tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/war-reporting-7856/articleswar reporting – The Conversation2024-02-01T19:05:28Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2216092024-02-01T19:05:28Z2024-02-01T19:05:28ZAustralian media’s Instagram posts on Gaza war have an anti-Palestine bias. That has real-world consequences<p>It’s well documented that news media influences our behaviour in all manner of ways, from how much <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1477-9552.2010.00266.x">meat we buy</a> to our attitudes towards <a href="https://academic.oup.com/her/article/30/2/359/702489">exercise</a>.</p>
<p>Journalism does not merely hold a mirror up to reality, as some <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Whole_World_Is_Watching.html?id=00iwHPO73mkC&redir_esc=y">have argued</a>. It creates versions of reality. With every decision of which story to include and exclude, which image to show or not show, even which grammatical choice is made, our impressions are sculpted. This is especially the case with the Israel-Gaza war.</p>
<p>Research has shown, for example, that exposure to news media can induce <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0174606">Islamophobia</a>. There’s also evidence of historical news media bias against <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/17506352231178148">Palestinians</a> and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10345329.2007.12036423">Muslims</a>.</p>
<p>As the leading organisation tracking and tackling Islamophobia in Australia through its digital reporting platform, the Islamophobia Register Australia commissioned this research to assess whether there was media imbalance in the present-day coverage of the Israel-Gaza war. <a href="https://islamophobia.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/IRA_2023-Israel-Gaza-War-Report_Final-22DEC.pdf">Our analysis</a> found a pro-Israel bias across the surveyed outlets.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-islamophobia-and-anti-palestinian-racism-are-manufactured-through-disinformation-216119">How Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism are manufactured through disinformation</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A flammable media environment</h2>
<p>The impact news media can have on our attitudes became especially pertinent when the Israel–Gaza war began on October 7 2023, and with it, sustained media coverage. From that date, reports of antisemitism in Australia <a href="https://www.news.com.au/national/australian-jews-suffer-738-per-cent-spike-in-antisemitic-abuse/news-story/33ed1f60ff568d31ce399b325bbc03a2">increased 738%</a> and Islamophobia <a href="https://islamophobia.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Website_Islamophobia-Register_28-NOV-Press-Release.docx.pdf">increased 1,300%</a>. </p>
<p>Australians brought their concerns to the Islamophobia Register Australia as anti-Palestinian racism is a <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-923X.13166">specific and documented</a> form of Islamophobia.</p>
<p>Our analysis was a focused, introductory study with the aim of looking for disparities in reporting on the Israel-Gaza war on the Instagram accounts of six of Australia’s most followed news outlets: ABC News, The Daily Aus, The Australian, News.com.au, 9News and The Daily Telegraph. We looked at their posts on the topic between October 7 and November 7 2023. We chose Instagram as the field of analysis, as the <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3873260">latest global research</a> found social media is the main way people of all ages come across news online.</p>
<p>These outlets span commercial and publicly owned, legacy media and new media, digital-only and print-based, and national and state-based media. Outlets also needed to have more than 100,000 followers on their verified Instagram account. The amount of posts assessed varied depending on how many each outlet had posted. News.com.au had only four posts in the time period, while ABC News had published 63. </p>
<p>This is not a definitive analysis of potential bias in the Australian media. Its scope is small and doesn’t account for the outlets’ reporting on the Israel-Gaza war more broadly. This report is, however, an initial look that highlights some common areas of imbalance or inequality in the current approach.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/israel-now-ranks-among-the-worlds-leading-jailers-of-journalists-we-dont-know-why-theyre-behind-bars-221411">Israel now ranks among the world’s leading jailers of journalists. We don't know why they're behind bars</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Humanising the victims of war</h2>
<p>We focused on language because it’s part of the “<a href="https://ojs.aut.ac.nz/pacific-journalism-review/article/view/779">covert operations of war</a>”. While we assessed all posts about the conflict during the time period (not just posts with an explicit human angle), we measured them on how humanising they were because of the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1530-2415.2005.00056.x">known impact it has</a> on the way audiences interpret conflict. </p>
<p>One specific tool we developed to assess the treatment of people in coverage was what we called the “humanising test”. To meet a minimum standard of humanising coverage, news outlets’ Instagram posts needed to include at least two of the three following criteria in their mentions of Israelis and Palestinians:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>provide at least a first name for the person</p></li>
<li><p>show their face, and/or</p></li>
<li><p>use at least some of their own words (translations were ok).</p></li>
</ul>
<p>This test appears easy to pass. Outlets only needed a single post that met the criteria to be successful. However, only one of the six accounts passed the test for Palestinians, while five of the six passed for Israelis.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/CzAuMbbLQQA/?hl=en","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>Five of the six news media accounts did not include a single post that passed the humanising test about Palestinians. ABC News was the only account to provide any posts about Palestinians that passed. The Australian had ten posts about Israelis that passed the humanising test, and not one post that passed the test for Palestinians.</p>
<h2>The power of grammar</h2>
<p>We also investigated the use of “voice”, specifically the active, passive and middle voice. </p>
<p>While the distinction between active and passive voice may seem like something only your high school English teacher cares about, it matters a lot more than just clarifying prose. It highlights who an actor is in a sentence, which really matters in discussions about war. </p>
<p>Even more important is the less-discussed “middle voice”. The middle voice exists beyond the active and passive voice, and when used in a sentence, removes any possibility of an actor causing an event. </p>
<p>In an example from our study, a post by The Daily Telegraph is captioned “bombs are falling less than 100m from where [the family] are sheltering” on the Gaza strip. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/CyUZLkHMtl_/?hl=en","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>Note the word “fall” used when discussing the “bombs falling” on the family. Using the word “fall” with “bomb” as opposed, for example, to “dropped”, signifies to the audience that there was no external agent involved in the bombing. If the word “dropped” had been used, even if using the passive voice without naming the Israeli army, there remains an understanding that somebody dropped the bombs, even if they are unnamed. </p>
<p>But this use of the middle voice by saying the bombs “fall” implies that the bombs fell spontaneously from the sky without human intervention, as if it were a natural phenomenon. There is no attribution as to where the bombs came from, nor who is responsible for their presence. Thus, even the suggestion of Israel as the agent of the bombs is erased in the mind of the audience. </p>
<p>The middle voice was never used for any posts about attacks on Israel, but was used by five of six accounts when reporting on attacks on Gaza. </p>
<p>Five (ABC News, 9News, The Australian, The Daily Telegraph and News.com.au) of six accounts showed bias against Palestinians in their use of the active, middle and passive voices. Meanwhile, all five accounts were more likely to use the active voice when discussing attacks against Israel. Overall, the passive voice was used more often to describe what was happening in Gaza than in Israel. </p>
<h2>Why does all this matter?</h2>
<p><em>So what?</em> you may think. But this is important, because these grammatical choices shepherd the audience – you and I – into a way of understanding the parties in the Israel-Gaza war. </p>
<p>Grammatical choices are more subtle than blatantly calling one side “the victim” or “human”, and the other side “the aggressor” and “inhuman”. Such framing therefore slips past the audience unnoticed, but creates a reflexive perception that lingers in the audience’s mind.</p>
<p>Subsequent analysis internationally has found Australian news media is not alone in its biased treatment against Palestinians. Analysis of the media in <a href="https://breachmedia.ca/palestinian-deaths-canadian-newspapers-data/">Canada</a> and the <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/01/09/newspapers-israel-palestine-bias-new-york-times/">United States</a> found the same imbalance in language we identified. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/war-in-gaza-an-ethicist-explains-why-you-shouldnt-turn-to-social-media-for-information-about-the-conflict-or-to-do-something-about-it-218912">War in Gaza: An ethicist explains why you shouldn't turn to social media for information about the conflict or to do something about it</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The discrepancies and dehumanisation we and others have found are not merely semantic squabbles. Five of the six outlets we studied (all bar The Daily Aus) were unbalanced against Palestinians in their Instagram posts in at least one of the three categories we assessed (along with humanisation and grammar, we also looked at <a href="https://islamophobia.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/IRA_2023-Israel-Gaza-War-Report_Final-22DEC.pdf">descriptive language</a>).</p>
<p>The media’s reporting on the Israel-Gaza war matters because it shapes the way the audience views the people involved in the war. These perceptions are fostered online and can translate into the way Australians view and treat each other in real life. </p>
<p>Palestinian war victims are being systematically dehumanised by large and influential parts of the media to their substantial audiences. When the media is the primary prism through which people understand the war, it must be held to high standards, and to account.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221609/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Susan Carland was commissioned by the Islamophobia Register Australia to conduct this research and received research funding to complete this work. Susan Carland sits on the board of the Islamophobia Register Australia as an academic advisor. She was not part of any decision making that led to her being commissioned to conduct this research.
