The Essentials: “Managing Risk, Safety, and Trauma as a Journalist” with Alison Baskerville and Tara Pixley

This session discusses key elements of risk assessment, safety and security planning, and the management of bio/psycho/social impacts in the work of journalists, understanding those experiences and the realities of the job through an intersectional lens. By recognizing how identity, environmental, organizational, and operational variables impact our health and safety for every assignment, we are better prepared to enter any space or experience.

Tara Pixley (she/her) is a visual journalist and educator with 20 years of experience as a freelance photographer and photo editor for news organizations such as the New York Times, Newsweek, CNN, Wall Street Journal, ProPublica, and many others. She is currently an IWMF NextGen Fellow in journalist safety and risk assessment and a professor of journalism at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Tara was a Knight Visiting Fellow at Harvard’s Nieman Foundation of Journalism, an inaugural awardee of the World Press Photo Solutions Visual Journalism Initiative, and holds a Ph.D. in Communication from the University of California San Diego. You can follow her @tlpix.

Ali Baskerville (she/her) is a documentary photographer and a media safety trainer and advisor with a focus on freelancers. A former-soldier-turned-photographer, Alison is able to blend her military experience with her career as a conflict photographer to translate into realistic safety training for the media community. As a photographer she uses her experience to comment on, document and question the military experience that aims to make work reflecting on important contemporary issues such as social inequality, military occupation, gender identity and safety as well as the long-term consequences of emotional trauma through conflict. You can follow her @ali_baskerville.