Why journalists risk all

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”

Mexico – It’s more dangerous than you think... for journalists

Finally some one is paying attention to the growing power of the drug cartels in Mexico.

Several years back the SPJ joined with other journalism groups around the world to raise concerns about the number of journalists being killed or intimidated by organized crime forces along the U.S.-Mexican border.

In the past 8 years - as the IFJ statment below points out - 24 journalists have been killed.

Former IJC co-chair Roberty Buckman reported a couple of years ago on the intimidation of border journalists.

Newspaper buildings were attacked with bombs and drive by shootings.

The families of journalists along the border - even those who just handled the police blotter beat - were threatened.

Mexico is the most dangerous place for journalists in this hemisphere.

The SPJ once stood with the IAPA, the IFJ and other groups in not only offering words of encouragement to our colleagues in Mexico but we also called on the U.S. government to do more to pressure Mexico to bring the criminals to trial.

To their credit, the Mexican govenrment has been waging a large-scale war against the drug lords.

The latest victim is the national leader of that battle.

Edgar Eusebio Millan Gomez was killed outside his home in Mexico City May 7.

The shooting clearly marks a new phase in the war against the drug lords of Mexico. A war that has been going on for years but whose victims were hundreds of unnamed people along the border and a couple dozen reporters. Too bad no one bothered to give these people's deaths front page coverage.

The Washington Post and CNN stories on the Gomez shooting talked about the growing problem and the efforts to get the druggies under control. Yet nowhere in their stories was even a mention that the main reason we know so much about what the drug barons of Mexico are doing is because of the work of brave journalists -- some of whom were killed becuase of that work.

Would it have been so hard to mention that 24 journalists were killed and anothuer 8 reporters are missing because of the drug lords?

Hell, I will bet damn few American journalists -- except for a handful -- know how dangerous Mexico is for our profession.

Maybe we can't get folks in our profession to understand the links between Main Street and the rest of the world thanks to the bean counter mentality of local, local, local. But local now includes the world.

Does anyone really think the drugs these guys in Mexco process are being sold to Mexican in Mexico?

We owe a great debt to the brave journalists in Mexico who are risking their lives to expose the criminal society taking hold along our border. We also owe a debt to the Mexican government that is trying to get rid of this vermin.

Too bad it takes the dramatic shooting of a prominent figure to finally get the story up front.

How much you want to bet there will be little or no follow up in the American media?

Dan Kubiske

Statement by the International Federation of Journalists

May 08, 2008

IFJ and FEPALC Call for Investigation into Disappearance of Mexican Journalist

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and its regional organization, FEPALC, today called on Mexican authorities to launch a full investigation into the disappearance of Jorge Carrasco Taracena, a journalist and reporter working for the television channel Televisa.

Carrasco Taracena was last seen on April 30, according to Televisa. He usually covered crime, police news and other local issues for the channel during the nighttime and early morning hours.

“Carrasco Taracena joins a list of at least 24 other dead and eight missing journalists in Mexico in the last eight years,” said Gregorio Salazar, Director of the IFJ Latin America Office, “a country which, in this sense, has shown the bleakest outlook for journalism on our continent.”

Recently an international joint mission of press freedom organizations and journalists visited Mexico to investigate the challenges journalists face as they are increasingly the victims of organized crime, corruption and official failure to punish their murderers. Journalists there also need more support from professional groups, other media and civil society to fight against the impunity that those responsible for attacks on their colleagues enjoy.

“The grave fears for what has happened to Jorge Carrasco,” said Manuel Méndez, president of FEPALC and a member of the Mexico mission, “come in a country, where the number of killed and missing journalists is not only the greatest in Latin America but also raises questions about the lack of alarm that official institutions are showing.”

The IFJ and FEPALC said they will not cease in their efforts until they can reverse the trend that has made Mexico one of the most dangerous countries for journalists in the world.

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