Susan Carland has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council and the Churchill Trust to conduct research into Islamophobia in Australia
</span></em></p>Language has been dubbed “the covert operations of war”, such is the power it holds in shaping public opinion. Here’s what we found about the way Australian media has been framing the conflict.Susan Carland, Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) fellow, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2210422024-01-25T16:06:00Z2024-01-25T16:06:00ZGaza: high numbers of journalists are being killed but it’s hard to prove they’re being targeted<p><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/17/al-jazeeras-gaza-bureau-chief-wael-dahdouh-in-qatar-for-medical-treatment">Wael Dahdouh</a>, one of the most well-known faces of Palestinian journalism in the Gaza conflict, has this week started medical treatment in Qatar. Dahdouh was wounded in December in an Israeli drone strike that killed his camera operator.</p>
<p>Al-Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief has also lost his wife, two children and a grandchild in an Israeli raid that hit his home. This was followed by the loss of another son <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/7/hamza-son-of-al-jazeeras-wael-dahdouh-killed-in-israeli-attack-in-gaza">Hamza, also an Al-Jazeera journalist</a>, when his car was hit by an Israeli missile while on a reporting trip. </p>
<p>In the current Gaza conflict, the number of <a href="https://cpj.org/2024/01/journalist-casualties-in-the-israel-gaza-conflict/#:%7E:text=CPJ%20is%20investigating%20all%20reports,began%20gathering%20data%20in%201992.">journalists killed</a> and injured continues to rise. One of the latest, as this article went to press, was <a href="https://cpj.org/2024/01/journalist-casualties-in-the-israel-gaza-conflict/">Yazan al-Zuweidi</a>, a Palestinian journalist and camera operator for the broadcaster Al-Ghad, who was killed on January 14 in an Israeli airstrike in northern Gaza.</p>
<p>Now many international bodies, politicians and non-governmental organisations are asking the inevitable question: “Are these killings targeted?” These organisations, including <a href="https://rsf.org/en/rsf-files-second-complaint-icc-war-crimes-against-journalists-gaza-7-october#:%7E:text=RSF%20has%20urged%20the%20ICC,7%20October%2C%20currently%20totalling%2066.">Reporters Without Borders</a> (RSF) and the Committee to Project Journalists (CPJ), are calling for inquiries and <a href="https://cpj.org/2023/10/cpj-calls-for-investigation-into-killing-of-palestinian-journalist-mohammad-el-salhi-in-gaza/">investigations</a>, but will these succeed in getting to the truth or securing prosecutions? </p>
<p>According to a <a href="https://cpj.org/2024/01/journalist-casualties-in-the-israel-gaza-conflict/#:%7E:text=CPJ%20is%20investigating%20all%20reports,began%20gathering%20data%20in%201992.">CPJ report</a> published on January 20, 83 journalists and media workers have been confirmed dead since October 2023, of which 76 were Palestinian, four were Israeli and three were Lebanese. The CPJ notes the data does not so far establish that “all of these journalists were covering the conflict at the time of their deaths”. However, it is including them all in its count as it “investigates the circumstances”.</p>
<p>RSF’s secretary-general, <a href="https://rsf.org/en/rsf-s-2023-round-45-journalists-killed-line-duty-worldwide-drop-despite-tragedy-gaza#:%7E:text=According%20to%20the%20annual%20round,war%20in%20the%20Middle%20East.">Christophe Deloire</a>, said: “Journalists are paying a heavy price. We’ve noted that the number of journalists killed in connection with their work is very high: at least 13 in such a tiny territory. We have filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC) to establish the facts and to what point journalists were knowingly targeted.”</p>
<p>The first incident of journalists being targeted that came to international attention was on October 13, on Lebanon’s southern border with Israel. Reports of cross-border shelling had drawn a group of seven journalists to the area. <a href="https://www.reuters.com/graphics/ISRAEL-LEBANON/JOURNALIST/akveabxrzvr/">According to Reuters</a>, this group was hit by two shells fired in quick succession from Israel. Reuters video journalist Issam Abdallah was killed and AFP photographer Christina Assi was badly wounded and had to have her leg amputated.</p>
<p>At the time, <a href="https://rsf.org/en/rsf-video-investigation-death-reuters-reporter-issam-abdallah-lebanon-journalists-vehicle-was">RSF said</a>: “The reporters were not collateral victims of the shooting. One of their vehicles marked ‘press’ was targeted, and it was also clear that the group stationed next to it was journalists.” </p>
<p>Following the incident, Reuters and AFP conducted investigations. <a href="https://www.reuters.com/graphics/ISRAEL-LEBANON/JOURNALIST/akveabxrzvr/">Reuters spoke</a> to “more than 30 government and security officials, military experts, forensic investigators, lawyers, medics and witnesses to piece together a detailed account of the incident”. Mobile phone footage from eight media outlets was examined and shrapnel was sent for analysis to the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research. </p>
<p><a href="https://rsf.org/en/killing-issam-abdallah-lebanon-four-new-investigations-confirm-rsf-s-conclusions-and-reveal-israeli">Further investigations</a> were carried out by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, which, along with RSF, proposed the attacks be investigated as possible war crimes. The Lebanese prime minister, Najib Mikati, said his government was <a href="https://www.afp.com/en/inside-afp/journalists-killed-and-injured-lebanon-afps-investigation-points-israeli-army">pursuing a complaint</a> filed with the UN security council.</p>
<p>Reuters’ evidence was presented to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), whose international spokesperson <a href="https://www.reuters.com/graphics/ISRAEL-LEBANON/JOURNALIST/akveabxrzvr/">Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hecht</a> said: “We don’t target journalists.” <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/07/journalist-issam-abdallah-killed-by-israeli-tank-firing-in-quick-succession">Israel’s UN envoy, Gilad Erdan,</a> reiterated this point later, saying: “Obviously, we would never want to hit or shoot any journalist that is doing their job. But you know, we’re in a state of war, things might happen.”</p>
<p>While it might be possible to prove this particular case, backed by the investigative resources of international news organisations, it is going to be a lot more difficult to provide the same level of detail from within the enclosed Gaza Strip, where it is increasingly difficult to gather evidence or even operate as a journalist.</p>
<p>When questioned about the high number of journalist deaths by UK radio station LBC’s Lewis Goodall, the former ambassador and Israeli spokesperson <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6ufnNJjckg">Mark Regev</a> avoided answering by asserting instead that: “Israel is the only country in the region that protects and defends the freedom of the press.” </p>
<h2>Prosecuting cases</h2>
<p>So, what is the likelihood of these Gaza deaths ever being prosecuted? A previous case illustrates the difficulties.</p>
<p>A year before this latest Gaza conflict, in May 2022, Al-Jazeera’s reporter in Palestine <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2023/mar/21/the-killing-of-shireen-abu-akleh-what-one-morning-in-the-west-bank-reveals-about-the-occupation">Shireen Abu Akleh was killed</a>. While covering an Israeli military operation in a refugee camp in the West Bank town of Jenin, Abu Akleh’s reporting team came under fire, despite the fact they were wearing clothing and helmets that clearly marked them out as journalists. </p>
<p>In the immediate aftermath of the killing, <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/05/middleeast/idf-shireen-abu-akleh-investigation-intl/index.html">Israeli officials</a> put out a story that it was likely the dual Palestinian-American citizen was shot by “indiscriminate Palestinian militant gunmen”.</p>
<p>This was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2023/mar/21/the-killing-of-shireen-abu-akleh-what-one-morning-in-the-west-bank-reveals-about-the-occupation">later disproven</a> following the examination of mobile phone footage and investigations by human rights groups, various media companies and the UN. Four months later, the <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/05/middleeast/idf-shireen-abu-akleh-investigation-intl/index.html">IDF admitted</a> there was a “high possibility” that Abu Akleh was shot “accidentally” by an Israeli soldier. Following this, the IDF’s military advocate general’s office said it would not be pursuing <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/05/middleeast/idf-shireen-abu-akleh-investigation-intl/index.html">criminal charges</a> against the soldiers involved. </p>
<p>As killings of journalists continue, local reporters are increasingly the only media left in Gaza. It is out of bounds for most international reporters, except under <a href="https://theconversation.com/gaza-war-reporting-from-the-frontline-of-conflict-has-always-raised-hard-ethical-questions-217570">limited and controlled embedding operations</a> with the IDF. The danger makes it more and more difficult to cover what is going on.</p>
<p>It’s a pattern also seen following the war in Iraq in 2003, and Syria from 2011, when reporting in these locations became too dangerous for international reporters, who relied on local <a href="https://www.academia.edu/41658937/Baghdad_bureaux_an_exploration_of_the_interconnected_world_of_fixers_and_correspondents_at_the_BBC_and_CNN">journalists until eventually</a> it became too difficult for them too. In these places, and increasingly in Gaza, news becomes impossible to get out, and potentially the space for disinformation grows.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221042/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Colleen Murrell receives funding from Coimisiún na Meán to research and write the annual Reuters Digital News Report Ireland (2021-2026)</span></em></p>International press freedom bodies are concerned about the high numbers of deaths of journalists reporting from Gaza.Colleen Murrell, Full Professor in Journalism, Dublin City UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2204182024-01-01T03:26:03Z2024-01-01T03:26:03ZThe world has lost a dissenting voice: Australian journalist John Pilger has died, age 84<p>John Pilger, a giant of journalism born in Australia in 1939, has died at the age of 84, according to a statement released online by his family.</p>
<p>His numerous books and especially his documentaries opened the world’s eyes to the failings, and worse, of governments in many countries – including his birthplace.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1741430497581109422"}"></div></p>
<p>He inspired many journalists, and journalism students, with his willingness to critique the damaging effects on ordinary people’s lives of capitalism and Western countries’ foreign policies, particularly the United States and the United Kingdom.</p>
<p>But his campaigning approach to journalism also regularly provoked controversy. That was partly because of his trenchant dissent from official stances, and partly because in aiming to reach the broadest possible audience, he tended to oversimplify issues and overstate his views.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/more-than-one-journalist-per-day-is-dying-in-the-israel-gaza-conflict-this-has-to-stop-217272">More than one journalist per day is dying in the Israel-Gaza conflict. This has to stop</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘I am, by inclination, anti-authoritarian’</h2>
