Has the media learned from its mistakes in Iraq?

COLLATERAL DAMAGE Carroll's harrowing ordeal should have been a wake-up call for the news industry. Instead, it seems to have bolstered the fundamentally flawed system that put her there in the first place

Jill Carroll, the Christian Science Monitor freelancer kidnapped in Iraq last January, was released a year ago this month. And what a difference 343 days make. Promoted to staff writer during her eleven weeks in captivity, she's enjoyed a cache of consolation prizes since returning home. There was the international award for courage and the sprawling 10-part Jill Carroll Story, which became the Monitor's most popular and profitable series ever. Then the 30-year-old nabbed a $30,000 Harvard fellowship reserved for "distinguished experts" in media and spent the fall on-campus crafting a widely-cited report criticizing cutbacks in foreign news coverage.

Carroll's story is indicative of a broken news business where media companies—
under ever-growing pressure to cut costs—shave the salaries and benefits of freelancers grateful for work and too conscious of competition to protestCarroll's ability to look past her ordeal and tenaciously build her career is impressive. But beneath the surface success, her journey from barely-known stringer to "expert" staff writer looks like a series of guilty payoffs and inappropriate rewards that over the long term don't help journalists, news outlets, or the public. The Monitor's decision to officially hire her on staff while she was a hostage with dim prospects for survival comes across rather like a reluctant groom atoning for past sins with a quickie marriage he doesn't expect will last. And, unfortunately, the sense that Carroll might have been out of place at Harvard's Shorenstein Center—in a class of fellows that included a 45-year-veteran of the New York Times and an award-winning media critic —was only enhanced last month when her report on foreign news was yanked from Harvard's website. A spokesman for the program said by phone that "complaints" revealed the need for "further fact checking" but wouldn't specify the gripes or release a copy of the report. When asked by Editor & Publisher about the sudden removal, Shorenstein Director Alex Jones explained that the problems may have been caused by a rush to publish. "We maybe should have given her more time to get the kinks out," he said.

Carroll's story is indicative of a broken news business where media companies—under ever-growing pressure to cut costs—shave the salaries and benefits of freelancers grateful for work and too conscious of competition to protest. "There's a dramatic relationship between changes in the industry and use of freelancers. It's something that a lot of people are very worried about," says Josh Friedman, director of the International program at Columbia's journalism school. "If you complain, employers will just drop you and get somebody else."

It's a dynamic on display all too clearly in Iraq, where only a handful of correspondents have had a good war and landed a staff gig, like NBC's Richard Engel and CNN's Awra Damon, both of whom started out in Baghdad as freelancers. But with no guarantees and no base salaries, the majority of writers, reporters, and photographers have to fight for strings, selling stories and photos to mid-major outlets like the Monitor. Such publications are increasingly reliant on freelancers yet unwilling to dip into shallow overseas budgets to pay for their insurance and security. "It's a Don't Ask, Don't Offer system," says Frank Smyth, Washington representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists. "If you bring up that stuff, you're making yourself out to be more expensive than they want you to be." But with a steady line of hungry, reliable freelancers, what incentive is there for companies to fund the coveted staff positions?

Of course, war reporting has long been a particularly bloody crossroads of shoddy corporate ethics and individual ambitions, an intersection where would-be Christiane Amanpours and Christopher Hedges gamble their lives for their ideals, careers, and legacies. "It was hard to find a niche in New York. I couldn't think of another way to prove myself so I was trying to go somewhere obviously dangerous as a short cut. It turned out to be just that," says Anya Kamenetz, a journalism fellow for the Freelancers Union who went to Israel in 2003 and came back with a Village Voice cover story. "That was a big break for me and kind of led to the rest of my career. It led to more for the Voice and I sold my first book a year later."

COVERED UP When it comes to security for freelancers in Iraq, the policy is "Don't Ask, Don't Offer"

Success stories like this are a big part of what motivates young journalists to parachute into conflict zones and risk their lives for the outside possibility that it will help their careers. But the odds of landing a steady gig are getting longer as competition intensifies and more journalists fight for fewer staff positions than ever before. A record number of people graduated from journalism schools last year, according the New York Times, and new enrollments jumped for the twelfth consecutive year to over 210,000 students in 2006, according to new research from the University of Georgia's Grady College School of Journalism. Meanwhile, according to Indiana University journalism professor David Weaver, the total number of print and broadcast jobs fell from 122,000 to 116,000 between 1992 and 2002, the first decline in 30 years. Last year alone, more than 2000 newspaper jobs were cut. And overseas bureaus are often hit hardest, with the Boston Globe and Baltimore Sun the latest papers to shutter all foreign operations. There are currently only three American newspapers with full-time staff operations in Iraq—the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and the Washington Post—a situation that Dean Baquet, who was ousted as editor of the Los Angeles Times for protesting staff cuts, described to Frontline as "apalling." [Editor's note: The Wall Street Journal and USA Today each have a single staff correspondent in Iraq. The Baltimore Sun shuttered all overseas offices with the exception of its Jerusalem bureau.]

But while some worry that this is the age of the "vanishing foreign correspondent," the freelance ranks are fattening. In an interview with his ombudsman, New York Times executive editor Bill Keller confirmed that the paper "significantly" increased its use of freelancers between 2000 and 2004. Today, "more than 5,000" hired guns are listed in its database. Across the Atlantic, "20 percent or more" of journalists in European countries are employed through freelance contracts, a number that has increased steadily in recent years, according to a European Federation of Journalists study published in 2003.

The benefits for employers in an age of declining advertising revenues, evaporating print audiences, and increasing competition are obvious: no health care costs, no overhead fees, and streams of gutsy reporters willing to step into the crossfire. What's less savory, critics worry, is that a built-in lack of security for freelancers encourages risk-taking and big-story hunting at the expense of less glamorous but important news. "Ultimately, people want to make a big splash," says Friedman. As a result, "publications need to build up safeguards to ensure that a) their people don't get hurt or kidnapped and b) the truth doesn't get hurt or kidnapped."