Fixers have long worked alongside foreign correspondents and photojournalists in war zones—doing everything from translating, booking hotels, and setting up interviews to safeguarding journalists and providing critical regional expertise behind the scenes. But with the rise of hostility toward journalists covering the U.S.-led "war on terror," fixers in Iraq and Afghanistan find themselves pushed to the frontlines. Not only are they increasingly used to cover areas and situations considered too dangerous for Westerners, but they are targeted merely for their association with Westerners.
These high-risk jobs come at an even higher price: their lives. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that 106 journalists have been killed in Iraq since the invasion in 2003, and of those 84 were Iraqi. Additionally, 39 support workers, i.e. fixers, were killed, 38 of them Iraqi. As the work of fixers becomes more critical and dangerous, news organizations, freelance journalists, and photographers face tougher ethical and professional questions.
Supported in part by OSI’s Documentary Photography Project, this panel discussion aimed to open dialogue on these issues, as well as share some of the fixers' inspiring and heartbreaking stories.
Panelists
- Bob Dietz (Moderator), Asia Program Director, the Committee to Protect Journalists.
- Majeed Babar, former fixer/journalist/photojournalist from Pakistan.
- Micah Garen, photographer and documentary filmmaker. He and his Iraqi interpreter Amir Doshi were kidnapped and held hostage for ten days in Southern Iraq in 2004.
- Ayub Nuri, Iraqi journalist.
- George Packer, staff writer for The New Yorker and author of The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq.
- Lisa Ramaci, founder of the Steven Vincent Foundation, set up to honor the memory of her husband, a journalist who was kidnapped and murdered in Basra, Iraq in August 2005.
Location
Alwan for the Arts
16 Beaver Street, 4th Floor
(between Broad and New Streets, one block east of Whitehall Street and Bowling Green)
New York, NY 10004
Subway: 4, 5 to Bowling Green; J/M/Z to Broad St.; R,W to Whitehall St.; 1 to Rector St. or South Ferry; A,C to Broadway-Nassau
Map
Free and open to the public.
Organizers
The Steven Vincent Foundation is a nonprofit organization set up to assist the families of indigenous journalists in regions of conflict throughout the world who are killed while doing theirjobs, and to support the work of female journalists in those regions.
Friends of Jassim is a loose and growing collective of concerned individuals from the photographic community working to raise awareness and foster dialogue on the multitude of issues surrounding the work of fixers, while also urgently trying to secure the safety of Iraqi fixer Jassim. Jassim has worked with many well-known journalists and photographers and he was a key part of the grassroots efforts to negotiate the release of photographer Micah Garen and interpreter Amir Doshi when they were kidnapped in 2004. He was also the main photographer and local coordinator of Photographs by Iraqi Civilians, 2004, an exhibition launched on the first day of the Republican National Convention in New York, in collaboration with Daylight Magazine, PixelPress, NYU, and the Open Society Institute. For further information or to make donations, pleasecontact Ambreen Qureshi at friendsofjassim@gmail.com.