Journalism Studies

ISSN: 1461-670X (Print) 1469-9699 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjos20

Lost in Translation

Lindsay Palmer

To cite this article: Lindsay Palmer (2017): Lost in Translation, Journalism Studies, DOI:
10.1080/1461670X.2016.1271284

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2016.1271284

Published online: 13 Jan 2017.

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 LOST IN TRANSLATION
Journalistic discourse on news “fixers”

Lindsay Palmer

This study examines the war-reporting industry’s attitude toward news “fixers”—the locally based
contacts who become news employees, by helping foreign reporters translate interviews, build con-
tacts, and navigate the cultural contexts with which correspondents are increasingly unfamiliar in
the era of “parachute journalism.” Conducting a critical discourse analysis of 189 articles published
in English-language journalism trade publications, the study seeks to answer these research ques-
tions: (1) How do Anglophone editors and reporters understand and value the labor of news fixers
working in conflict zones? (2) How do Anglophone editors and reporters discuss the safety of their
news fixers? Drawing upon the critical frameworks found in the field of global media ethics, the
study will suggest that news fixers have the potential to facilitate more complex and productive
“global–local exchanges,” which could in turn lead to a global media ethics that is, in the words
of Wasserman, “truly dialogic and critical.” Yet, despite the valuable cultural perspective that
fixers can bring, a critical discourse analysis shows that these media employees are currently under-
valued and underprotected by the editors and correspondents who hire them.

KEYWORDS discourse analysis; foreign reporting; global media ethics; news fixers; safety and
security; war

Introduction
In his 2014 article in the Columbia Journalism Review, freelance conflict correspondent
Andrew Bossone describes the “thankless” work of news “fixers”—the locally based media
employees who help foreign reporters translate interviews, build contacts, and navigate the
cultural contexts with which correspondents are increasingly unfamiliar in the era of para-
chute journalism. Addressing a news industry that does not appreciate local media workers
enough, Bossone (2014) says of news fixers: “These people are not mere translators who
provide a service in exchange for payment. Our work—and, on occasion, our safety—
depends on them.” As Bossone implies, fixers are especially necessary when correspon-
dents are working in conflict zones, since their culturally specific knowledge can help jour-
nalists avoid injury or even death. In this sense, Bossone’s article illuminates a professional
relationship that is all too often invisible to news audiences: the relationship between
foreign journalists and the locally based news workers who help them tell the story of
what is happening in politically tense regions of the world.
Bossone’s piece is rare in its determination to give credit to news fixers, as well as in
its effort at exposing the mainstream, English-language news industry’s tendency to
devalue these important media workers. While a number of journalism trade publications
based in North America and Britain do mention fixers—especially in the articles published
after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the subsequent “war on
terror”—they almost never think critically about how these media employees are
Journalism Studies, 2017
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2016.1271284
© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 LINDSAY PALMER

treated. Only a very few of these articles explore the fact that fixers are paid much less than
correspondents, and even Bossone’s own article fails to mention that fixers rarely receive
any sort of safety training, equipment, or insurance (Walters 2009; Bossone 2014; Palmer
2016). As this study’s findings will show, fixers instead appear within English-language
trade discourse as inevitable casualties, necessary costs, or unpredictable liabilities who
might mistranslate or skew the reporters’ stories. In turn, the discourse tends to disavow
the centrality of news fixers to the process of war reporting, and it rarely takes for
granted the responsibility that news outlets might have for their local employees’ safety.
Inspired by the field of global media ethics, which seeks to articulate the best prac-
tices for media practitioners operating within a transnational context (Ward 2013), this
study examines the Anglophone news industry’s discourse on local news fixers. Drawing
upon a critical discourse analysis of 189 English-language journalism trade articles, the
study identifies the most prominent ways in which fixers are discussed by the Anglophone
journalism industry. Focusing especially on the issue of safety in the conflict zone, my analy-
sis highlights the ethical problems entangled within news outlets’ attitudes toward the
local employees they hire. These problems are of great relevance to journalism studies
and to the field of communication studies more broadly.
Though some communications scholars have previously mentioned the figure of the
news fixer within their larger studies on international reporting (Pedelty 1995; Hamilton and
Jenner 2004; Hannerz 2004; Tumber and Webster 2006)—most often to briefly describe the
fixers’ specific tasks—at the present moment there are only a handful of academic studies
that focus solely on the fixer’s role in foreign correspondence. Perhaps the most well-known
study is Jerry Palmer and Victoria Fontan’s (2007) article on Iraqi media employees, which
draws upon interviews with both fixers and foreign correspondents in order to give a
detailed description of the job that these local media workers do. Yet, the article focuses
mostly on foregrounding the fixers’ potential biases, and it does not consider the some-
times problematic ways in which correspondents and editors treat these local media
employees.
Colleen Murrell’s (2015) book on news fixers explores these media workers’ labor in
greater detail, making the essential point that news fixers assist journalists editorially as well
as logistically. Yet, as with Palmer and Fontan’s article, the book is less interested in thinking
about the ethical treatment of fixers in the conflict zone. Conversely, Lindsay Palmer’s
(2016) article exploring news fixers’ own perspectives on their labor begins the process
of critically examining such ethical questions from the news fixers’ unique viewpoints.
That article homes in on the important issue of cultural difference, showing the need for
foreign correspondents to learn more about the places and people they cover in their
reports.
Each of these articles contributes to the scholarly discussion on the labor of war
reporting, taking the news fixer as a central focus. But so far, no one has interrogated
the foreign reporting industry’s less overt attitudes toward news fixers, attitudes that
surface in the articles that journalists, editors, and news pundits write for members of
their own profession, rather than for the public. Understanding these attitudes can help
communications scholars and journalism practitioners to think more carefully about the
messy power dynamics and the cultural clashes that inform the labor of representing the
world’s conflicts.
These issues are already of great interest to scholars in the more critical strand of
global media ethics. For example, postcolonialist ethicists such as Herman Wasserman
 LOST IN TRANSLATION 3