<p>The English journalist, Auberon Waugh, who clashed with Pilger on more than one occasion, invented the verb “to pilger” which he <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/185430.In_the_Name_of_Justice">defined</a> as “to treat a subject emotionally with generous disregard for inconvenient detail, always in the left-wing cause and always with great indignation”.</p>
<p>Whatever the merits of Waugh’s criticism, they are, in my view, outweighed by the breadth and depth of Pilger’s disclosures in the public interest.</p>
<p>Pilger never hid behind the safety of the “he said, she said” approach to journalism, which New York University professor Jay Rosen has famously <a href="https://pressthink.org/2010/11/the-view-from-nowhere-questions-and-answers/">called</a> the “view from nowhere”.</p>
<p>Pilger, however, rejected the label of crusader, telling Anthony Hayward for his book, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/185430.In_the_Name_of_Justice">In the Name of Justice: The Television Reporting of John Pilger</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I am, by inclination, anti-authoritarian and forever sceptical of anything the agents of power want to tell us. It is my duty, surely, to tell people when they’re being conned or told lies.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1741453972391551380"}"></div></p>
<h2>Telling the stories of ordinary people</h2>
<p>Pilger was <a href="https://johnpilger.com/biography">born in Bondi</a>, Sydney. Like many of his generation, he moved to the UK in the early 1960s and worked for The Daily Mirror, Reuters and ITV’s investigative program World in Action.</p>
<p>He reported on conflicts in Bangladesh, Biafra, Cambodia and Vietnam and was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/dec/31/john-pilger-campaigning-journalist-dies-aged-84">named</a> newspaper journalist of the year in Britain in 1967 and 1979. </p>
<p>He made <a href="https://johnpilger.com/videos">more than 50</a> documentaries. His best known is <a href="https://johnpilger.com/videos/year-zero-the-silent-death-of-cambodia">Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia</a>, which in 1979 revealed that as many as two million of the seven million population of the country had died as a result of genocide or starvation under Pol Pot’s brutal regime.</p>
<p>His documentaries garnered numerous prizes, including the prestigious Richard Dimbleby award for factual reporting, a <a href="https://johnpilger.com/biography">Peabody award</a> for <a href="https://johnpilger.com/videos/cambodia-year-ten">Cambodia: Year Ten</a> and a Best Documentary Emmy <a href="https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/journalist-and-filmmaker-john-pilger-dies-aged-84-20231231-p5eufs.html">award</a> for <a href="https://johnpilger.com/videos/cambodia-the-betrayal">Cambodia: The Betrayal</a>.</p>
<p>He also made several documentaries about Australia, including one in 1985, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0438974/">The Secret Country</a>, about historic and continuing mistreatment of First Nations people that thoroughly irritated the then Labor prime minister, Bob Hawke.</p>
<p>When the US government of George W. Bush reacted to al-Qaeda’s murderous 9/11 terrorist attacks by invading first Afghanistan, in late 2001, then Iraq in March 2003, Pilger made <a href="https://johnpilger.com/videos/breaking-the-silence-truth-and-lies-in-the-war-on-terror">Truth and Lies: Breaking the Silence on the War on Terror</a>. </p>
<p>It sharply criticised not only Bush’s actions but those of the most ardent members of the “coalition of the willing”: UK Labour prime minister, Tony Blair, and Australian coalition prime minister, John Howard.</p>
<p>No doubt, if Pilger was still alive he would condemn the absence of the National Security Committee’s papers from the 2003 cabinet papers<a href="https://theconversation.com/cabinet-papers-2003-howard-government-sends-australia-into-the-iraq-war-217812"> released today</a> by the National Archives of Australia. </p>
<p>They <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/jan/01/australia-went-to-war-in-iraq-based-on-oral-reports-to-cabinet-from-john-howard">show</a> Howard’s cabinet signed off on the controversial – in hindsight disastrous – decision to endorse the Bush administration’s plan to invade Iraq based on “oral reports” from the prime minister, rather than full cabinet submissions.</p>
<p>Pilger wrote or edited 11 books, including <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/tell-me-no-lies-9781407085708">Tell Me No Lies</a>, an anthology of outstanding investigative journalism, and perhaps his best regarded book, <a href="https://johnpilger.com/books/heroes">Heroes</a>, which hewed to what one of his favourite journalists, Martha Gellhorn, called “the view from the ground”. </p>
<p>He did this by telling the stories of ordinary people he had encountered, whether miners in Durham, England, refugees from Vietnam, or American soldiers returning from the Vietnam War – not to parades, but to lives dislocated by the silence and shame surrounding the war’s end.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1741458541356208461"}"></div></p>
<h2>The world has lost a resolutely dissenting voice</h2>
<p>Phillip Knightley, a contemporary of Pilger who was also born in Australia and went to Fleet Street to become a celebrated investigative journalist and author himself, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/185430.In_the_Name_of_Justice">summed up</a> his compatriot’s work in 2000:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>He was certainly among the first to draw international attention to the shameful way in which Australia has treated the Aborigines [sic] […] John has a slightly less optimistic view than I have. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://johnpilger.com/videos/welcome-to-australia">Welcome to Australia</a> [Pilger’s 1999 film], he concentrated on the bad things that were happening but not the good. He would say that’s not part of his brief and it’s covered elsewhere. He’s a polemicist and, if you want to arouse people’s passions and anger, the stronger the polemic, the better.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Pilger made fewer films in the 2000s, focusing much of his energy on supporting Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks. Assange continues to suffer in Belmarsh prison in England while appeals against his extradition to the US to answer charges under the 1917 Espionage Act grind interminably on.</p>
<p>Whatever flaws there are in Pilger’s journalism, it feels dispiriting that on the first day of a new year clouded by wars, inaction on climate change and a presidential election in the US where democracy itself is on the ballot, the world has lost another resolutely dissenting voice in the media.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-time-of-anxiety-the-depressing-new-reality-for-local-journalists-in-conflict-zones-95878">'A time of anxiety': The depressing new reality for local journalists in conflict zones</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220418/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Ricketson is the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance’s representative on the Australian Press Council.</span></em></p>Pilger inspired many with his willingness to critique the damaging effects on ordinary people’s lives of capitalism and Western countries’ foreign policies. But he also provoked global controversy.Matthew Ricketson, Professor of Communication, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2175702023-11-13T14:55:08Z2023-11-13T14:55:08ZGaza war: reporting from the frontline of conflict has always raised hard ethical questions<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559055/original/file-20231113-29-mccnnq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C7%2C1738%2C930&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The BBC's veteran foreign correspondent Jeremy Bowen reporting from Syria, 2014</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Twitter</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Who would want to be a journalist covering the conflict in Gaza? It seems that every day a new accusation of bias surfaces on social media. Live reporting is prone to the dangers of speculation, mistakes and disinformation traps for the unwary. If you add in the most explosive dateline in the world, then the accusations of bias come thick and fast. On the other hand, <a href="https://pressgazette.co.uk/comment-analysis/afp-phil-chetwynd-gaza/">Phil Chetwynd</a>, global news director at AFP, a French news agency, says: “Our work has never felt more important.” </p>
<p>In this conflict, most of the dangerous reporting has been done by Palestinian journalists living inside Gaza, with foreign correspondents limited to coverage from inside Israel and the West Bank. To date, 40 journalists <a href="https://cpj.org/2023/11/journalist-casualties-in-the-israel-gaza-conflict/">are reported</a> to have been killed in the fighting, 35 of them Palestinian.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7T9ZnT-gC4">Jon Donnison</a>, a BBC correspondent, was accused of anti-Israel bias when reporting in the immediate aftermath of the explosion at the Al-Ahli Hospital on October 17. Donnison said that the Israeli military had been contacted for comment and was still investigating: “But it is hard to see what else this could be really given the size of the explosion other than an Israeli air strike or several air strikes.” </p>
<p>Following Israel’s denial, the deputy chief executive of BBC News <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/bbc-news-bbc-gaza-grant-shapps-palestinian-b2432797.html">Jonathan Munro</a> said the “language wasn’t quite right” but that “at no stage did we actually say it was caused by the Israelis”.</p>
<p>The BBC has also been <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67076341">under fire</a> for not using the word “terrorists” to describe Hamas militants. This long-standing BBC tradition of not labelling one side or the other in a conflict as terrorists, has been condemned in some media and at Westminster but has been rigorously defended by veteran correspondents, including <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67083432">John Simpson</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We don’t take sides. We don’t use loaded words like “evil” or “cowardly”. We don’t talk about “terrorists”. And we’re not the only ones to follow this line. Some of the world’s most respected news organisations have exactly the same policy.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Embedded with antagonists</h2>
<p>A month after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, several of these respected news organisations also came under attack for allegedly being at the locations suspiciously quickly. The US-based pro-Israeli website <a href="https://honestreporting.com/">Honest Reporting</a> named the news organisations as The New York Times, CNN, AP and Reuters. They have all vehemently denied the accusations. </p>
