To Die For
WHY
JOURNALISTS RISK ALL
BY
ADEEL HASSAN
Chris
Hedges was sprinting down a road in the Gaza Strip, just ahead
of some young Palestinians carrying Molotov cocktails whom he
had been interviewing, dodging bullets fired by Israeli soldiers,
when he concluded that he could no longer be a war correspondent.
It was at this moment, in the fall of 2000, after twenty years
of being shot at, shelled, bombed, ambushed, and taken prisoner,
that Hedges, a reporter for The New York Times, made “a
very conscious decision to stop.” Others, like Ian Stewart,
an AP reporter who was shot in the head in 1999 in Sierra Leone,
stopped when they were wounded. The sixteen journalists featured
on the next two pages didn’t get to make that decision. They
lost their lives in Iraq. Which raises the question: If physical
and emotional injuries and death can end such careers, then what
starts them? Why do some journalists risk all?
Perhaps the main motive is simple: “I’ve been a storyteller
my whole life and war is a big story,” says John Laurence,
who covered the Iraq conflict primarily for Esquire and
has covered sixteen wars, beginning with Vietnam. But there are
other reasons, including the need to make a mark. Laurence saw
that in the two other reporters he traveled with in Iraq. One
was on her first big story for a Latin-American newspaper. The
other was a photographer “who came to try and prove himself.”
Stewart, for one, did not set out to become a war correspondent
when he graduated from journalism school in 1991. He reported
from more than forty countries and covered the wars in West Africa
in the late 1990s because “it was the hottest story then.”
Shortly after the coup in Sierra Leone, he and Myles Tierney,
an AP Television News producer, were ambushed by rebels in their
car. Tierney died instantly; Stewart was given a 20 percent chance
of living. Today, his left arm is paralyzed. Stewart says that
many war reporters, including himself, are in denial about the
danger. “It happens,” he says, “but it was never
going to happen to you.”
Stewart’s uncle, Brian Stewart, one of Canada’s most
accomplished foreign correspondents, helped instill in him the
belief that journalists are at the front line of history. Michael
Kelly, the late editor of The Atlantic Monthly and columnist
for The Washington Post, also was drawn to war, at least
in part, as a matter of conviction. “He was an advocate of
this war,” says John Fox Sullivan, publisher of the Atlantic.
“So he really felt a responsibility to cover it.” Kelly
was killed when the Humvee in which he was riding came under enemy
fire and swerved into a canal. Lieutenant Colonel Rock Marcone
told the National Journal: “Mike begged me to get
him up front for the assault on the airfield, and I finally agreed.
That was what Michael wanted to do. He was going to get his story.”
Kelly must have understood something of what Hedges gets at in
his new book, War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, when
he explains that reporters get addicted to the emotional intensity.
“There’s a close-knit fraternity of war correspondents,”
Hedges says. “Courage is very highly looked upon. You earn
your way into it.”
Not all war reporters are looking to be part of this mostly male
fraternity. Judith Matloff describes herself as “accidental
conflict reporter.” In the early 1980s, Matloff was doing
research in Mexico and began writing free-lance pieces. She joined
Reuters, and eventually covered forty-seven countries, half of
which were in conflict, as Africa bureau chief for The Christian
Science Monitor. “People who are in this for the thrill,
that’s the wrong motivation,” she says. “War is
a huge part of the human experience.” To cover it, she says,
“You have to have a big heart, moral vision, and never lose
sight of your humanity.”
But is it worth it, after all? “After 9/11, everyone in the
newsroom was fighting to go to Afghanistan,” says Maria Ramirez,
twenty-five, a contributor to El Mundo, Spain’s second
largest daily. But then one El Mundo reporter was killed
in Afghanistan, another in Israel, and later a third in Iraq,
and suddenly there were no more volunteers. “There is no
story worth a life,” she says.
Yet the world does need to see and understand its armed conflicts.
After covering World War II, the CBS correspondent Eric Sevareid
told his radio listeners, “The war must be seen to be believed,
but it must be lived to be understood.” John Laurence agrees.
“If no one was risking their lives for this war, then the
public wouldn’t be informed,” he says. “If we’re
not willing to do that, then the idea of a free press has quite
a defect, and democracy would really cease to exist. There have
to be some risks worth dying for. Being a good reporter is one
of them.”
Read
about the sixteen journalists who died in Iraq.
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Adeel Hassan is an assistant editor at CJR.
