For specific guidance on applying for and using The FIRE Guide to Freelancer Protection, visit here. To apply, click button. 

General overview of the Guide below.

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Funded by a $50,000 grant from craig newmark philanthropies, the pilot FIRE Guide to Freelancer Protection is highlighting one key variable in freelance investigative reporting by evaluating whether publishers and broadcasters will protect freelancers from liability—and promise to do so.

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

By alerting freelancers to particular practices in advance, the Guide will have immediate practical benefit: It will enable more informed decision-making by the reporters, invaluably reducing sunk time and costs.

In the process, the Guide will also recognize forward-looking outlets like Science magazine—as well as their less protective counterparts. It will do so with concrete, nuanced intelligence based on vetted experience.

Over time, this intelligence will help clarify acceptable treatment, leading to basic standards for the field. With the clarity, outlets will have incentives to adhere to the standards.

The Guide will evaluate relevant intelligence to place publishers and broadcasters in one of three categories:

• Green List—approved by FIRE: known to take responsibility for stories. Sufficiently protective of freelance investigative reporting

• Yellow List—not yet approved by FIRE: inconsistent practices or incomplete information, with hints of progress. Getting there

• Red List—not approved by FIRE: consistently unprotective. Not there and no progress

The evaluation uses objective and evidence-based criteria that hold any publisher or broadcaster to the same standard as their peers, allowing them to meet the criteria if they choose to. 

The pilot Guide relies on three main sources of evidence:  

• documents derived from FIRE’s experience facilitating stories with particular outlets  

• responses to a standard questionnaire that FIRE submits to outlets 

• documentation and intelligence contributed privately and confidentially by freelance reporters.  

To vet the intelligence for fairness and accuracy, FIRE is using standard reporting methods, including rigorous sourcing and exculpatory interviews with outlets and opportunities to comment. The evaluation will also be updated frequently to reflect changes in an outlet's liability practices, particularly improvements.

As of August 2024, FIRE had completed initial evaluations of 20 major outlets. We expect to release the results selectively by September, 2024, in the following forms:

• To the general public: a list of evaluated outlets on FIRE's website—and the criteria by which they are evaluated

• To interested parties (relevant grantmakers and non-participant journalists): the Red, Yellow, Green category associated with particular publishers or broadcasters, on written request 

• To participants (designated freelance reporters): the full detailed version of evaluations

The pilot project initially relies on more than two years of accumulated data from FIRE’s Legal Consultancies, which has already documented freelance-related liability practices at more than two dozen outlets.

For the pilot, FIRE has asked numerous freelancers to share their own experiences negotiating liability with outlets. Reporters who contribute to the evaluation effort are receiving the detailed results of the evaluations, for their use. (Identities of contributors are being kept confidential.)

Freelancers interested in participating in the FIRE Guide to Freelancer Protection by contributing intelligence to the project may apply below—or learn more here.