<p>AFP, which was also later accused on social media of being suspiciously early to the locations where the attacks took place, denied it had been somehow “embedded” with Hamas. AFP’s <a href="https://www.afp.com/en/agency/press-releases-newsletter/afp-reiterates-its-unwavering-support-its-gaza-colleagues">Phil Chetwynd</a> threatened possible legal action for defamation, saying about his photographers in Gaza:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>They were woken by the sound of artillery and rocket fire and headed towards the fence between Gaza and Israel. Each one was clearly identified as a journalist, on their helmet and bulletproof vest. The first photos near the Gaza fence were taken more than an hour after the attack started … We covered it as we would cover any major news story.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Nonetheless, after the event both AP and <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/tug-of-war/episodes/3bfdebc0-6c6d-11ee-96c2-df1cb1009980">CNN</a> did “sever ties” with a “freelance journalist” called Hassan Eslayeh who was at the site of the killings and was not wearing a press jacket. </p>
<p>A picture of this man being embraced by Hamas leader <a href="https://twitter.com/DemMaj4Israel/status/1722455200701571581">Yahia Sinwar</a> was circulated on social media platforms. AP’s media relations director, <a href="https://blog.ap.org/ap-statement-on-gaza-freelancers?utm_medium=AP_CorpComm&utm_source=Twitter&utm_campaign=SocialFlow&fbclid=IwAR0IWBiTo0bqFeSiQlVKdZP-OuLr50ycfFp0BNMaIAjjBplCnNfw4LwUf0s">Lauren Easton</a>, said: “We are no longer working with Hassan Eslaiah, who had been an occasional freelancer for AP and other news organisations in Gaza.”</p>
<p>Another kind of “embedding” has also been under scrutiny, following press trips with the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) into Gaza on November 9. This trip included reporters from CNN, the Daily Mail, and the BBC (who sent Jeremy Bowen). Channel 4 News went subsequently. </p>
<p>On “X” this decision was widely criticised, with <a href="https://twitter.com/rohantalbot/status/1722571290320458231">Rohan Talbot</a>, the director of advocacy and campaigns for Medical Aid for Palestinians, saying this was tantamount to senior journalists “effectively acting as stenographers for Israel’s military comms machine”. </p>
<p>When I put this to Bowen at the weekend, he replied: “Nonsense. The question is what you do with the material and how you challenge the speakers they put up. It’s also important in the script to provide context. We had a choice – to stay out of Gaza or to accept some restrictions in return for access.” While the IDF checked the video to make sure no military operational details were disclosed, neither the BBC nor Channel 4 News had to show their scripts in advance.</p>
<h2>Time-honoured practice</h2>
<p>These kinds of embedding practices are common when covering wars. From the Boer war to the Gulf wars of 1991 and 2003, international journalists and photographers have been embedded with troops and have had their material censored if it might have given away operational information, but also sometimes if it might show troops in a bad light. </p>
<p>The question of “ethical considerations” comes up more frequently if embedding with a country’s opponents in a war or interviewing those understood to be “the enemy”. According to <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/59883588">Christina Lamb</a>, back in the Spanish civil war, US reporter Virginia Cowles was regarded as “particularly suspect” by her fellow journalists Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn for interviewing leaders on both sides of the conflict.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two journalists and a US pilot stand by a heicopter in Cambodia, 1971." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559058/original/file-20231113-15-afxben.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559058/original/file-20231113-15-afxben.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559058/original/file-20231113-15-afxben.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559058/original/file-20231113-15-afxben.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559058/original/file-20231113-15-afxben.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559058/original/file-20231113-15-afxben.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559058/original/file-20231113-15-afxben.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australian cameraman Neil Davis while working in Cambodia, 1971.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Australian War Memoria</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Media history is full of cases of journalists, photographers and camera operators covering the other side. During the 1960s war in Indochina, Visnews cameraman Neil Davies filmed from the South Vietnamese side and later with the Vietcong. In the 1980s, ITN’s Sandy Gall regularly embedded with the Afghan Northern Alliance, and during the Gulf war of 1991, the CNN team was criticised for staying behind enemy lines during the allied bombing of Baghdad. </p>
<p>While media companies can hold meetings to thrash out the ethical implications of embedding decisions, the problem today is how to know anything of substance about the activity and connections of the many freelancers who often now stand in for staff employees on the frontline.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217570/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Colleen Murrell receives funding from Coimisiún na Meán (Ireland's media regulator) to research and write the annual Reuters Digital News Report Ireland (2021-2026)</span></em></p>If the first casualty of war is truth, it’s not often the fault of the journalists on the frontline who do a tough job in difficult circumstances.Colleen Murrell, Full Professor in Journalism, Dublin City UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2039622023-08-06T20:00:17Z2023-08-06T20:00:17ZIraqi journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad watched Saddam’s statue topple in 2003. His ‘standout’ war memoir de-centres the West<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540389/original/file-20230801-19-s9g6ur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2800%2C1869&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Iraqi civilians and U S soldiers pull down a statue of Saddam Hussein in downtown Baghdad</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jerome Delay/AP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Baghdad native and former architect Ghaith Abdul-Ahad traces his start as a journalist to the day Saddam Hussein’s statue <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/08/toppling-saddam-hussein-statue-iraq-us-victory-myth">was toppled</a> in central Baghdad, on April 9 2003 – two weeks after US troops invaded the city.</p>
<p>Framed as a watershed moment, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/08/toppling-saddam-hussein-statue-iraq-us-victory-myth">Western media coverage</a> at the time “heavily implied” the statue was taken down by “a large crowd of cheering Iraqis”.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: A Stranger in Your Own City: Travels in the Middle East’s Long War – Ghaith Abdul-Ahad (Hutchinson Heinemann)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>But Abdul-Ahad, who was standing in the Green Zone in Baghdad, “along with a few other Iraqis and a much larger crowd of foreign journalists”, remembers watching an armoured vehicle with a large crane on it reverse into the square. </p>
<p>“Oh no, don’t do it,” he thought. “Let the Iraqis at least topple the statue of their dictator.” </p>
<p>Climbing to the top of the monument, a US marine secured a length of thick rope around its neck, and “with all the arrogance of every occupying soldier throughout history”, covered the statue’s face with an American flag. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540391/original/file-20230801-28-5cy2j1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540391/original/file-20230801-28-5cy2j1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540391/original/file-20230801-28-5cy2j1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540391/original/file-20230801-28-5cy2j1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540391/original/file-20230801-28-5cy2j1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540391/original/file-20230801-28-5cy2j1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540391/original/file-20230801-28-5cy2j1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540391/original/file-20230801-28-5cy2j1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An Iraqi man (right) watches a US marine cover the face of a statue of Saddam Hussein with an American flag.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jerome Delay/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Abdul-Ahad reflects on the image of a handful of Iraqi men defacing Hussein’s toppled monument with glee and rage: “That iconic image has played again and again on every report on Iraq ever since, as if those men represented all the nation.” </p>
<p>Indeed, images and stories that reduced the Iraqi population to a monolith (and epitomised Edward Said’s theory of <a href="https://theconversation.com/orientalism-edward-saids-groundbreaking-book-explained-197429">Orientalism</a>) were rife in Western media coverage at the time. They helped manufacture consent for the indiscriminate violence of the occupation. </p>
<p>But expressions of gratitude for the American goal of “restoring democracy” were not unanimous. Describing the moment US troops massacred a crowd of unarmed civilians on Haifa Street in 2004, Abdul-Ahad – who <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/14/iraq-middleeast">was on the scene and wrote about it</a> for the Guardian – recalls being pulled aside by a man who noticed a camera in his hands: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>‘Take pictures!’ he told me. ‘Show the world American democracy.’</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/orientalism-edward-saids-groundbreaking-book-explained-197429">Orientalism: Edward Said's groundbreaking book explained</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Beyond ‘shock and awe’</h2>
<p>On March 20 2023, the 20-year anniversary of the Iraq War, media outlets around the world published op-eds lamenting the US-led coalition’s “<a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/04/iraq-invasion-slow-burn-intro.html">mistakes</a>” in Iraq. </p>
<p>In the two decades since the brutal invasion, its architects have held onto near-total impunity. Iraqis attempting to pursue justice through lawsuits and criminal trials have <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde14/001/2013/en/">faced countless obstacles</a>. And in 2019, the UK government <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/may/15/mordaunt-vows-introduce-amnesty-military-veterans">even sought to grant amnesty</a> to troops who committed war crimes during their deployment. </p>
<p>Countless memoirs from US and UK veterans published over the past two decades betray persisting delusions of heroism. Historians and journalists, too, continue to pore over the justifications and motives behind the war. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/a-stranger-in-your-own-city-9781529151534">A Stranger in Your Own City</a>, a “de-centering of the West in the history and contemporary situation of the region”, is a standout in this saturated field. </p>
<p>Although published to coincide with the anniversary of Iraq’s invasion, this captivating debut broadens its scope beyond the US bombardment campaign of “<a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/03/23/1165527256/reflecting-on-the-pentagons-shock-and-awe-campaign">shock and awe</a>”.</p>
<h2>Sweeping and dynamic</h2>
