistically and/or culturally limited: “the mainstream media companies are much smaller compared to Anglo-Saxon media companies and have less money to spend, and thus also less protection to offer” (Van Der Hoeven and Kester, 2022, p. 265; see also Creech, 2018). In the case of Dutch journalists, this results in little money for proper safety training, risk assessment, and other preparations for hiring local fixers, bodyguards, translators and, in effect, can seriously increase the work-related risks for war journalists – who, moreover, are mostly freelancers or work for small media companies (Van Der Hoeven and Kester, 2022). As Norbäck (2021) shows in her study of Swedish freelance journalists, journalists’ strategies for resisting industry pressures can include exiting the profession or giving up quality journalism due to the lack of organizational identity/support. Likewise, the Dutch war reporters studied by Van Der Hoeven and Kester (2022) were demotivated by the difficulty of making ends meet, the demands of getting older, and the desire to settle down. Gender aspects make things even worse, as Francesca Borri, an Italian/international freelance reporter, shows in her famous piece depicting how the industry forces her to take inappropriate risks:

“whether you’re writing from Aleppo or Gaza or Rome, the editors see no difference. You are paid the same: $70 per piece. … you end up maximizing, rather than minimizing, the risks. … if you happen to be seriously wounded, there is a temptation to hope not to survive, because you cannot afford to be wounded” (Borri, 2013).

The third group of SE conflict reporters included in this study are photographers. News photography (or “war photography”) is among the most affected conflict reporting ecosystems by the technological and economic challenges of the media industry. Photographers – the vast majority of whom are also freelancers – go from assignment to assignment and pay for insurance, equipment, and other forms of protection on their own. Many of them carry debts caused by delayed payments from their clients (media organizations) and often have to rely on an increasingly wide range of work (e.g., teaching or video editing) (Istek, 2017; The State of Photography 2022 Report, 2022). Even award-winning photographers struggle to make ends meet (Liscia and Ellis-Gibbs, 2022). As some of the financial issues are related to ethical standards, ethics can suffer, too; for example, news photographers have to get involved in business assignments, thus compromising their independence (Hudson, 2023).

In line with the porous boundaries of SE and the ambiguity of reporters’ positions, media professionals operating in these three examples of SE share many challenges with freelancers or junior reporters operating in Anglophone media ecosystems and also with local conflict reporters, fixers, and local producers (Palmer, 2018; Yazbeck, 2021); the SE themselves form a part of a larger, global conflict reporting ecosystem. Yet, for the structural reasons explained above, the SE works as a “laboratory” of European cross-continental continuities, ambiguity, and ambivalence and as a useful analytical category.

Focusing on conflict reporters navigating the ambivalent work and ambiguous positions in these three types of SE, this paper addresses the following questions:

RQ1

What makes the work of SE conflict reporters “bad”?

RQ2

What makes it “good”?

RQ3

How do SE reporters navigate the ambivalence of their work and the ambiguity of their positions?

Method

To better account for the complexity of connections in global conflict reporting, media and journalism scholars have been shifting their attention to diverse non-journalistic actors (e.g., Chernobrov, 2022; Heinrich and Cheruiyot, 2024; Merrin and Hoskins, 2020; Ristovska, 2022; Smets and Akkaya, 2016; Yousuf and Taylor, 2017). This paper takes a different approach, shows diversity within the journalistic profession, and illustrates how even a limited expansion of scholarship beyond the Anglophone bias and introducing a spatial variation (Zelizer, 2015) – zooming in on European media professionals – presents the theoretical opportunity to conceptualize contemporary conflict reporters’ work and position as deeply and inherently ambivalent and ambiguous.

The study is based on semi-structured or in-depth interviews with 22 media professionals working for/in media situated in small conflict-reporting ecosystems. The first two cases involve freelance and staff Central and Eastern European and freelance Western European (non-UK) reporters: in total 14 men and three women from the Czech Republic, Italy, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Romania, and Ukraine. While there are significant differences between media ecosystems delimited by nation-state borders, all these reporters worked for non-Anglophone media, which, to various degrees, defined/limited their job opportunities and budgets. Five more research participants (men from Italy, Belgium, Sweden, US/CEE) navigated the strongly “impoverished” terrain of news (“war”) photography, including in Anglophone news ecosystems ² . While their work is less linguistically bound and more transnational, making their personal background less relevant, recent developments in the industry have reduced the market volume and resulted in dire conditions (Hudson, 2023; Istek, 2017). All the interviewees – recruited through snowball sampling and existing professional contacts – had covered conflicts, in particular, the Russo-Ukrainian War, Israel, and Palestine (before 7 October 2023).

