It has traditionally been the freelancer’s lot to be courted when news is hard to obtain and discarded when the pickings are easy. But recently freelancers reporting from Syria have found themselves in the perverse position of being unpopular with clients who desperately want a scarce commodity.  

Over the past year, a dwindling band of independent journalists have braved intense risks to report from Syria.

During this time, news organisations — worried that they might be bound by a legal duty of care towards casual employees who were neither on their payroll nor under their control – have been increasingly reluctant to hire them.

I wrote a story for the Columbia Journalism Review about all this. It is about a news industry that is simultaneously frantic for dramatic coverage of Syria and taking an axe to its foreign news budgets. Today’s news editors rely on freelancers more than ever because they have too few staff reporters and those that are still employed may be reluctant to risk their lives. 

And now evidence is emerging to explain why so many freelance journalists are dying in a location to which major employers profess reluctance to send them. It seems that policies operated by news organisations to prevent risks to freelancers’ safety are simply discarded when a major story demands copy and pictures.