Journalist safety: getting away with murder?

In the month since Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik were killed in the Syrian city of Homs the question of how to protect journalists - and prosecute those who target them - has been taken up at a national and international level.

At a Westminster Hall debate last week, the Liberal Democrat MP Don Foster argued that "the continuing high level of media deaths cries out for more action by international institutions, such as the United Nations, to force governments to pay more attention to the safety crisis affecting journalists and media workers."

Mr Foster drew attention to UN Security Council Resolution 1738, adopted in 2006, which urges "all parties involved in situations of armed conflict to respect the professional independence and rights of journalists, media professionals and associated personnel as civilians."

In reality though, argued Mr Foster, UN agencies are often reluctant to confront governments that target journalists.

In Paris, UN member states, journalists' organisations and civil society groups debated a UNESCO report which says that in most cases those responsible for killing, abducting and intimidating journalists go unpunished.

The report says that journalists, many of them covering issues such as organised crime and corruption rather than conflict, often resort to self-censorship in an effort to protect themselves rather than risk losing their lives.

It puts forward a plan of action to protect media workers and address the issue of impunity, which it says perpetuates the cycle of violence.

Panellists at the opening session of the recent Polis conference on International Journalism at the London School of Economics also reflected on the growing dangers associated with their profession.

"The threat to journalists has been brought home to British news organisations by the deaths of Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik - but the overwhelming majority of those being killed are local reporters in unstable or repressive countries," the Defence Correspondent for The Times, Tom Coghlan, told me. 

"The trend is clearly that more journalists are being killed with impunity - particularly in unstable countries like Mexico and Pakistan.

"Intimidating an independent media into silence only serves the interests of the malign and the repressive.

"The international community should do more to protect the status of journalists and make life more difficult for those who target them," Coghlan added.

But Lindsey Hilsum, International Editor at Channel 4 News, told me she didn't believe journalists should be given special protection just because they happen to carry a microphone or a notepad.

"The killing of journalists reflects wider issues in society, because all kinds of people, including health workers and civil society activists, tend to be killed," she said.

"Murder is wrong and murderous regimes, rebel groups and organised crime syndicates and drug cartels get away with it.

"Journalists become vulnerable when they investigate these people - but we are part of society not above it," Hilsum believes.

As politicians and diplomats discuss how best to bring those responsible for silencing media workers to justice, journalists are taking their own proactive steps to try to protect one another.

The American writer Sebastian Junger has set up a training organisation - RISC (above) - in memory of his friend Tim Hetherington (both pictured above), who died on assignment along with fellow photographer Chris Hondros in the Libyan city of Misrata last April.

RISC will offer 3-day courses in battlefield first aid to freelancers. It will hold its first workshop in New York next month, before expanding to London and Beirut.

A new book published by the International News Safety Institute, meanwhile, offers practical advice to women working in hostile environments.

Many of the suggestions contained in the book are specific to women, but others transcend gender.

As Tina Susman from the LA Times points out: "like our male colleagues, our main concerns are staying alive and keeping our limbs and brains intact."

Stuart Hughes is a BBC World Affairs producer.