All Meeting Images by: Gabriela Bhaskar
The 2024 ACOS Alliance Annual Safety Coordination Meeting is scheduled to hold October 22nd and 23rd at the Thomson Reuters offices in London. This invitation-only meeting, continues to raise the bar of diversity and inclusion in an impact intensive gathering— bringing together both established and underrepresented journalists, editors, news organizations and NGOs for a time of practical learning, meaning conversations and presentations on key journalists’ safety issues.
In a world where knowledge is power and the new currency, the ACOS Alliance is empowering media professionals, including freelance journalists to integrate the culture of safety into their day-to-day journalistic endeavors as a professional lifestyle and not just a one-time practice. Using a holistic approach, the annual meeting explores some of the least talked about safety driven discussions in newsrooms today— creating integral enlightenments and raising the consciousness of safety practices within local, regional and global media organizations.
In addition to hosting series of safety workshops and a psychological safety session, the ACOS Alliance Annual Meeting is raising the next-generation of editors and journalists who will normalize ‘a robust and inclusive safety practices that leave no-one behind’ upon their return to their diverse communities across the world.
This further upholds the values of the ACOS Alliance, as a platform that honors transfer of knowledge and fosters collaborations.
With a gathering of over 120 participants from 71 organizations and 27 countries from the previous year meeting, the ACOS Alliance has built an ecosystem that transcends a platform for safety oriented discussions to becoming an embodiment of safety— creating a safe space where all participants feel seen and heard, with everyone having access to the microphone during the program’s short presentations and group discussions on new initiatives, recent researches, challenges, potential and active solutions.
This year’s meeting will pay special attention to topics on 𝗔𝗜, risk assessments, exile media, elections, conflicts and environmental crisis.
At Hello ICON Magazine, we see the ACOS Alliance as a timely beacon of light, illuminating both journalists and journalism in entirety.
Aside the annual meeting, the ACOS Alliance co-developed a generative 𝗔𝗜 safety tool and consciously curates best practical guides, tools, courses and webinars available in multiple languages.
Other Key ACOS Alliance Activities Include:
1. Coordination & Collaboration
2. Practical Safety Solutions
3. Advocacy and News Industry Engagement
In Summer 2014, the kidnapping and brutal murders of freelance journalists, James Wright Foley and Steven Joel Sotloff in Syria led to the creation of ACOS Alliance. Shortly after, this creation birthed the Freelance Journalist Safety Principles which is currently endorsed by more than 150 signatories to the ACOS Alliance, including the Dart Center, Reuters, The Associated Press, the Frontline Freelance Register, the Overseas Press Club and the GroundTruth Project.
Among the numerous immersive learning programs of the ACOS Alliance in 2024 was the Editor Safety Cohort— designed to empower news editors in Africa. This included a theoretical and practical learning experience through a series of online safety training modules, weekly webinars and one to one coaching.
Weaponizing The Law Against Journalism
The ACOS Alliance has continued to champion a ‘holistic approach to journalist safety’ which encompasses four key elements including: physical, digital, legal and psychosocial.
“A narrow view of journalists’ safety is ineffective.
That’s why we champion a holistic approach- a 360 degree view of safety incorporating physical, digital, legal and psychosocial dimensions.”
– Elisabet Cantenys, Executive Director, ACOS Alliance
In time past, the ACOS Alliance Annual Meeting has been described as — rich, generative, insightful, inspiring, energizing.
At Hello ICON Magazine, we make bold to add — inclusive and wholesome, which are all words that reflects the legacy works at the ACOS Alliance.
