Fixers assist foreign journalists by arranging transportation, lodging, meals, and interviews. They use their local connections and language skills to help journalists get stories. However, working as a fixer can be dangerous due to reprisals from their communities. Journalists exchange information about good fixers and respect their input. Some fixers become journalists themselves.
A fixer is someone who offers assistance to foreign journalists who are trying to get a story. The repairers use their experience and local contacts to pave the way for their employers and many receive a high rate of pay, especially when compared to locally available wages. For traveling journalists, fixers are essential, because without a fixer it can be very difficult to get a story or connect with the people of a country.
The services offered by a fixer are quite diverse. At a minimum, a fixer arranges transportation, lodging and meals and uses local connections to track people down. Fixers also translate or find translators who speak obscure dialects and work to arrange interviews and visits to various sites for their employers. If a fixer is not available, a journalist may find it difficult to get the information they need, and journalists may be endangered due to a lack of available cultural guidance.
Working as a repairman can be quite dangerous. Fixers are sometimes perceived as workers for the enemy due to their cooperation with journalists, and this can make them subject to reprisals in their communities. As many journalists acknowledge, once they get their stories, they may walk away, but the fixers stay behind. Cases of kidnapping, murder and extortion of fixers have been documented in some regions of the world, and in some cases, kidnapped fixers have been used as a tool to force news crews out of a country.
Some attempts have been made to protect fixers, as journalists recognize the importance of good fixers and want to be able to work with them again. Journalists tend to exchange information with each other about which repairers are the best to work with, and there is a growing trend to respect the opinion and input of repairers much more. For example, when a fixer says a place is too dangerous to visit, a reporter may look for another way to get the story, as opposed to the past, when reporters would have insisted on making the trip anyway.
In some cases, the fixers have even become journalists themselves, after being inspired by their employers. During the Iraq war, many fixers became journalists by accident, as journalists found themselves unable to move freely around the country. As they cooled off in hotel rooms and lodgings, their fixers took photographs, gave interviews, and engaged in other news reporting, taking the material back to their employers to be written up and published.
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