It’s usually bad news when the reporter is the story, and it happens more and more often as the world’s flashpoints become increasingly dangerous and lawless. To do an effective job in those conditions, journalists cannot avoid putting themselves in situations where they might be kidnapped, wounded or killed.

At the end of last year Colin Freeman, chief foreign correspondent of The Sunday Telegraph, and the photographer José Cendón were kidnapped by men they had hired to protect them from just that threat. They were heading for the airport to leave Somalia after reporting the wave of piracy and hostage-taking there. They were held in a succession of caves for six weeks before a deal to free them was done.

Is it worth it? The question is always asked when such incidents occur. Why should reporters put their lives and freedom at risk for the sake of a good story? Would the world really be much worse off if we remained ignorant of what was going on in its most benighted and treacherous corners? And aren’t there more sensible ways of earning a living?

By chance, Freeman had addressed those questions, as far as his own career choice was concerned, in a thought-provoking book published a few weeks before his Somali misadventure. In The Curse of the Al Dulaimi Hotel (Monday Books) he tells engagingly how, at the end of 2002, he was working as a reporter at the London Evening Standard, doorstepping celebrities and developing a speciality in covering the roadworks that had begun to spread like a rash all over the capital.

He did not rush into it. He spent several months preparing for the trip, in particular taking expert advice on personal security. By the time he flew to Amman, from where he would travel by road to Baghdad, Saddam Hussein had been toppled, along with his gigantic statue. So Freeman, then 33 years old, had missed the war and moreover had no firm commissions from newspapers or broadcasters, because most of them had staffers on the spot. Yet he persevered and gradually earned enough to move from the cheapest hotels in town to the marginally less grotty. By the time he took his first home leave at the end of the summer he had become a streetwise Baghdad hand and survived several alarming incidents.

“Eight months previously,” he writes, “I’d been on the brink of an early mid-life crisis, my career going nowhere. Now, despite all the risks and uncertainty, it had all worked out. I’d earned enough money to pay my bills and I’d never felt happier. Working in a lawless, messed-up country, staying in a shitty hotel… had filled some oddshaped void in my life.”

Freeman stayed in Baghdad for the best part of three years, by which time the security situation had deteriorated to the extent that journalists could leave their hotels only rarely, after taking the most elaborate precautions. It was impossible to know whom to trust. Men hired as translators or bodyguards could well be double agents, working for one or other of the terror gangs that targeted Westerners. Several of his acquaintances were killed or kidnapped, but he was lucky: the worst that befell him was a bullet in his bottom, leaving a scar that immensely boosted his status on the London party circuit.

Although he writes lyrically of the freedom inherent in freelancing, he returned gladly to London to accept a staff job on The Sunday Telegraph. “I jumped at it. I had the feeling that, sooner or later, the law of averages was going to catch up with me.” And so it did, in Somalia last November. “For the first time in six joyful years of foreign reporting,” he wrote after his release, “I felt not like a swashbuckling adventurer but a reckless, selfish fool.”

Which takes us back to that question: is it worth it? In Freeman’s particular case, it was. By taking carefully calculated risks he escaped the drudgery of the Standard’s roadworks watch, overcame his mid-life crisis and has become a notable foreign correspondent. His six weeks of captivity were hellish, but they are now a memory and, to state it cynically, have enhanced his professional credentials. No doubt a ransom was paid, but not by him.

What about those who didn’t make it, though – the reporters who, despite being equally careful, have lost their lives, often horrifically? They are martyrs to the cause of keeping the world informed. But is that ultimately a cause worth laying down a life for? On balance I think yes, and not just because any other answer would do a disservice to the victims. I suspect most journalists would agree with me. But it’s a close call; and each new incident makes it harder to argue the case.