<p>A Stranger in Your Own City is sweeping in scope. It doesn’t fit neatly into any one genre, but reads at once like a travelogue, geo-biography, memoir and political history. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540396/original/file-20230801-15-t0wcs4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540396/original/file-20230801-15-t0wcs4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540396/original/file-20230801-15-t0wcs4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540396/original/file-20230801-15-t0wcs4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540396/original/file-20230801-15-t0wcs4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540396/original/file-20230801-15-t0wcs4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540396/original/file-20230801-15-t0wcs4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540396/original/file-20230801-15-t0wcs4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Its chapters shift between personal vignettes from Abdul-Ahad’s life – encounters with doctors, old friends, schoolteachers, militia leaders and jihadist fighters – and sections that provide an overview of Iraqi political groups and historical events. </p>
<p>But this dynamic collection rarely meanders, nor does it lose the reader in its frequent shifts in focus. Instead, its structure foregrounds what the book does best: unsettling the enduring myths about the origins of Iraq’s never-ending crisis. </p>
<p>Context for the emergence of sectarian tensions, corruption and religious extremism in Iraq are but a few of the gaps in common knowledge filled. </p>
<p>A Stranger in Your Own City spans almost 40 years, following the contours of Iraq’s modern political chronology. It takes us through the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Iran-Iraq-War">1980–88 Iran–Iraq War</a>, to the mass demonstrations against the corruption and “misrule of the (post-invasion) sectarian parties” that broke out across Iraq in October 2019. </p>
<p>Abdul-Ahad traces the various centres of power and wealth since the 1980s, from Saddam Hussein’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Baath-Party">Ba’athist</a> regime to the emergence of the Islamic State <a href="https://time.com/isis-mosul/">in Mosul</a>, which became the largest population centre under ISIS control after it was occupied by <a href="https://theconversation.com/understanding-islamic-state-where-does-it-come-from-and-what-does-it-want-52155">Islamic State</a> forces in June 2014. </p>
<p>He reveals a bleak historical throughline: “a concentration of unaccountable power, shadowy intelligence services and corruption.” </p>
<p>Those in power in Iraq framed their corruption under various guises of nationalism, sectarianism and religiosity. But they served only to deepen the inequalities that had emerged under Saddam Hussein’s rule.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-did-it-so-badly-its-now-backfired-women-and-minority-us-forces-reflect-on-the-invasion-of-iraq-now-20-years-ago-199415">'We did it so badly ... it's now backfired': women and minority US forces reflect on the invasion of Iraq – now 20 years ago</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Sectarian tensions heightened by occupation</h2>
<p>In the preface, Abdul-Ahad describes his nocturnal hypervigilance while hiding out in a hotel room in Baghdad in 2007, “listening to the sounds of a city at war”. </p>
<p>He scans an old photo of his friends from high school, trying to infer what sect they belong to. The exercise seems absurd to him: information that was once all but irrelevant is now a primary organising principle of Iraqi society. </p>
<p>He echoes this bleak contrast between pre- and post-invasion Iraq in a chapter called “The Wedding”. We meet Akram and Zainab, an intersectarian couple planning their wedding in Baghdad. Their matrimony, which would once have been “the most common and normal thing”, became a dangerous and tenuous prospect during the 2006 civil war. It was an act, Abdul-Ahad contends, that was now considered “akin to treason”. </p>
<p>Here, Abdul-Ahad challenges the widely held view that sectarian tensions were an entrenched and longstanding source of conflict in Iraq before 2003. We learn instead that sectarianism was, in fact, catalysed by the US occupation – namely in the formation of the post-Saddam government. </p>
<p>The US <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Coalition-Provisional-Authority">Coalition Provisional Authority</a> (the governing body of the occupation) selected a group of Iraqi elites and exiled politicians, many of whom had fled Iraq decades before during Ba’athist rule, to form “the charade called the Iraqi Governing council”. Initially, it was an empty symbolic expression of power, while the Coalition Provisional Authority continued to exercise colonial control. </p>
<p>The council organised itself according to a model of confessionalism known as the “<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/12/4/muhasasa-the-political-system-reviled-by-iraqi-protesters">muhassasa</a>” system. The 25 members ostensibly represented different sects and ethnic groups in Iraq. </p>
<p>But this arrangement didn’t reflect the lived realities of their constituents, and only provided another opportunity to establish corrupt patronage networks. </p>
<p>Ultimately, these networks functioned as “personal fiefdoms” that distributed and privatised resources and services following sectarian quotas. And, as Abdul-Ahad argues, the rearranging of Iraqi society across sectarian lines – both socially and geographically – fuelled the civil wars to come. </p>
<h2>An extension of America’s war</h2>
<p>Abdul-Ahad challenges the binary view of Iraqi societal tensions as split neatly between Sunni and Shia Muslims following the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_civil_war_(2006%E2%80%932008)">2006 civil war</a>. The US occupiers, he writes, “like all conquerors aimed to simplify their occupation of a society by breaking it into components”. </p>
<p>He examines a “wide range of localised schisms and fault lines, feuds based on class or geography”. We read of the various groups that were established, and their rapid and at times incomprehensible shifts in allegiance and goals. </p>
<p>Despite this ever-changing political climate, Abdul-Ahad contends, “as for the Iraqis, friend and foe alike, this was still an extension of America’s war, even if it was now only Iraqis who were butchering Iraqis”. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jA5WMmL7grA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Iraqi journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad on the US invasion, sanctions and occupation.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Indeed, the US invasion of Iraq wasn’t simply a misguided attempt to liberate a nation held hostage by an autocratic leader. Instead, it was a protracted, deliberate campaign of political and economic destabilisation. </p>
<p>Abdul-Ahad points out that “western pontificates” limited their critiques of the invasion to what a 2005 New York Times article called “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/30/opinion/dangerous-incompetence.html">dangerous incompetence</a>”. He responds: “No amount of planning could have turned an illegal occupation into a liberation.”</p>
<p>Now, 20 years on, notions of failure and incompetence still pervade media responses to the war on Iraq. </p>
<p>In March, Jeremy Bowen called the invasion “a failure not just of intelligence but of leadership”. Former Bush speechwriter David Frum (of <a href="https://theintercept.com/2023/03/29/iraq-war-atlantic-david-frum/">“Axis of Evil” infamy</a>) put it in <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/03/iraq-war-us-invasion-anniversary-2023/673343/">egregiously dismissive</a> terms: “[The Bush administration] were shocked and dazed by 9/11. They deluded themselves.” </p>
<p>While most are hard-pressed to view the invasion of Iraq as anything but catastrophic, the myth of the occupation’s “failure” persists.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/iraq-war-20-years-on-how-the-world-failed-iraq-and-created-a-less-peaceful-democratic-and-prosperous-state-200075">Iraq war, 20 years on: how the world failed Iraq and created a less peaceful, democratic and prosperous state</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Disaster capitalism in Iraq</h2>
<p>By vaguely attributing the occupation to the “desire to project American power in a unipolar world”, I sometimes wondered whether the book should have delved more deeply into the ways Iraq’s destabilisation served the interests of US imperialists – and the corporations that profited off its demise. </p>
<p>I felt some important political context was missing. And where we can’t infer a clear line of reasoning for the US-led invasion, the “failure” narrative threatens to re-emerge. </p>
<p>For instance, there is no mention that privatisation of Iraqi oil was high on the US agenda following the invasion. Multinationals seized virtually the entire Iraqi oil sector, which had been nationalised in 1972, with “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/03/iraq-war-us-invasion-anniversary-2023/673343/">production-sharing agreements</a>” by 2009. </p>
<p>Abdul-Ahad illustrates how the Gulf War and 13 years of crippling sanctions “brought [Iraq] to its knees”. But there’s little reflection on what these punitive measures achieved for the interests of their primary perpetrator: the US.</p>
<p>US Coalition Provisional Authority leader <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/L-Paul-Bremer-III">L. Paul Bremer</a> is sketched out in a short chapter, aptly called “The Viceroy”. It describes his “De-Ba’athification”: a far-reaching gutting of the public sector.</p>
<p>Roughly 85,000 public service workers <a href="https://pfiffner.gmu.edu/files/pdfs/Articles/CPA%20Orders,%20Iraq%20PDF.pdf">were fired outright</a> due to nominal affiliations with the Ba’ath party – even though registration with the party was mandatory for all who held public jobs. But what is missing from this chapter is a more substantial analysis of what these policies did. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540398/original/file-20230801-27-y0dg77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540398/original/file-20230801-27-y0dg77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540398/original/file-20230801-27-y0dg77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540398/original/file-20230801-27-y0dg77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540398/original/file-20230801-27-y0dg77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540398/original/file-20230801-27-y0dg77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540398/original/file-20230801-27-y0dg77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540398/original/file-20230801-27-y0dg77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">L. Paul Bremer III eats dinner with US soldiers in Baghdad, 2004.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stefan Kaklin/Pool/EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Iraq’s reconstruction and governance were largely outsourced to private companies and <a href="https://jacobin.com/2021/09/united-states-war-iraq-afghanistan-profiteering-defense-contractors">military contractors</a>, who sought to profit off the sudden political destabilisation. </p>
<p>This constitutes part of a broader system of state-(un)building, which Naomi Klein has termed “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/06/naomi-klein-how-power-profits-from-disaster">disaster capitalism</a>”. </p>
<p>Disaster capitalists exploit and even manufacture political and economic crises so they can introduce vastly transformative neoliberal policies amid the chaos. Corporations can then swoop in and clean up profits in the wake of the destruction.</p>
<p>In this context, the invasion of Iraq was anything but a failure in the eyes of its architects.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-you-cant-explain-the-iraq-war-without-mentioning-oil-59352">Why you can't explain the Iraq War without mentioning oil</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A productive tension</h2>