and Shakuntala Rao have pushed communications scholars and media practitioners in the
Anglophone world to think more cautiously about specific historical and geopolitical con-
texts, rather than merely attempting to impose Western values onto disparate cultures (Rao
2011; Wasserman 2011). As Wasserman has argued:
Conceiving of the media’s moral duties as somehow having global relevance cannot
therefore gloss over the particularities of the local context. A global media ethics would
have to be located in relation to local histories of cultural, political and social struggle,
as well as the power relations underlying contemporary global–local exchanges.
(Wasserman 2010, 75)
Yet, both Rao and Wasserman also argue for a more cautious consideration of the “local”
(Rao 2011; Wasserman 2011), declaring that Westerners must move past a “tokenistic” or
“exotic” inclusion of the “Other” within global narratives, instead striving for a global
media ethics that is “truly dialogic and critical” (Wasserman 2011, 793). Such an approach
interrogates the tendency to homogenize entire regions, representing them as monolithic
and “internally uncontested” (793).
Though Wasserman and Rao largely aim their arguments at media ethicists working
within the scholarly tradition, the call to think more carefully about “global–local exchange”
is directly relevant to the war-reporting industries based in North America and Britain.
These news industries regularly initiate “global–local exchanges” in order to tell the story
of geopolitical conflict. In turn, Anglophone war reporters sometimes attempt to impose
a Western cultural perspective onto the regions they visit, while also representing “local”
cultures in an exotic and often homogenous fashion—especially in the context of the
“war on terror” (Freedman and Thussu 2012; Kumar 2012; Rane, Ewart, and Martinkus
2014). This suggests a power imbalance in these “global–local exchanges,” an imbalance
that not only leads to impoverished war coverage, it also leads to material consequences
for the local employees whose dangerous labor is not ultimately valued as much as that
of the correspondents who depend on fixers to function in distant war zones.
At this point, however, few media ethicists have turned their attention to war report-
ing, despite the practice’s centrality to journalism in the present moment. While numerous
journalism scholars have provided rich and impactful research on the history of war report-
ing (Hallin 1989; Kellner 1992; Knightly [1975] 2004), as well as on the practice of war report-
ing in the twenty-first century (Thussu and Freedman 2003; Allan and Zelizer 2004; Lewis
2006; Tumber and Webster 2006; Matheson and Allan 2013), few of the current studies
on war correspondence delve into the questions offered by the field of global media
ethics: questions of how to appropriately consider local histories, cultural difference, and
inegalitarian power dynamics. By combining these academic traditions, communications
scholars could learn a great deal about the messier aspects of representing the world’s
wars, as well as beginning the process of providing some solutions.
My article illuminates this “messiness” as it surfaces in the Anglophone journalism
trade discourse, an “insider” conversation that has much to reveal about the industry’s
broader attitudes toward the people who assist journalists in the labor of war reporting.
Since fixers are especially helpful when journalists are working within conflict zones, my
analysis of such representations will be tightly linked to a discussion of safety, as well as
to a discussion of the ways in which the Anglophone news industry values the fixers’
dangerous labor. This paper is structured as follows: I will first explain the method I used
in this research, showing why this method was most useful for my purposes. I will then
4 LINDSAY PALMER

share the findings that came as a result of the following research questions, which were
inspired by the current lack of scholarship on how fixers are conceptualized and protected
by the news outlets who hire them:
RQ1: How do Anglophone editors and reporters value the labor of news fixers working in
conflict zones?

RQ2: How do Anglophone editors and reporters discuss the safety of their news fixers?

After sharing the findings from both of these research questions, I will engage in a
discussion of the relevance of my findings within the context of global media ethics,
suggesting that while news fixers have the potential to facilitate more complex and pro-
ductive “global–local exchanges” (Wasserman 2010, 75), they are ultimately undervalued
and underprotected by their employers. I ultimately hope to show that both communi-
cations scholars and journalism practitioners need to gain a clearer understanding of the
relationship between foreign correspondents and local news fixers, if they also hope to con-
tribute to a more ethical foreign reportage.

