If journalism’s business model is so broken that it can’t find a way to get Christian Stephen to work then I really think we have a problem.
Stephen is a one-off. Having run away from home at the age of 15 to film the riots on the West Bank, he has since covered conflict in Somalia, Afghanistan, Gaza, the Central African Republic, Iraq, Syria and other places blighted by armed fighting. He is still only 22.
He has dedicated his entire young adult life to studying the human condition in the midst of war and it has given him a unique perspective on the world.
He is also a highly talented and self-taught videographer. As a teenager, he took himself into the anarchy of Iraq to make a remarkable Vice documentary, ‘The Vicar of Baghdad’, highlighting the courage of local Anglican clergyman Andrew White as he tended to parishioners. More recently Stephen has become something of a figurehead for technology-driven innovation, after making 2015’s haunting ‘Welcome to Aleppo’, the first depiction of a war zone made in 360 video and a project that required him to spend hours dodging the bullets of snipers who hunted him like a deer.
He is not a mere thrill-seeker but someone who is largely driven by a desire to give a voice to the forgotten victims of war. “I’m incurably, hopelessly obsessed with talking to people in places that people don’t usually go to,” he says.
Stephen is highly articulate, with a deep understanding of the geo-politics of the Middle East, as he demonstrated in a long interview with Larry King on Russia Today (RT), shortly after ‘Welcome to Aleppo’ was released by news site RYOT (now part of the Huffington Post). “Great interview,” King purred admiringly at the end of the discussion, and the veteran broadcaster has done a few.
Many experienced war correspondents find it harder to venture to the most dangerous hot spots as they grow older and have families and other responsibilities. For Stephen, despite a “rough” experience in Syria that challenged his resolve, this remains his way of life.
And yet for all his talents and courage, he is not sure where his next commission is coming from, or even if there is a demand from news organisations for the type of insight his bravery can bring.
“Finding funding for journalism is incredibly difficult unless you have got reasons that are handed down from (a news outlet) on high and told exactly which two-and-a-half minute viral Facebook video they want you to make,” he says.
He self-funded the making of ‘The Vicar of Baghdad’ and has been living almost hand-to-mouth ever since. “Any money that I have made in the last five years has gone back into trying to get out and do more stuff,” he says. “You would like to be able to have a producer come up and go, ‘You can go here, here or here…’ but all the practicalities and logistics have always proved hard.”
‘It would make my year to get $5,000 to cover refugee stories’
Given the news media’s relationship to an entertainment industry worth multiple billions, it seems a shame that audiences are being denied this frontline journalism, which lacks nothing in terms of compelling human drama. “People are getting hundreds of thousands to do strange animations or porn or games and it would make my year to get $5,000 to cover refugee stories but it just doesn’t happen – people who are financing this just aren’t interested,” says Stephen, a Londoner.
He operates through an independent multimedia organisation called Freelance Society, which he co-founded in 2013 with Texas-based Dylan Roberts, who is the chief executive. It has a noble mission: “To source, gather, package and deliver stories from the darkest and furthest reaches of the world. Our exploration of the internal and external human condition is overtaken only by our belief that every man, woman and child should have a voice, no matter how hard to reach.”
Stephen, it appears, wants to be the guy who makes it through, against all odds, to reach those that think they’ve been forgotten by the world. “I dislike fire-fights and air strikes – that sounds absurd to say out loud, of course you do – but I don’t get a high off adrenaline and I don’t chase it whatsoever. My addiction as it were is finding people who never thought that anyone would come and speak to them about what they are going through and asking them how they are doing.”
Freelance Society has embraced 360 filming and a fine example of its work is Roberts’s portrayal of Haitian cities and villages flattened by Hurricane Matthew last October. The film, made for Discovery’s video streaming platform Seeker VR, places the viewer in the midst of the destruction faced by communities still recovering from the effects of the 2010 earthquake. Roberts lives up to Freelance Society’s mission by highlighting the plight of rural people who have not been reached by global aid organisations distributing relief.
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Source: Thedrum