<p>As I write this review, I’m reminded the representational responsibilities of a book like this aren’t set in stone. And considering the motivations for the US-led invasion is not its priority. Abdul-Ahad very deliberately resists buying into a reductive narrative about what caused the war – and rightly so. </p>
<p>The stories that fill this book bolster it with a plurality of perspectives. A productive tension emerges between Abdul-Ahad’s personal understanding of Iraqi society and politics and those of his interviewees, complicating the Western media’s monolithic rendering of Iraqis.</p>
<p>At moments, the author seems to succumb to generalisations about national or sectarian attitudes. But then he pulls back to reflect on the limitations of his thinking. </p>
<p>In a later chapter, Abdul-Ahad asks a fellow journalist, Omar al-Shahir, why Sunni groups <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2013/2/22/protests-in-iraq-continue-amid-new-killings">demonstrating in Ramadi</a> against the sectarian violence of the Maliki administration couldn’t establish a more unified leadership. </p>
<p>Shahir responds: there was no Sunni unity to begin with. Abdul-Ahad proceeds to admit, “I was committing the same mistake as those committed by the people in the Dignity camp: addressing all the Sunnis as if they were one homogeneous people.” In these moments, the hybrid structure of the book shines.</p>
<p>It’s also important to note that many writers from the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-global-south-is-on-the-rise-but-what-exactly-is-the-global-south-207959">Global South</a> face implicit pressure to humanise themselves and their “people” for Western audiences. </p>
<p>They are called on to produce “human stories” that invite compassion and sympathy. But this pressure risks depoliticising their experiences – and relegating their historical and political contexts to the narrative margins.</p>
<h2>‘Deeply human’, but still political</h2>
<p>A Stranger in Your Own City has been praised for its “<a href="https://theintercept.com/2023/03/22/intercepted-podcast-iraq-war-anniversary-ghaith-abdul-ahad/">deeply human reporting</a>”. But Abdul-Ahad mostly avoids this trap, without sacrificing either personal resonance or political subjectivity. </p>
<p>A Stranger in Your Own City is often difficult to read. Graphic descriptions of torture, loss, despair and rage pervade its pages. The book ends with the <a href="https://merip.org/2023/04/perpetual-protest-and-the-failure-of-the-post-2003-iraqi-state-2/">Tishreen Movement</a> protests of 2019. There, young Iraqis took to the streets, united in their struggle against “the corruption and nepotism of the ruling kleptocracy of religious parties”. </p>
<p>While the protests failed to inspire substantial political change, the reverberations of a “larger more common identity” were felt. </p>
<p>In the wake of the Tishreen Movement, Abdul-Ahad renders an image of ambivalent, angry steadfastness and hope. He concludes: “the failure of the ruling class, the religious parties, regional bosses, the clergy and militias to heed the warnings of Tishreen will lead to their eventual demise.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203962/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cyma Hibri does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Countless memoirs have been published by US and British veterans in the 20 years since the Iraq War began in March 2003. Iraqi journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad offers a fresh perspective.Cyma Hibri, PhD, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1992042023-03-08T02:53:38Z2023-03-08T02:53:38ZAustralia’s first female journalists reported on wars and human rights around the world – but many died in obscurity<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511590/original/file-20230222-18-ucxxfs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4000%2C2000&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> </figcaption></figure><p>When I look out into a class of journalism students, the faces I see will often belong to young women. In contemporary journalism education, this is the norm. In many countries, about two thirds of journalism tertiary students <a href="https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2017/women-dominate-journalism-schools-but-newsrooms-are-still-a-different-story/">are female</a>. And in Australia, women have <a href="https://eprints.qut.edu.au/68322/">held the majority of journalism jobs</a> for some time.</p>
<p>This is a remarkable turnaround when you consider journalism was, not that long ago, almost entirely produced by men. It was only after the 1950s that women started joining the profession in small numbers. Even then, they were typically confined to writing for the “women’s pages”.</p>
<p>Before this time, female journalists were almost unheard of. Which makes the women of <a href="https://bookshop.nla.gov.au/book/bold-types-how-australias-first-women-journalists-blazed-a-trail.do">Bold Types</a>, who worked as journalists in Australia from 1860 to the end of World War II, particularly worthy of our attention. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Bold Types: How Australia’s First Women Journalists Blazed a Trail – Patricia Clarke (National Library of Australia Publishing)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Facing obstacles at every turn, they were adventurous and incredibly courageous. As author Dr Patricia Clarke writes: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The journalists in Bold Types were a particularly ground-breaking group, given the societies in which they were living. The earlier journalists wrote thousands of words in longhand using quill pens. They ventured into muddy battlefields, down mines and into slums and prisons in their crinoline-style, ankle length dresses. Women who reached positions of standing and power could suffer the full brunt of gender discrimination either publicly or subtly. They also had to ignore the ethos of a society that disapproved of middle-class women working at all, much less in a such a public job at journalism.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/bravery-insight-and-simmering-fury-australian-female-correspondents-on-speaking-truth-to-power-189962">Bravery, insight and simmering fury: Australian female correspondents on speaking truth to power</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Gender inequality was ‘part of the deal’</h2>
<p>An historian and author, Clarke is well placed to tell these stories. She worked as a journalist in male-dominated newsrooms, including at the ABC, during the 1950s and 1960s. Gender inequality was part of the deal, she writes, and sexual harassment was rampant. </p>
<p>At the time, most female journalists were employed on the women’s pages, where they typically covered social events and were paid at low rates, despite their coverage generating significant revenue from advertisers.</p>
<p>Some of the women who feature in Bold Types wrote for the women’s pages, often in addition to more satisfying work. But others eagerly took on roles that were usually only assigned to men. These include <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Blackwell">Anna Blackwell</a>, Australia’s first female correspondent, who reported from Paris for the Sydney Morning Herald from 1860, and <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/couvreur-jessie-catherine-3270">Jessie Couvreur</a>, who worked for the London Times as Brussels correspondent in the 1890s after growing up in Hobart.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511277/original/file-20230221-28-dwr6h7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="woman in bun and black dress at writing desk, with flowers" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511277/original/file-20230221-28-dwr6h7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511277/original/file-20230221-28-dwr6h7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511277/original/file-20230221-28-dwr6h7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511277/original/file-20230221-28-dwr6h7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511277/original/file-20230221-28-dwr6h7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=703&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511277/original/file-20230221-28-dwr6h7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=703&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511277/original/file-20230221-28-dwr6h7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=703&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jessie Couvreur grew up in Hobart, then worked for the London Times as Brussels correspondent in the 1890s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library Victoria/Mathilde Philippson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Others demonstrated remarkable bravery and resilience in jobs that were physically demanding and dangerous. <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/stewart-flora-shaw-11767">Flora Shaw</a>, a British journalist, travelled throughout regional Australia in 1892. Travelling by buggy and steamer, Shaw reported on the sugar, mineral and pastoral industries of Queensland. </p>
<p>She then toured Western sheep stations in a journey of more than 800 kms in an open buggy, in temperatures often above 40 degrees. After a short stint in Brisbane, she continued her journey through the southern states, reporting on the fruit and butter industries in Victoria and on the Barossa wine region. The hazards and discomfort she experienced were recounted in letters to her sister. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511289/original/file-20230221-28-18jews.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511289/original/file-20230221-28-18jews.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511289/original/file-20230221-28-18jews.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511289/original/file-20230221-28-18jews.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511289/original/file-20230221-28-18jews.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511289/original/file-20230221-28-18jews.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511289/original/file-20230221-28-18jews.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511289/original/file-20230221-28-18jews.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Flora Shaw toured regional Australia in 1892, visiting WA sheep stations in an open buggy, in temperatures often above 40 degrees.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">J.J. Dwyer/State Library Western Australia 019926PD</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The trip took a toll on her health, but Shaw continued to write and post her articles to The Times. She returned to London in late 1883 to wide acclaim and was appointed to the influential position of Colonial Correspondent, a role that saw her become the highest-paid female journalist in London.</p>
<p>A few years later, another female journalist, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Dickenson">Edith Dickenson</a>, also travelled great distances under difficult circumstances to fulfil her reporting role. She was Australia’s first female war correspondent, sent to Durban in 1900 to cover the Second <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-an-audit-of-the-british-empires-deadly-toll-in-southern-africa-would-reveal-127892">Boer War</a>. </p>
