Why news, as you know it, would not exist without guide and fixers?

Here is a little, ugly secret about journalism: We dont know everything. Throw us
right in the middle of a combat area, a natural disaster or a totalitarian state, we would make
news but it is not because of that we are smarter or braver.
Most likely it is because we found a perfect guide or a fixer
If you are not working in journalism community, you may not be familiar with the
term fixer, or the important role it plays for local freelance journalists in making news about
international subjects.
They also serve as the interpreter of not only the local language but also the traditions,
controversies and chaos of that place. It is also equally important that, they are helpful about
getting access to a government official or setting up a meeting with a rioter group that
government hates. Foreign journalists are subordinate to the local guides, especially when it is
about the security. They know when to use the camera and the time to leave when in a tricky
situation.
Shortly these guides and other freelance journalists are the heart of independent
journalism. Unfortunately they carry the higher risk of getting arrested, being abducted and
getting killed. According to the comittee to protect journalists, in 2014 up to 68 freelance
journalists got arrested and 13 got killed in world-wide records.
Muhammed Ismail Resul who lives in Istanbul, Resul as we call, is a basic example
for the vital role that local freelance journalists play on collecting news. Resul was making
translations for a Vice News team that was sent to make news about the still-continuing
clashes in southern Turkey when he and his colleagues Philip Pendlebury and Jake Hanrahan
were arrested and thrown into prison by Turkish police with absurd accusations that they were
assisting a terrorist orginazation.
Jake and Philip were released by Turkish authorities after 11 days behind the bars, but
Resul is still arrested. This is highly unfair. Resul is a successfull and principled journalist. He
is a student doing masters degree on International Relations at Istanbul Fatih University.
Unlike any others, Resul has dedicated himself to other people, to telling the stories of people
whose voices are hardly heard.
At Vice News, we treat the freelance journalists that we work together in the field as if
they are our own employees. We underlined this when we joined a coalition of major
journalism institutions including Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France Press, that is
about the acceptence of the worldwide freelance protection standards. These standards stress
both the recognition of the vital work that guides do and our responsibilites towards them in
times of crisis.
This is a crisis.

Now, Resul is in a Turkish prison for doing nothing but his job as a journalist; for
trying to help us understand the world that we live in better. While we continue to work to
ensure his release, Resuls being in prison is affecting a larger group than his family and his
colleagues. Everyone who show interest to news, think that this world will be a safer and
more just place when the information can spread freely.
Without the journalists like Resul, we would all be left blind eyed to the situations that
affect our lives and subsistence. Without journalists like Resul we would be limited with the
professionally made news, political scams, rumours and carefully made state-controlled media
rather than the confirmable truths.
This crisis can be eliminated.
I want you to take this situation very personally, for Resul, for the many other
journalists in similar situations around the world and for the news that you rely on. Get in
touch with your local government officials and inform them about where you stand on
Turkeys arrest of Resul. Use the social media to raise awareness about Resuls situation and
the threats towards press freedom all over the world. For now, Resul can not speak up about
this unfair treatment. So we have to speak up about it for him.

rem Hzal
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