Method
In order to answer my research questions, I deployed the qualitative method of criti-
cal discourse analysis. Johnny Saldaña (2012, 270) defines this method as “the strategic
examination of speech or texts for embedded and inferred sociopolitical meanings.”
According to Ruth Wodak (2001, 66), “discourses influence discursive as well as non-discur-
sive social and political processes and actions,” while also being influenced by certain “situa-
tional, institutional, and social settings.” Because discourse is simultaneously reflective and
constructive, it serves as a fruitful site of analysis for understanding a profession that par-
ticipates so strongly in knowledge reflection and production. Following this logic, I ana-
lyzed 189 articles found in six English-language, journalism trade publications: the
Columbia Journalism Review and the American Journalism Review (both based in the
United States); the British Journalism Review and the Press Gazette (both based in the
United Kingdom); and the Ryerson Review of Journalism and Media Magazine (both based
in Canada).
I searched the online versions of each of these publications for any articles including
the words “fixer,” “translator,” and “interpreter.” Though Bossone (2014) argues that fixers
are far more than translators, journalists list translation as a primary task of the news
fixer. Sometimes, the English-language journalism industry even uses the terms “fixer,”
“translator,” and “interpreter” interchangeably. Thus, I searched for all three terms, saving
any trade article that discussed the local news employees in question. I also limited my
chosen articles to those published after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade
Center, since I am especially interested in representations of news fixers that unfold
within the context of the “war on terror.” While the term “fixer” did occasionally appear
in the trade discourse before 2001, it became much more prominent after 9/11, pointing
to the relevance of studying the relationship between news fixers and foreign journalists
in the post-9/11 era.
My search resulted in 189 articles for analysis, broken down as follows: 85 articles
from the Press Gazette, 43 articles from the Columbia Journalism Review, 32 articles from
the American Journalism Review, 14 articles from the British Journalism Review, 13 articles
 LOST IN TRANSLATION 5

from the Ryerson Review of Journalism, and only 2 articles from Media Magazine. There are a
few possible reasons for the uneven distribution of articles across publications. One expla-
nation could be the disparity in the number of issues that each magazine publishes on a
yearly basis. For example, the Press Gazette started as a weekly publication, then shifted
to a monthly magazine in 2008, before shifting back to a weekly format in 2013. Thus,
the Gazette simply publishes more articles than the British Journalism Review, which is a
quarterly publication, or Media Magazine, which usually publishes on a biannual basis.
Another explanation could be the possibility of a different set of institutional priori-
ties in each of the trade magazines I searched. For example, Media Magazine appeared to be
far more interested in journalistic “how-to’s” and explorations of domestic reporting than
the Press Gazette, the Columbia Journalism Review, and the American Journalism Review.
This could explain why the Media Magazine only mentioned fixers twice in 15 years of
post-9/11 publishing. There could also be less of a commitment to transparency about
international journalists’ dependence on news fixers in some of the trade publications,
an issue that Bossone (2014) mentioned in his own article on the industry’s relationship
with these media workers. Perhaps the authors working with the British Journalism
Review did not see the need to flag the presence of their news fixers as often as did the
authors working with the Press Gazette or the Columbia Journalism Review.
What these publications each had in common was their focus on discussing the
English-language, British and North American journalism industry for a specific audience:
journalism practitioners, and, to some extent, journalism scholars and students. The articles
I found were written by a number of different actors within the broader field of Anglophone
journalism. Some of them were written by war reporters, some of them were written by
news executives, some of them were written by the editorial staff of the trade publications,
and some were written by prominent industry commentators who might also teach jour-
nalism at a university. A very small number of the articles conducted interviews with
news fixers themselves, but the vast majority of the articles drew upon testimonies from
foreign correspondents and their editors. Together, these different players contributed to
the industrial discourse on English-language war reporting.
After narrowing down the articles to be analyzed, I uploaded them into MAXQDA, a
computerized qualitative data analysis program that assists the researcher in coding data
and identifying thematic patterns. Using this software, I again searched the terms “fixer,”
“translator,” and “interpreter.” I then looked at these words in the larger context of each
article. In this process, I was guided by my broad research questions; yet I also allowed
more specific themes to emerge from the data itself. As I coded the data, three major
themes emerged, within the larger context of my research questions. These were the
themes: (1) the professional interactions between fixers and correspondents, especially in
terms of the fixers’ unpredictable potential to mistranslate or to skew the story; (2) the
fixer as a costly media service; and (3) the dangers of working in conflict zones, dangers
often represented as being inevitable. The next section of this article discusses these
themes in more detail.

Theme 1: Professional Interactions

One of the themes that emerged in the discourse was the discussion of the pro-
fessional interactions between news fixers and foreign correspondents. This theme
especially surfaced as I searched for the answer to RQ1, which asked how the discourse
6 LINDSAY PALMER

represents and values the labor of news fixers. Within this larger category, a few sub-themes
emerged: (1) the professional reliability of the fixer; (2) the professional relationship as a
“positive,” and sometimes even “personal” relationship; and (3) the effort at giving pro-
fessional credit to news fixers.

Reliability
The question of reliability is one that has been discussed in previous scholarship on
news fixers, and it is usually analyzed from the war correspondents’ point of view: are the
fixers trustworthy, for example, and will they try to skew the correspondents’ stories accord-
ing to their own personal biases? (Palmer and Fontan 2007; Murrell 2015). While this issue
also surfaced in the journalism industry discourse, it was not the most prominent theme,
though it still deserves discussion here. In some cases, the question of reliability was rep-
resented as a problem of the news fixers’ professional character. For example, an article
in the Columbia Journalism Review cited Moira Murphy, a professor of Latin American
and Border Studies, as asserting that correspondents need to avoid “rely[ing] solely on
interpreters. Sometimes things do get lost in the translation. Or unwary reporters may be
told what the interpreter wants them to hear” (cited in Meares 2011). In this sense, the
article suggested that correspondents’ locally based employees may intentionally try to
trick them, telling the “unwary” reporter what the “interpreter wants them to hear.” The
article also implied that the correspondents’ own lack of skill in the local language was a
less pressing problem than the interpreter’s trustworthiness.
In other cases, the fixer’s potential unreliability was represented as an issue of incom-
plete professional training on the fixers’ part. As an article in the Ryerson Review of Journal-
ism remarked:
When someone else is doing the talking, journalists can’t personally get the information or
ask follow-up questions, so they must teach fixers the nuances of the trade. For example,
to deliver a quote and not paraphrase what they hear. The reliability of this practice is a
matter of some debate.
(Li 2009)
The fear of the fixers’ inability to correctly interact with the interviewee and to translate with
the proper amount of detail even led correspondent Graeme Smith to test his fixers, in
order to see if they were doing their job correctly:

Smith prepared a list of 20 questions for his fixer to ask Taliban members, and the fixer
delivered 42 videotaped interviews over three months. Smith then gave the raw
footage to a company in Kabul for comprehensive translation into English. He developed
the interviews into a six-part series showcasing major patterns he found while analyzing
the tapes. The result was a multimedia site called “Talking to the Taliban”—proof his fixers
weren’t altering the information.
(Li 2009)

Thus, the question of whether or not fixers can be trusted to correctly translate the local
languages for their foreign colleagues loomed large in the discussion of professionalism
in the field. A few other articles assured readers that there were indeed some very good
fixer-translators out there; yet these articles still reinforced the idea that generally fixers
 LOST IN TRANSLATION 7

are not to be trusted. Only a few of these articles explored the deeper problem of Anglo-
phone war reporters’ typical lack of knowledge of foreign languages—and when this issue
was addressed, it was linked back to the “danger” of the potentially unreliable news fixer,
rather than serving as an entry point into a discussion of the correspondents’ own pro-
fessional blind spots.

Positive Relationships
Some of the trade articles on news fixers also represented these media employees in
a more positive professional fashion, pointing to the often contradictory nature of the dis-
course that needs to be strategically examined “for embedded and inferred sociopolitical
meanings” (Saldaña 2012, 270). Those articles that did represent news fixers in a better pro-
fessional light tended to mention their years of service with a particular news organization,
or to list their contribution to the field of war reporting. This especially tended to happen
when the fixer had been injured or killed in the war zone. While the locally based news
employees’ service was celebrated in these articles, there was usually no discussion of
how these deaths or injuries could have been prevented, or what precautions the news
outlets had taken to help ensure the fixers’ protection.
Some of these articles also tended to veer into the personal, portraying the locally
based media employee as a friend or family member. For example, one article mentioned
a correspondent who reportedly moved into his fixer’s home, where the fixer’s mother
“loved him like a son” (Rosen 2004). Another article interviewed an Iraqi fixer who had
worked with a Washington Post correspondent:
Naseer Nouri was [Rajiv] Chandrasekaran’s fixer for more than a year-and-a-half. An aircraft
engineer and pilot, Nouri says that he loved working for Chandrasekaran, which made it
difficult for him to leave his job with the Post once Iraqi Airways started operating again.
“Rajiv is a kind of person that he is very smart, heavy worker, brave, care about the others a
lot and like to see his employee as one family,” he writes in an e-mail.
(Pompilio 2005)

A third article, written by British correspondent Philip Jacobson, said of his fixer:

Eduardo soon proved to be personable, tireless, cool under pressure, brave but not fool-
hardy. He kept me out of harm’s way on numerous occasions and what began as a
working relationship ripened into a lasting friendship.
(Jacobson 2008, 88)

In each of these cases, the relationship between the individual journalist and his or
her news fixer was foregrounded and celebrated. Yet, very few of these articles examined
the power dynamics entangled within these relationships, positive though they may have
been. For example, the articles rarely discussed the fact that the visiting war correspondent
could easily leave the conflict zone, as opposed to the local fixers who lived there and could
not always escape. The articles also did not raise larger institutional questions about the
news outlets’ policies on the treatment of news fixers. Thus, while one article discussed
the friendly relationship that blossomed between correspondent Jackie Spinner and her
female fixer Luma, the article did not elaborate upon the “tragic and extraordinary twist”
that led Luma to later be shot and killed (Stepp 2006).
8 LINDSAY PALMER

Giving Credit
The last sub-theme that emerged within the larger category of professional inter-
action was the issue of giving fixers credit for their labor, and only one of these articles (Bos-
sone’s 2014 piece) raised the issue of giving news fixers a byline. The rest of the articles
invoked the notion of “credit” more obliquely, touting the war correspondents’ depen-
dence on news fixers, as well as the fixers’ lack of visibility. For instance, one article
quoted US freelance correspondent Bill Gentile as saying: “The local hires are critical,
because these are really the eyes and ears for the correspondents. Western correspondents
really couldn’t do their jobs very well without them” (cited in McLeary 2007). In turn, corre-
spondent Kathy Gilsinan (2013) wrote of Pakistani journalist and fixer Arif Shafi, who was
killed in a suicide bombing: “I’m glad, in a way, that he lived amid violence just because
that’s where his home was, and not to gain visibility. Because in the end, he didn’t get any.”
While these articles went a long way in their attempts to show appreciation for the
locally based employees who so rarely get any credit at all, they did not raise more concrete
questions about when news fixers should receive a professional byline and when their work
should be valued as editorial in nature, rather than merely logistical. As in the case of the
articles that celebrated the personal relationships between news fixers and correspondents,
the majority of the articles that attempted to give credit to local media employees only did
so in a general sense, without actually contributing to the news fixers’ professional mobility.
What is more, this was the least-explored sub-theme in the discourse, pointing to the rela-
tive silence on this issue within the larger English-language war-reporting industry.