<p>Edith had already lived an unconventional life, moving to Melbourne from England in 1886 to meet her lover, Dr Augustus Dickenson. Both Edith and Augustus were married to others; Augustus was eventually prosecuted and found guilty of deserting his infant daughter in England. For many years he regularly “disappeared”, moving between small towns in regional Australia, always accompanied by Edith and her sons. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511280/original/file-20230221-14-wv2o30.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511280/original/file-20230221-14-wv2o30.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511280/original/file-20230221-14-wv2o30.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=878&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511280/original/file-20230221-14-wv2o30.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=878&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511280/original/file-20230221-14-wv2o30.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=878&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511280/original/file-20230221-14-wv2o30.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1104&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511280/original/file-20230221-14-wv2o30.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1104&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511280/original/file-20230221-14-wv2o30.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1104&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Edith Dickenson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During this time, Edith became a photographer and eventually began producing newspaper articles as a freelancer. Before being assigned to cover the war for the Adelaide Advertiser, she wrote about her journeys through India and the East, establishing herself as an “intrepid traveller with remarkable stamina”. </p>
<p>These traits were to prove invaluable in South Africa, where she was able to move across the country after receiving a formal correspondent’s pass. She gained a reputation for her detailed scene-setting and even-handed approach. When all civilians were barred from the town of Ladysmith due to high rates of dysentery and enteric (typhoid) fever, Edith managed to gain entry and interview survivors. </p>
<p>By October 1900, the British had taken the Boer capitals and most of the major fighting was over, so Edith left South Africa. However, she returned in 1901 to report on the concentration camps set up by the British to house displaced women and children. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511284/original/file-20230221-22-bl5oso.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511284/original/file-20230221-22-bl5oso.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511284/original/file-20230221-22-bl5oso.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511284/original/file-20230221-22-bl5oso.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511284/original/file-20230221-22-bl5oso.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511284/original/file-20230221-22-bl5oso.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511284/original/file-20230221-22-bl5oso.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511284/original/file-20230221-22-bl5oso.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Edith Dickenson’s reporting was ‘a savage indictment’ of the concentration camps set up by the British in South Africa after the Boer War.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photographical Collection Anglo Boer War Museum Bloemfontein SA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“During the next six months, Edith’s Advertiser articles were a savage indictment of conditions in British camps,” Clarke writes. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Everywhere she reported overcrowded tents, some located nearly two kilometres from a source of water, others set up on marshy ground. Food was inadequate, unsuitable, and contaminated. Malnutrition and epidemic diseases were rife, and mothers were separated from their children.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Dickenson died at age 52 after completing a third trip to South Africa. According to Clarke, she remained unequalled for many years, including the two world wars, when the movements of Australian women journalists were tightly controlled.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-catherine-hay-thomson-the-australian-undercover-journalist-who-went-inside-asylums-and-hospitals-129352">Hidden women of history: Catherine Hay Thomson, the Australian undercover journalist who went inside asylums and hospitals</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Extraordinary for their times</h2>
<p>Not all the stories in Bold Types are as dramatic as Shaw and Dickenson’s, but each of the women profiled were extraordinary for their times. Most were freelancers, relying on low and irregular payments. Many were also activists fighting for <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-human-being-not-just-mum-the-womens-liberationists-who-fought-for-the-rights-of-mothers-and-children-182057">women’s</a> and/or <a href="https://theconversation.com/like-most-of-the-fashion-industry-theres-a-blind-spot-in-country-roads-ethical-focus-172295">workers’</a> rights. Almost all who worked in mainstream media faced opposition and condescension from male colleagues who felt threatened by their presence.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511282/original/file-20230221-24-3wb5pv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511282/original/file-20230221-24-3wb5pv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511282/original/file-20230221-24-3wb5pv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=763&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511282/original/file-20230221-24-3wb5pv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=763&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511282/original/file-20230221-24-3wb5pv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=763&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511282/original/file-20230221-24-3wb5pv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511282/original/file-20230221-24-3wb5pv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511282/original/file-20230221-24-3wb5pv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alice Henry.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library Victoria</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some, like Texas-born <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/scott-griffiths-jennie-11641">Jennie Scott Griffiths</a>, worked as journalists while overseeing large families (Scott Griffiths had ten children). Others, such as feminist and social activist <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/henry-alice-6642">Alice Henry</a>, defied convention and never married or had children. In many cases, they brought attention to the discrimination and exploitation experienced by women. Speaking out against the establishment rarely led to success. A sad and recurring theme throughout the book is that these women often died in obscurity.</p>
<p>The women of Bold Types led the way for the many prominent women reporters and presenters in Australia today. The opportunities in journalism for women have grown hugely since the late 1970s, which signalled the end of the traditional women’s pages. </p>
<p>However, we still have a long way to go, cautions Clarke, echoing the Guardian’s Amy Remeikis in her introduction to the book. “The public profile of notable women disguises the fact that women journalists struggle to attain real influence in decision-making roles,” Clarke says. “Few reach leadership positions with power over recruitment and promotion, and content is still determined predominantly by men, resulting in sexual bias.”</p>
<p>Bold Types provides a welcome and overdue rewriting of the history of Australian journalism. It should be of interest to reporters, news bosses and educators, who can finally acknowledge the pioneering contributions of our first female journalists.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199204/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kathryn Shine does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A new book illuminates the bold lives of Australian women journalists between 1860 and the end of Word War II – a time when female reporters were ‘almost unheard of’.Kathryn Shine, Associate Professor, Journalism, Curtin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1998202023-02-16T13:24:31Z2023-02-16T13:24:31ZUkraine war 12 months on: the role of the Russian media in reporting – and justifying – the conflict<p>The media war that has accompanied <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/ukraine-invasion-2022-117045">Russia’s invasion of Ukraine</a> has shown how important a part of 21st-century conflict journalism is, and also demonstrated the power authoritarian regimes possess to restrict reporting – even in the age of smartphones and social media.</p>
<p>In a move that echoed the draconian censorship laws of earlier ages, the Russian government declared its media war just days after it invaded its neighbour. <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/russian-parliament-approves-crackdown-on-fake-news-ltq6g6s9c">New legislation</a> meant journalists risked jail if they refused to follow dutifully the official line that the war was “a special military operation”, and not a war at all.</p>
<p>As the BBC director general, Tim Davie, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60617365">said at the time</a>, the legislation “appears to criminalise the process of independent journalism”. The BBC temporarily suspended its reporting from Russia, presumably while it sought to establish the real extent of the risk to its reporters.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510322/original/file-20230215-22-dna0kj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510322/original/file-20230215-22-dna0kj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510322/original/file-20230215-22-dna0kj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510322/original/file-20230215-22-dna0kj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510322/original/file-20230215-22-dna0kj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510322/original/file-20230215-22-dna0kj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510322/original/file-20230215-22-dna0kj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>Since Vladimir Putin sent his war machine into Ukraine on February 24 2022, The Conversation has called upon some of the leading experts in international security, geopolitics and military tactics to help our readers <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/ukraine-12-months-at-war-134215?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=Ukraine12Months">understand the big issues</a>. You can also <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/ukraine-recap-114?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=Ukraine12Months">subscribe to our weekly recap</a> of expert analysis of the Ukraine conflict.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Eventually, they resumed their work, with Steve Rosenberg and his colleagues bringing to international audiences <a href="https://twitter.com/BBCSteveR/status/1587859583716007937">stories such as that of Denis Skopin</a>, a university lecturer in St Petersburg, sacked for his protest against the war. For The Guardian, Andrew Roth has also <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/28/russians-arrest-victims-war-ukraine-kremlin-dissent-memorials">reported on anti-war activism</a>, including the quiet defiance of those who mourn Ukrainian victims of the Kremlin’s war machine.</p>