This research is part of a larger project on conflict reporting ecosystems, focused on reporting from Ukraine, Israel, and Palestine; therefore, all the reporters worked in at least one of these contexts, and three of the CEE reporters worked in all the contexts. All the interviewees also covered other countries or wars/conflicts; at least five specialized in conflict and crisis reporting. The diversity of the sample is purposeful, in line with the aims of the project; my aim is not to compare reporters from wide-ranging and very diverse media ecosystems but to analytically ground and conceptualize ambiguity as a trait dispersed across geographical, cultural, and professional spaces of conflict reporting.

The choice of the term “ecosystem” is not random. While the research participants speak about small “markets,” the term “ecosystem” stresses that the spaces where the research participants work are highly interdependent and porous and cannot be understood in terms of pure “market” logic and bilateral relationships (see Kostovska et al., 2021, p. 10). However, political-economic factors have profound consequences for who gets to be engaged in global conflict reporting and how, thus highlighting the importance of gender, class, ethnicity, educational background, regional specifics, or forms of proximity (Ahva and Pantti, 2014) to the contexts they cover – factors that very much shape the ambiguity and ambivalence of the profession.

The interviews, lasting between 30 minutes and 3.5 hours each, focused on 1) bad work and precarity, 2) good work – as defined above by Hesmondhalgh and Baker (2011), 3) safety/risks involved in their work, and 4) emotional labour and mental well-being. The interviews were accompanied by an informed consent procedure, recorded, transcribed, pseudonymized, and analysed using thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006) combining theory-driven codes (bad work, good work, self-exploitation, small markets, unpaid work) and data-driven codes (work-work balance, awards, friendship, creative solutions and efficiency, fixing market, hierarchies, insurance, equipment, legal ignorance, junior/senior assertiveness, psychological training, invoicing, collaborations and solidarity, language). The next section narrates the themes that combine the most significant of these codes.

Beyond precarity

The research participants face types of precarity described in previous research (Creech, 2018; Filer, 2010; Hudson, 2023; Istek, 2017). They experience constraints on flexibility and self-entrepreneurship (multiskilling, upskilling, reskilling), perform months of unpaid labour/hope labour (Mackenzie and McKinlay, 2021), are often not insured, trained, or even appropriately vaccinated to travel to a conflict zone, are distracted by bureaucratic requirements, and face diverse conflict-related or war-related safety and mental well-being risks. Due to the tough competition in this “jungle”, characterized as “a war between freelancers” (cf. Zhang, 2016), journalists treat any problem as a taboo (Theresa). Like other creative labour (Banks, 2007; McRobbie, 1998; Perreault and Bélair-Gagnon, 2022), their work involves the exchange of stability and decent pay for enthusiasm and self-realization. The main problem is reportedly the outflow of money from journalism, creating conditions in which “we all have to fight for our own position in the industry” (Daniel). The most radical change in the industry is observed by photographers: even award-winning photographers working for major clients (Joshua, Bruno, Eric) constantly feel under pressure to ask for less money, reduce expenses, and take side jobs.

Yet, somewhat surprisingly, the resulting intensity levels of the work’s “bad” aspects do not vary much across the sub-groups of SE conflict reporters in the sample. Rather, they depend on 1) the type of news outlet in/for which the reporters work, 2) their employment status (freelancing/false self-employment/employed staff), and 3) their seniority. Therefore, the rest of this section is organized around these three axes.

Solidarity, autonomy, and excellence

Many aspects of their work that are perceived by the SE reporters as positive do not differ from the typical attributes of “good work” (Hesmondhalgh and Baker, 2011): Florian, Mark, Daniel, Theresa, and Anna are attracted by the creativity of the labour, witnessing history, travelling, working on important content, and having a sense of purpose and meaning. Some mention their ego and adrenalin rush (Mark, Alois), prestige (Daniel), the impact of their work (Theresa), and the possibility of learning (Anna). Up to this point, the analysis does not significantly differ from other analyses of creative labour.

However, their work is also good in a variety of ways intensified by its intense precarity: it is social, in some respects relatively autonomous, the SE media professionals become highly involved experts on the regions they cover and thus can produce excellent content (Hesmondhalgh and Baker, 2011). The rest of this section unpacks these aspects, pointing to the inherent ambivalence and ambiguity of creative labour (Kotišová, 2019b; Taylor and Karen, 2016).