Theme 2: The Fixer as a Costly Service

The second-most prominent theme in the Anglophone industry discourse was the
representation of the news fixer as a costly, yet necessary “service.” This theme emerged
in answer to both of my research questions. On one level, this theme seemed directly
linked to the industry’s way of valuing the news fixers’ labor. Yet this theme was also con-
nected to the related issue of safety and security in the field. At times, the news fixer was
listed as a costly safety expense, one that the news outlet either could or could not afford.
At other times, discussions of security were woven into more detailed anecdotes about the
fixers’ work. The sub-themes that surfaced within this larger category mirrored this logic,
with some articles (1) listing or describing the news fixers’ different tasks, and (2) listing
the news fixer as part of the news outlets’ expenses or general infrastructure.

Listing the Tasks

Despite Bossone’s (2014) rare declaration that fixers are more than “mere translators,”
the industry trade discourse invoked translation as one of the most central tasks of the
news fixer. In some cases, translation was included on a lengthy list of other tasks expected
of these locally based employees; or, the trade article might instead note that a “local” had
been hired, and this local doubled as a driver and a translator. In other cases, the trade
articles very briefly mentioned the presence of the correspondents’ translator before con-
tinuing with a discussion of the work that the correspondent did in the field, all but erasing
the fixer’s active role in the correspondents’ reportage.
The work of translating was most clearly linked to issues of safety in the field when
the trade articles described instances in which the news fixer was able to understand a
 LOST IN TRANSLATION 9

spoken threat that the correspondent was not able to comprehend. For instance, in a Press
Gazette article, British correspondent Ian Williams recounted one such event that unfolded
in Nepal:
We had an incident where we saw a crowd of protestors and stopped. As we approached
them it became obvious that they had been turning around to leave, but when they saw
us they turned back and the fixer said they were saying, “let’s throw stones, let’s throw
stones.”
(cited in Pike 2006)
In this situation, the foreign correspondent was able to avoid a dangerous situation because
his fixer could translate the threats made by the crowd. Thus, the fixer’s labor was directly
implicated in questions of the correspondent’s security.
Another task typically listed in the industry trade discourse was the expectation that
the fixer would help the correspondent with building contacts, networking, and setting up
interviews. This was most often discussed in terms of the fixers’ “insider status,” where they
were seen as having “the best access and the best contacts” (Carr, cited in Pandher 2008).
The assumption that fixers were “part of the local communities” (Sambrook, cited in
Pandher 2008) surfaced in trade stories that also told of the correspondents’ own uncer-
tainty on who to interview—a problem that the local media employee could “fix”:
Two days after his arrival, Zoroya and his fixer went to the West Bank, unsure exactly
whom they would interview. With the help of the fixer’s contacts, they met a series of
Al-Aqsa intermediaries who were clearly feeling out the Western reporter.
(Heyboer 2002)

Because of the news fixer’s contacts, the correspondent was able to find the necess-
ary people to interview—people who may have been suspicious of him without the fixer’s
presence.
The fixers’ “insider status” overlapped with security concerns when they built con-
tacts and conducted interviews without the correspondent in tow:
To overcome, or at least ameliorate, the problems that security and communication posed
[in Iraq], journalists hired Iraqi stringers, and the embassy used foreign service national
employees. They lived among the people and could go where we couldn’t. They were
able to talk easily to other Iraqis and assess shifts in mood and attitude.
(Callahan 2006)

In these specific instances, news fixers operated as “surrogates” for the foreign correspon-
dents, networking and even reporting in their stead. Behind this practice was Western
reporters’ and editors’ assumption that passably “native” media workers were less likely
to be kidnapped or attacked than white Westerners (Morajea, cited in Herman 2016).
Yet, the myriad other articles discussing the deaths or injuries or “native” fixers calls this
assumption into question. At any rate, this sub-theme in the discourse shows that
Western journalists rely on fixers’ “insider status” in order to ensure their own safety.
Despite the fact that the news fixers’ insider status was repeatedly invoked in the
industry trade discourse, the discussion of the fixer’s tasks did not overwhelmingly
address the question of the correspondents’ lack of cultural and political background on
the places they were covering. While the trade discourse seemed to concede that
foreign reporters needed fixers for translating and for setting up interviews, very few of
10 LINDSAY PALMER

the trade articles talked about the news fixers’ job of “filling in” the correspondents’ inevi-
table knowledge gaps—especially in the case of parachute journalists who had spent little
time in the country. When the trade publications did mention this function, they did so in a
perfunctory manner: making brief references to “local expertise” (Doley 2015), “local knowl-
edge” (Fry 2012), or the “potted history[ies]” that fixers might share (Di Giovanni 2009, 30).
In other cases, the articles shared anecdotes that revealed the importance of the news
fixer’s unique knowledge of the “extremely volatile situation” (Jacobson 2008). But only a
few of the articles overtly critiqued the correspondents’ own lack of political and historical
knowledge about the places they were covering, and one of them was an article that inter-
viewed a local fixer who pointed this out himself (Mufti 2010).

