Freelance journalist

A freelance journalist is a Journaliste remunerated by the task (for example with the number of characters or pages for a writer, at the duration in the audio-visual one, the number of images for a photographer…). A freelance journalist can collaborate in one or more media.

Paid versus freelance journalist

In France, the freelance journalist is an employee and is thus not a Freelance. It profits in theory from the corresponding rights definite by the labor regulation and the collective agreement of the journalists (paid vacations, insurance unemployment, retirement, professional training, thirteenth month, right to the clause of conscience and transfer…). This fastening with a statute of employee is single in his kind in the world, as the investigation of the International federation of the journalists shows it realized in 2003. This presumption of work contract of the journalist freelance journalist is given in the French right by the subparagraph associated to the article L. 761-2 of the labor regulation by the law n° 74-630 of July 4th, 1974, said law Cressard: “Any convention by which a press company ensures itself, realizing remuneration, the assistance of a professional journalist within the meaning of the first subparagraph of this article is supposed to be a work contract. This presumption remains whatever the mode and the amount of remuneration as well as the qualification given to convention by the parts. ”

However, these rights are not always respected and the Jurisprudence is sometimes contradictory.

That they are titular chart of press or without chart, the situation of the freelance journalists can be of an extreme precariousness, as many testimonys of signatories of the petition show it “Freelance journalists in anger”.

The disadvantage not to be paid

With the Quebec and in the remainder of the Canada, the problem is more still shouting, owing to the fact that the freelance journalist, because it is not paid within the meaning of the Labor regulation, does not profit from any the protections acquired with the paid one: no the paid non-working vacation, not of insurance-accident or health insurances provided by certain employers, and especially, not of access to the unemployment insurance when a contract ends. Those which succeed in obtaining contracts of a few weeks or a few months (mainly in tele research) obtain blow fixed wages during one limited duration, but those which live only of contracts at piece-rates (the standard, out of written press) do not have any legal protection.

In addition, in France, in Quebec, in the remainder of Canada (these the last two markets are very different), in the United States and in several other countries, the problem is amplified by the fact that the basic tariffs with the measuring rod did not increase since a quarter century, sometimes longer still. It results a fall from it from the standard of living, which leads at the beginning of several journalists freelance journalists towards better remunerated employment sectors (public relations, for example).

A problem for the quality of information?

The progression of the measuring rod in the sector of the media raises, moreover, of the questions about the quality of information: a journalist who is paid at piece-rates can follow long-term files with difficulty; he is likely to make surface subjects, because paying, preferably with in-depth surveys; and it is more subjected to arbitrary of the owners, which becomes even thornier as the concentration of the press progresses.

“In the countries where many journalists are employed within the framework of renewable limited time contracts indefinitely, the answers do not dissimulate that the journalists are subjected to pressures so that their articles are less sour, more commercial and imply that the chances of renewal of their contract could be in danger”, reads one in a study of the International federation of the journalists published in 2006.

Those which see in the journalist freelance journalist a simple contractor similar to the others reduce it to an economic actor who has to only negotiate to improve his work conditions. This vision is particularly popular at those which leave the universities. But this vision despizes socio-economic reality (concentration of the press, tariffs cold, absence of social protections, etc). It has in addition as an perverse effect contributing to the retreat of the quality of information, since if some individuals, while negotiating tightened, temporarily manage to improve their work conditions, these improvements are not projected on the remainder of the profession.

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