Anyone may request a general version of the FIRE Guide to Freelancer Protection here.

Interested freelancers may click the button to apply for a detailed version of the Guide, or learn more here.

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FIRE has launched its pilot FIRE Guide to Freelancer Protection with draft evaluations of the 20 major publishers and broadcasters below.

Funded by craig newmark philanthropies, the Guide provides intelligence on liability practices to inform freelancers seeking to commission public-interest investigations.

It's well known that many outlets do not promise liability protections to reporters. This can have a chilling effect on public-interest investigations.

But others do—and they show the way.
 

List of Outlets Evaluated

The following publishers and broadcasters have been evaluated so far by the pilot FIRE Guide to Freelancer Protection:

Atlantic	Nature	Rolling Stone
Esquire	NHPR	Science
Guardian	New York Times	Stat News (Boston Globe)
Marshall Project	New Yorker	WGBH
Miami Herald	OCCRP	Wired
Mother Jones	100Reporters	Magazine 750,000+ circulation*
Nation	Politico

* Name pending additional
research and fair comment

Evaluation Results: Color Coding

The Guide does not measure the quality of an outlet's journalism (beyond baseline standards for inclusion in the Guide). It does not predict whether an outlet will ultimately protect a freelancer from defamation threats or action (which they might do even without promising to).

The FIRE Guide assesses only whether an outlet promises liability protection in writing. The written promise is important for reasons outlined below.

On that criterion, the liability practices of each publisher or broadcaster, including its standard contract, have been analyzed in one-paragraph briefings and assigned a color category:

• Green—FIRE-approved: Takes responsibility for stories. Default written promises. Sufficiently protective of freelance investigative reporting

• Yellow—Not yet FIRE-approved: Takes some responsibility for stories. Some outlets further along than others. Insufficiently protective of freelance investigative reporting

• Red—not FIRE-approved: Consistently unwilling to make the promise. Not there and no evident progress

The evaluations are works in progress, subject to additional credible intelligence from various sources. The current breakdown of the 20 outlets shows a strong need for improvement—but also models for achieving it:

• Five "Greens"
• Eleven "Yellows" (seven closer to Green, four to Red)
• Four "Reds"
   

Sharing Guide Results

The Guide provides sensitive intelligence about publishers and broadcasters. To protect the outlets, FIRE

• only shares the evaluation of "cleared" outlets, those that have been given a chance at fair comment—19 of 20 outlets as of early December, 2024.
• tries to share the information only with recipients who use it for public-interest reporting in accord with FIRE’s mission, and for no other purposes. We screen accordingly.

With that in mind, we share the Guide confidentially with two constituents as follows:

1. Freelance reporters may receive a detailed version of the Guide—including one-paragraph evaluations of each outlet—by becoming a Guide “participant,” a reporter who contributes intelligence to the Guide, via webform here.
2. Other journalism professionals and members of the public may request the Guide here.

The Guide will be updated periodically with new intelligence (more on Guide criteria and methods here).
 

Guide Scope and Purpose

The FIRE Guide to Freelancer Protection does not provide legal advice.

It uses three years of hands-on experience to examine specific evidence on how outlets approach a specific contracting practice—written promises against defamation exposure.

Any independent contractor needs a promise in writing. Freelance reporters are no exception (any more than staff reporters are).

If an outlet does not promise to take responsibility for a story at the time of commission, the reporter of the story may be burdened with untenable costs and anxiety about exposure. Any prudent freelancer may reasonably balk when the words on the page will not let them rule out mortgaging their house for a sensitive story.

But that is not just a private problem. It is a public-interest problem.

The elusive promise—the outlet essentially vowing to take responsibility for the story—can naturally influence whether and how aggressively freelancers may pursue investigations. The exposure on the page sends an unhelpful signal, a clear incentive to avoid lines of inquiry in the fullest investigative tradition, "without fear or favor"—or to abandon stories outright.

Nobody should want that, certainly not the outlets serving the public.

Too often any contract negotiation happens only late in the process, after significant "speculative" reporting and a substantial emotional and financial investment in the outcome. That can bring pressure to please overworked editors, finish the story, get paid, and recoup resources invested in earning the commission.

The Guide offers a tool for everybody. It provides the first-ever body of reliable intelligence on liability practices across multiple outlets, in advance, to facilitate comparison.

By transparently alerting freelancers to competing liability practices, the Guide informs not only placement of stories but also investment in proposing them. The result for freelancers: less time, uncertainty, and sunk costs—and more confidence, bandwidth, and energy for fearless careful reporting.

But the Guide also provides incentives for outlets to more productively engage freelancers, something that many are looking to do. Publishers and broadcasters want careful impactful reporting as much as their audience does, as much as anyone in a democracy does. The outlets recognize that freelancers are part of the solution and deserve a sound contract.

By describing practices, the Guide highlights forward-looking outlets, clarifies acceptable treatment, reinforces basic standards, and provides incentives for outlets to adhere to the standards in everybody's interest—the freelancers',  the public's, and ultimately their own.