Expenses and Infrastructure

Alongside the tendency to list the news fixer’s most important tasks, the industry
trade publications also sometimes represented the news fixer as a high expense, or as
part of the industrial infrastructure. In these cases, the news fixer was represented as a
line on a company spreadsheet or a fiscal challenge that individual journalists—mostly free-
lancers—had to surmount. For instance, one article asserted that on a freelancers’ salary,
“Not only can you not afford insurance—it’s almost $1,000 a month—but you cannot
afford a fixer or a translator. You find yourself alone in the unknown” (Borri 2013).
A number of the trade articles also mentioned the prices that news fixers charged in
the field:
Fixers had been charging $300 a day to drive reporters around Syria, extremely high rates
of pay for the region. Now they are out of work. In Kilis I met a Syrian driver, Nur, who is
paid $800 a month by one broadcaster, whether or not they use him.
(Pendry 2013)
As the tone of this particular passage would suggest, the discourse on the price of hiring a
fixer tended to imply that these rates were exploitative of visiting journalists. Some articles
were more overt about this than others, with one going so far as to complain that

an official driver will charge $100 (£69) a day for the use of his clapped-out wreck. An offi-
cial interpreter will take a similar amount for his censoring presence and poor grasp of the
English language.
(Loyd 2001, 13)
Only one of the 189 trade articles mentioned that most news outlets do not provide news
fixers with insurance, flak jackets, or hazardous environment training, leaving them to fund
these expensive safety precautions on their own (Walters 2009).
When the price of hiring a fixer was not being addressed, the industry trade articles
instead tended to simply include the fixer in a longer list of expenses or industrial
necessities:
Although [ABC’s David] Westin wouldn’t reveal budget details, maintaining a traditional
broadcast bureau overseas—including salaries and support such as office space, com-
munications, travel, camera crews, secretaries, fixers, family housing and school tuition
for correspondents’ dependent children—can easily total $500,000 per year.
(Dorroh 2008)
 LOST IN TRANSLATION 11

Fixers also appeared on lists of expenses that were directly related to the visiting cor-
respondents’ security:
“If we cannot afford the resources needed to manage the risk of a proposed trip, then we
do not commission it,” [GlobalPost CEO Philip] Balboni wrote in an email. “Approved
expenses may include fixers, translators and the safest means of transport as determined
with the reporter.”
(Fitts 2015)

This type of discourse revealed the fact that news fixers are an integral part of the
foreign reporting infrastructure. They are necessary in order to help reporters function in
a different country, and they are also considered crucial to the correspondents’ safety.
Yet, despite flagging the importance of news fixers, this type of discourse also obfuscated
the subjectivities of these media workers. Listed alongside expenses like family housing and
transportation, in some of these trade articles, readers were given little sense of the local
media employees’ complexity, or indeed, their agency.

Theme 3: Dangers in the Field

The most prominent theme that surfaced in relation to my research questions was
the theme of news fixers ameliorating or succumbing to the intense risks encountered in
the field. The potential to keep the correspondent safe appeared to be the most valuable
aspect of the fixers’ labor, where the journalism industry discourse was concerned.
However, the issue of the correspondents’ own safety was mentioned less often than
was the issue of the dangers faced by the fixers themselves. In the discussion centering
around both of these sub-themes, there was very little analysis of the dangers that corre-
spondents and local employees encounter, especially in terms of what measures should be
taken to protect the fixers that news outlets hire. While news fixers were overwhelmingly
listed as one of the correspondent’s safety precautions, almost none of the articles dis-
cussed what safety precautions should be observed on the fixers’ behalf.

The Correspondents’ Security in the War Zone

When exploring the safety of the foreign correspondent, the industry trade discourse
most often portrayed the news fixer as an entity that could help ameliorate the potential
dangers of the war zone. Yet, a small number of the articles rather paradoxically portrayed
the fixer as a risk, rather than as a protector. This points to the contradictory nature of dis-
course in general, as well as to the ambivalence that the Anglophone news industry dis-
plays toward the locally based employees hired at the site of conflict. Some of the
articles represented the news fixer as a security threat, and in some cases, this discomfort
with the fixer was linked directly to his or her cultural difference. As correspondent David
Axe recounted:
In Lebanon, I had to navigate bewildering layers of red tape just to accompany the Italian
Army on a brief patrol near the Israeli border. Such bureaucracy is perhaps inevitable when
you kludge together a dozen different armies, all with their own rules and political sensi-
tivities, and deposit them in contested territory. The Italians were perfectly polite, but
obviously uncomfortable with me and especially with my interpreter, whom they
12 LINDSAY PALMER

seemed to suspect of being an Islamic terrorist just because he was Lebanese.

