A global survey recently fielded by three leading academics highlights the structural challenges faced by conflict journalists and points to ways in which news organisations could better support their work. According to the study’s preliminary findings, most of the journalists surveyed said their reporting has impacted their mental health negatively and around half acknowledged overworking, social withdrawal and substance abuse.

The online survey, funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh and designed by the Reuters Institute’s visiting fellow Adrian Hadland along with Tara Pixley and Martin Smith-Rodden, was fielded in six languages and received hundreds of responses from 54 countries. Respondents were predominantly male and most of them work as freelancers, and ages spanned from 21 to 80, with an average age of 47. The researchers will expand on this work with in-depth interviews of some of these respondents, and are planning to publish a report at the Reuters Institute in the 2026-27 academic year.

Hadland, Pixley and Smith Rodden recently presented the survey’s preliminary findings about conflict journalists in Oxford at an event chaired by the Institute’s Director of Journalist Programmes, Anne Godlasky. Researchers were surrounded by the Institute’s researchers and journalists fellows, and by media managers and representatives from media freedom groups.

Speakers stressed conflict journalism is no longer restricted to battlegrounds. With drone attacks, digital surveillance and war rhetoric deeply impacting journalists, they wanted this survey to show how journalists are experiencing this kind of environment and the kind of strategies they are using to navigate it.

How Conflict Journalists Responded

The preliminary data presented are a stark warning for the news industry. It suggests many of the conflict journalists covering conflict do so without receiving any training or equipment from the organisations they work for. Almost half of the journalists surveyed said they had received no safety training at all before heading for a conflict zone and one-quarter said they’d worked with no safety gear.

This is especially concerning in light of an increasingly dangerous environment. Almost half of the conflict journalists surveyed report receiving threats or attacks from law enforcement or military personnel, with one-fourth being targeted or attacked by armed groups. Around one-fourth report being arrested, with more than one-third being attacked with non-lethal projectiles or beaten up while they were in the field.

Read the full article about conflict journalists by Eduardo Suárez at Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.