Conclusion

The global conflict reporting jungle is a complex, ambivalent place. On the one hand, navigating it alone and without proper support increases the various risks conflict reporters face (Creech, 2018; Van Der Hoeven and Kester, 2022). In regard to RQ1 – What makes the work of SE conflict reporters “bad”? – I do not observe distinctions between SE conflict reporters and non-SE reporters (e.g., Filer, 2010; Hudson, 2023) and other creative workers described in previous research (Banks, 2007; Hesmondhalgh and Baker, 2011; Mackenzie and McKinlay, 2021; McRobbie, 1998) – or more precisely, not in principle. However, the research participants, comparing themselves with reporters from big Anglophone media, do report a difference in the intensity of their precarity. They experience pressure for flexibility, multiskilling, and self-entrepreneurship and perform unpaid/hope labour. They often work without adequate support and protection and thus face increased war-related safety and mental well-being risks. They exchange stability and financial security for enthusiasm and self-realization. The intensity of the bad work reflects the ambiguity of their positions on the axes of type of news outlet in/for which the reporters work and their employment status, and their positions on the continua of seniority, ethnicity, nationality, and other characteristics. Reporters working for smaller and less established outlets, those with less stable positions/contracts, and junior reporters usually experience more severe risks, uncertainty, and pressure.

The jungle is also a beautiful place defined by unexpected encounters, new beginnings, and growth. One of the metaphors the research participants use for the conflict reporting ecosystem (or war in general) is the x-ray: it reveals the worst in people but also the best, and many find the closest connections in war zones. Thus, it is also legitimate to ask (RQ2): What makes the work “good”? Here, too, many aspects of the work perceived by the SE reporters as positive do not differ from the typical attributes of “good work” (Hesmondhalgh and Baker, 2011). The work is creative, important, impactful, and prestigious; it gives access to history in the making, travel, a sense of purpose, and an adrenalin rush; it teaches reporters new things every day. However, the work is also rewarding in ways that are inseparable from its intense precarity. It is social, in some respects autonomous, and the SE media professionals become highly involved experts in the regions they cover. Their products potentially serve the public well. The precarity necessitates creative solutions, sharing, and exchange (of costs of cars and fuel, local media workers’ labour, body armour, contacts, advice, technologies, and food), thus giving rise to wide and organic networks of reciprocity, solidarity, and friendships.

Therefore, with regard to RQ3, the work is profoundly ambivalent: the reporters navigate the precarity in a way that sometimes turns it into a creative asset. For example, the analysis shows that, out of necessity, the SE reporters unwittingly employ aspects of ethnographic journalism (Hermann, 2016), which operates on epistemic, strategic, and stylistic levels, altering how journalists position themselves vis-à-vis their subjects, produce knowledge, and speak about this knowledge. The SE reporters sometimes adopt the strategies of ethnographic journalism, for which the employment of immersion is central (albeit stimulated by the goal of “getting the story”; Hermann, 2016, p. 273), and which “broadens the scope of inquiry by catering to context and balancing an angled approach with a more flexible focus” (ibid.). This approach enables many of them to develop invaluable contextual expertise and also tones down the distinctions between “foreign” and “local,” “proximity” and “distance,” “reporter” and “fixer”.

The cross-European diversity of experiences further illustrates the ambiguity of conflict reporters’ positions, which, in turn, also implies that in terms of precarity, creativity, and solidarity, there are no solid borders between European SE, Anglophone ecosystems, other SE (Mabweazara, 2018), and other large conflict reporting ecosystems (Zhang, 2016). In principle, a junior British freelance photographer can have more in common with a Slovak freelancer or a Ukrainian fixer than with a CNN staff reporter. The ambiguity is shaped by the diversity of reporters’ proximities to the local context (Ahva and Pantti, 2014), each other, and other ecosystems. These proximities problematize any clear-cut divisions. This is why it is important to study conflict reporters’ identities as ambiguous and hybrid, defined by global racial/ethnic hierarchies, political-economic relations, languages, gender, forms of knowledge, class formations etc. – all the “scattered hegemonies” in conflict correspondence (Kotišová and Deuze, 2022; Shome and Hegde, 2002).

Interestingly, in 2010, Sambrook wrote that “[i]n future, foreign correspondents are likely to be far more diverse in gender, ethnicity and background. They will speak the language and have specialist knowledge of the country before they are eligible to be appointed” (Sambrook, 2010, p. 99). The data presented in this paper illustrate that the future is now.

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