(Axe 2008)
In Axe’s experience, the news fixer was seen as a threat by the military with which Axe
wanted to embed, and this sense of danger was linked directly to the fixer’s race and
nationality.
In other articles, the fixer was portrayed as a direct danger to the correspondent.
Sometimes this was listed as a problem that had already occurred, as in the case of a trans-
lator who raped the female correspondent with whom he was working (Matloff 2007). But
more often it was listed as conjecture, as a potential risk. For example, in the Columbia Jour-
nalism Review, columnist Nicholas Kristof was cited as wondering if two imprisoned journal-
ists “weren’t lured across into North Korea by their fixer or by the human trafficker they
supposedly were going to interview” (Barrett 2009). Through assertions such as this one,
the trustworthiness and loyalty of the news fixer was called in question.
More typically, however, the trade articles represented the news fixer as a valuable
safety precaution. As discussed in the previous section of this article, some of the trade
pieces simply listed the locally based employee as a necessary step to take in order to
ensure the safest-possible assignment:
There is no substitute for local expertise, particularly where a volatile environment is
involved, and the input of specialists on the ground—such as security consultants or at
least experienced and trusted fixers—should always be considered.
(Doley 2015)
In passages like these, the discourse foregrounded the fact that the news fixers should be
experienced in partnering with foreign correspondents, and they should also have earned
the correspondents’ trust.
Other articles shared anecdotes about times that fixers and translators had intervened
on behalf of the foreign correspondent, talking their way out of a dangerous situation:
Spotting an opening, the translator beckoned the good cop into the hall … She informed
him that I was an extremely famous person whose capture would cause a diplomatic mess.
“You wouldn’t want that,” she counseled, to which he replied, “Oh, no.” Upon returning to
the cell he dismissed the barking policeman with an apologetic, “These guys are unprofes-
sional.” (Matloff 2012)
This passage provided an example of a time when a news fixer drew upon her cul-
tural knowledge to alleviate the ire that local law enforcement officers were showing
toward the white, Western correspondent. Though the above article did not reflect
overtly upon the correspondents’ own lack of cultural knowledge, it was the news fixers’
insider perspective, as well as her willingness to speak on behalf of the correspondent,
that ultimately turned the tide. Indeed, the news fixer consistently surfaced in the trade
articles as an employee whose primary task was to protect the correspondent—a task
that sometimes demanded that the fixer act as the “interface” between the visiting reporter
and the diverse people that he or she might encounter on the ground.

The Fixers’ Security in the War Zone

Even more prominent than the sub-theme of the fixer’s role in securing the corre-
spondents’ safety was the sub-theme of the dangers that fixers themselves face in
 LOST IN TRANSLATION 13

twenty-first-century war zones. This at first glance suggests that the safety of locally based
media employees is a high priority for the English-language news industry. Yet, a more
detailed investigation suggests otherwise. While the discourse often mentioned instances
in which news fixers had been imprisoned, injured, or killed, there was almost no analysis of
what should have been done to prevent this problem. There was also very little conversa-
tion on how news outlets should react when their local hires get into trouble. Instead, the
injury or death of news fixers were most often portrayed as being an “inevitable” part of war
reporting, an unfortunate occurrence so natural as to warrant no need for discussion or
reform.
Some of the articles simply stated that a news fixer had been hurt, detained, or killed.
The majority of these articles stated the fact very briefly, often as an afterthought that
received little commentary. For instance: “They swarmed [Jill] Carroll’s car, executing her
long-time fixer, and hauling her away at gunpoint. Word of Carroll’s kidnapping spread
quickly among the media community in Baghdad” (Simon 2014). In this passage, the
author noted that Carroll’s fixer had been murdered, but then said nothing else about it.
At best, these types of articles returned to the question of the news fixer after a lengthy
discussion of the correspondents’ ostensibly more interesting fate:
Richard Butler, the British journalist held in captivity in Basra for more than two months,
was freed in a dramatic rescue operation by Iraqi forces today. Colleagues spoke of their
delight after Butler, who was seized alongside his interpreter on 10 February while
working on an assignment for US broadcaster CBS, was reportedly handed over to
British forces. He [Butler] was pictured smiling and apparently in good health amid
chaotic scenes on Al Iraqiya television.
(“Kidnapped British Journalist Freed in Iraq” 2008)

It was not until the last line of this article that the author mentioned that Butler’s interpreter
had also eventually been released from detainment.
In other cases, the industry discourse engaged in more extensive descriptions of what
had happened to the news fixer. For example, a number of articles in the Press Gazette told
of ITN correspondent Terry Lloyd’s death by “friendly fire” in Iraq, each time asserting that
his translator Hussein Othman had also been killed. These articles actually named the trans-
lator and included a number of details about the circumstances of his death. Another article
devoted itself entirely to the case of a missing Afghan translator, Ajmal Naqshbandi (Colby
2007). That article called Naqshbandi an “ambitious journalist” who was “doing a dangerous
job, without any kind of training, or safety net.” Yet, the article did not engage in a discus-
sion about who should have required (and funded) Naqshbandi’s training. What is more,
the use of the word “ambitious” subtly cast some doubt on Naqshbandi’s credibility,
making him sound like someone who was more interested in professional success than
in his own safety—safety for which he was represented as being solely responsible.
While a small number of articles did tell of foreign correspondents who tried to help
their fixers get out of prison (Azeez 2002; “Prezza Pics Photographer Pledges Cash” 2006) or
of international nonprofits working toward news fixers’ safety, only two articles mentioned
an instance in which a news organization considered taking action on behalf of its news
fixers (Carroll 2004; “Targeted” 2006). Yet, the vast majority of the articles discussing the
dangers that fixers face in the field were silent about the industrial policies on the security
of these important media workers. The fact that the fixers’ own security does not go
unmentioned is certainly promising: at least the English-language news industry is
14 LINDSAY PALMER

cognizant of the issue. But as the closing section of this article will argue, there is much
more to be discussed on the topic of news fixers’ security in the field.

Ethical Implications
Global media ethicist Stephen Ward (2013) asserts that we live in an increasingly
interconnected media environment. Because of this, journalists are no longer accountable
solely to the publics based in their own nations, but also to those scattered across the world
(Ward 2013). Crucially, this does not mean that journalists should attempt to represent the
world as being a more homogenous place. As media scholar Nick Couldry declares:
A global scale implies a space of irreducible moral disagreement and diversity. Media do
not reduce or resolve such disagreement: On the contrary, they bring it into view. So an
initial question is: How can we live sustainably with each other through media, even
though media unavoidably expose us to our moral differences?
(Couldry 2013, 17)

Wasserman (2011) and Rao (2011) provide a potential answer to Couldry’s question in their
aforementioned statements that media scholars and practitioners need to engage in more
egalitarian cross-cultural dialogue. Doing so could allow for more balance in the journalistic
representations of such “disagreement and diversity.”
By Western journalists’ own accounts, news fixers have the potential to play a huge
role in facilitating this cross-cultural dialogue. As the English-language industry discourse
shows, fixers serve as important interfaces between cultures, translating on both literal
and metaphorical levels. They also connect Western journalists to sources they may
never have thought to interview, helping these journalists to include new perspectives in
their reports. In turn, these locally based media employees can offer a wealth of knowledge
on the socio-political histories linked to the places that foreign journalists visit, rendering
those histories legible to media practitioners and their global audiences. In this sense,
news fixers have the potential to facilitate more complex and productive “global–local
exchanges” (Wasserman 2010, 75), which could in turn lead to a global media ethics that
is “truly dialogic and critical” (Wasserman 2011, 793).
Yet, as this analysis has shown, the mainstream, English-language news discourse
does not currently appear to recognize or value these possibilities. In one sense, Anglo-
phone news discourse represents news fixers as unreliable assistants who might carelessly
flub their translations, or—even worse—push correspondents toward writing a culturally or
politically biased story. While some journalists do develop close relationships with their
fixers, and while others do attempt to show their appreciation for the work that fixers
do, the majority of the trade articles I analyzed conveyed the professional interactions
between fixers and reporters as precarious encounters in which the fixer might sabotage
the journalist at any time.
The ethical problem with this outlook lies in its inability to interrogate foreign corre-
spondents’ own professional blind spots—blind spots that currently lead to impoverished
coverage of different regions. For instance, if more Anglophone journalists were fluent in
the languages of the regions they visited, fewer journalists would have to worry about
the issue of mistranslation. Even so, the news industry discourse barely seems to register
the fact that foreign correspondents need more extensive training in languages other
than English. What is more, a number of critical media scholars have already shown that
 LOST IN TRANSLATION 15

the mainstream, North American and British news coverage of the “war on terror” is often
biased in favor Western perspectives that are not necessarily generalizable across different
geopolitical regions (Kellner 2003; Thussu and Freedman 2003; Miller 2007; Stahl 2009;
Freedman and Thussu 2012). While journalists might complain that fixers try to skew cor-
respondents’ “objective” news stories, there is little consideration in the industry discourse
of the possibility that Anglophone correspondents are not always very balanced in their
own approaches to news reporting.
Though of course not every news fixer is perfect, nor is every news fixer a good
person to employ, the overall profession of news fixing still holds enormous potential for
building the cross-cultural dialogue that would in turn lead to more balanced coverage
in an increasingly globalized media environment. For this dialogue to successfully occur,
foreign correspondents and their editors must value their locally based colleagues on
both a physical and professional level. Where the question of professional value is con-
cerned, news organizations must stop referring to news fixers as simple “expenses,” as
lines on the budget report. If the fixers so desire, journalists must also give these media
employees bylines, or mention their names in radio and television reports. In doing so,
news outlets will not merely contribute to better professional sustenance and mobility
for news fixers, though that in of itself is an important goal. Alongside that goal, news
outlets will also succeed in being more transparent with their news publics about the
method through which they received their information, better illuminating the cross-cul-
tural collaboration that makes foreign reporting—and especially war reporting—possible.
Contrary to popular belief, foreign reporting is almost never the work of one, mystical indi-
vidual. It is a transnational collaboration, one that needs to be highlighted all the more in a
globalized era.
Where the issue of placing greater value on news fixers’ physical safety is concerned,
the journalism trade discourse reveals a great deal of work still to be done. The fact that
fixers’ safety is the most prominent theme in the discourse at first seems promising, as it
does at least signal some level of awareness that fixers do get injured or killed on the
job. Yet, these incidents are too often represented as “inevitable” or almost “natural” occur-
rences in the industry discussion of news fixers. Such rhetoric obfuscates the question of
accountability, distracting from the larger conversation that needs to occur. If news organ-
izations hope to achieve a truly ethical foreign reporting practice, then they cannot simply
stop at protecting their own Western correspondents. They must also be accountable to the
people they collaborate with in the field, providing them with insurance for the duration of
their work, with safety equipment for conflict zones, and with evacuation plans should that
measure become necessary. Though there will always be a certain level of unpredictability
in the field—especially in conflict zones—the injuries and deaths of news fixers do not have
to be “inevitable.” News editors can and should take just as many precautions for news
fixers’ safety as they do for the safety of their own correspondents.
Doing so would send the message that these important media employees are not
expendable, and neither is the cross-cultural perspective they can bring. In an increasingly
interconnected and globalized world, journalists from North America and Britain cannot
afford to propagate a simplistic “Us” versus “Them” dichotomy, nor can they afford to rep-
resent different cultures as static, fixed, and homogenous in nature. They also cannot afford
to situate their locally based fixers across a hierarchical divide from themselves, reprodu-
cing the “Us” versus “Them” mentality at the level of the newsgathering process. News
fixers have the potential to help Anglophone journalists move into a more engaged,
16 LINDSAY PALMER

dialogic, and ultimately ethical reportage. Because of this, they deserve the same respect
and protection that any other journalist would receive.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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Lindsay Palmer, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Wisconsin-

Madison, USA. E-mail: lindsay.palmer@wisc.edu