<p>Many others, though, <a href="https://theconversation.com/russias-disappearing-independent-media-why-they-closed-178590">left</a> – often when their editors felt it no longer safe for them to stay – and are yet to return.</p>
<h2>Echoes of 1920s Bolshevik ban</h2>
<p>What is in effect a ban on independent journalism may be seen as a kind of compliment: a testament to the power that reporters have to challenge the Kremlin’s justification for making war.</p>
<p>Combined with the inaccessibility of many international news websites and social media platforms since the start of the war, the effect is that reliable reporting from Russia is more restricted than at any time since before the era of reform and openness that characterised the late Soviet period.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Lenin gives a speech for the Red Army in front of the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow in 1920. On the right of the picture are Lev Trotsky and Lev Kamenev." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509828/original/file-20230213-14-n659lz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509828/original/file-20230213-14-n659lz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509828/original/file-20230213-14-n659lz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509828/original/file-20230213-14-n659lz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509828/original/file-20230213-14-n659lz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509828/original/file-20230213-14-n659lz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509828/original/file-20230213-14-n659lz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Controlling the message: Lenin was well aware of the power of the press as a tool of state control.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In fact, the situation today bears comparison with that of a century ago, when the fledgling Bolshevik government had <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/assignment-moscow-9780755601158/">banned international correspondents from Russia</a> on the basis that their governments and newspapers had supported the wrong – the counterrevolutionary, “White” – side in the civil war. Then, as now by some correspondents, events in Russia were reported from Riga in neighbouring Latvia.</p>
<p>With the threats of <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-64604233">punishment and prison</a>, Russia’s approach to the media war has been crude – and also, in some respects, as explained below, effective.</p>
<h2>Zelensky: consummate media performer</h2>
<p>In others, much less so. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has shown great skill – and presumably drawn on his previous acting career –in using modern media and formats (his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6A8VDvbFCI">second world war “Victory Day” video</a>, in which he drew parallels aimed at a Russian audience, between the second world war inflicted by Nazism and the invasion of his country, being a great example). </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/U6A8VDvbFCI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Zelensky’s surefooted and engaging media appearances have contrasted with videos of Putin that have prompted British tabloid speculation both about his <a href="https://metro.co.uk/video/vladimir-putin-shaking-uncontrollably-legs-repeatedly-buckle-speech-health-fears-grow-2707859/">health</a>, and <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1718204/Vladimir-Putin-supporters-stooges-actors-New-Year-s-Eve-address-BBC-facial-recognition">whether he is using actors</a> in some of his TV appearances.</p>
<h2>How Russia uses military and media in wartime</h2>
<p>But if Ukraine is winning the war for western public opinion, Russia seems to be successfully shoring up public support at home.</p>
<p>This has been a long process. I visited Russia in 2019, for the fifth anniversary of the 2014 annexation of Crimea, and was struck by the prevalence of militaristic imagery and sentiment – not only in the news media, but in murals overlooking the streets of Moscow and other cities I visited. </p>
<p>This combination of media and militarism has been an indispensable, integral, part of Russia’s use of war in international relations in the Putin era, as my co-author, Dr Alexander Lanoszka, and I argued in our <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/17506352211027084">2021 paper</a>: Russia’s rising military and communication power: From Chechnya to Crimea.</p>
<p>The Kremlin’s biggest success has been placing 20th-century controls on 21st-century media. Yes, these can be circumvented. Russia is a highly technologically literate society (think how many incidents of hacking are blamed on Russians) and those who want to read news from the west can do so if they put in a little effort.</p>
<p>But many do not seem bothered to try. As Rosenberg discovered in a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-64543618">report for the BBC from Belgorod</a>, not far from the Russian border with Ukraine, on February 10, official messaging seems largely to be taken at face value. “The west has always wanted to destroy Russia,” one resident of the city told him.</p>
<p>This is the stage which, 12 months since Russia’s large-scale invasion (Ukrainians will rightly point out that the war itself really began in 2014), the media war has reached. The rapid victory the Kremlin seems originally to have envisaged not having happened, the war has now been reframed – on the basis not only of Putin-approved versions of history, but also deliveries of western weapons to Ukraine – as a conflict between Russia and the west.</p>
<h2>What next for the media war</h2>
<p>Ukraine will need to keep international news organisations engaged. Zelensky’s speech in London on February 8 – that appeared so greatly to inspire the British parliamentarians who heard it – had to be on television and social media to have the desired impact, and for the visual gesture of handing over an airman’s helmet to make the desired impression.</p>
<p>There is one western policy that should change in the next stage of the media war, though I have little hope it will. The EU and the UK were wrong to ban Sputnik and RT. It gave them credit for greater reach and influence than they ever enjoyed. It allowed them the chance to masquerade – however absurdly – as martyrs for free speech. Western audiences need to see what Russian audiences are being told. In a media war, as in any war, the more you know of your enemy, the better.</p>
<p>As Vladislav Zubok, a professor of international history at the LSE, told me recently:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We still find even at the worst moments of the Cold War journalists talking to each other and acting as intermediaries. These people met. These people had a dialogue. Not any more.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That should change. One day this war will end, and the US, UK, EU and others will have to forge a new relationship with Russia. It is unlikely to be one of friendship – but even one accepting distance, division and discord can better be managed by the kind of dialogue of which journalism can be the starting point. </p>
<p>This level of mutual understanding <em>must not</em> be yet another casualty of this media war. Let journalists do their jobs.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199820/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Rodgers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The two sides have used media very differently during the conflict: Zelensky has inspired support, Putin has stifled dissent.James Rodgers, Reader in International Journalism, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1899622022-09-14T20:03:21Z2022-09-14T20:03:21ZBravery, insight and simmering fury: Australian female correspondents on speaking truth to power<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483942/original/file-20220912-18-so06fl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C32%2C4351%2C2894&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Emma Alberici writes about the Fourth Estate with a combination of despondency, scorn and hope.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Richard Wainwright/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A confession: I am an academic and a journalist, but the name at the top of an article means little to me – whether my own, or anyone else’s. It never has. I am always far more interested in elegantly rendered content. Whether it’s written by a man or a woman is irrelevant. </p>
<p>This gender disregard may seem counterintuitive. But being a woman does not change the craft of journalism. I know it changes almost everything else, but to survive as a woman in many (if not most) industries needs a sense of bloody-mindedness about our right to be there, and a weary robustness born of battle. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Through Her Eyes, edited by Melissa Roberts and Trevor Watson (Hardie Grant)</em></p>
<hr>
<h2>Does gender matter in journalism?</h2>
<p>In their preface, the co-editors of <a href="https://www.hardiegrant.com/au/publishing/bookfinder/book/through-her-eyes-by-trevor-watson/9781743798898">Through Her Eyes</a>, Melissa Roberts and Trevor Watson, touch on the sexism experienced by all female journalists. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482665/original/file-20220905-21-xvl1vl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482665/original/file-20220905-21-xvl1vl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482665/original/file-20220905-21-xvl1vl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482665/original/file-20220905-21-xvl1vl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482665/original/file-20220905-21-xvl1vl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482665/original/file-20220905-21-xvl1vl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482665/original/file-20220905-21-xvl1vl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482665/original/file-20220905-21-xvl1vl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Like me, they think and write: “The gender of a correspondent shouldn’t matter.” They qualify: “But the reality is that until very recently, gender determined all in journalism, particularly opportunity.” This is also true.</p>
<p>Several of the correspondents in this book hurdled gendered obstructions to their career and set out alone to foreign lands, funding themselves by freelancing. So, in many ways, reading Through Her Eyes is humbling. Not because it collects the stories of 29 Australian <em>female</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/axing-the-walkley-for-international-reporting-another-nail-in-the-coffin-80467">foreign correspondents</a> who fought hard for their place, but because it collects the stories of foreign correspondents. </p>
<p>Most of these stories are deeply reflective. These chapters are the ones that resonate most – and will, I hope, make readers truly think. They reflect not on being an Australian woman in the field, but on the job and the skills of journalism. On speaking truth to power through written words.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/abc-has-for-too-long-been-unwilling-to-push-back-against-interference-at-its-journalists-expense-143999">ABC has for too long been unwilling to push back against interference – at its journalists' expense</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Emma Alberici’s personal perspective</h2>
<p>Emma Alberici’s chapter, “What’s news?”, is the one that really stands out. It’s not so much a running mission of gathering news in war-torn, dangerous and corrupt countries, but more an essay on the state of play of news-gathering culture. <a href="https://theconversation.com/abc-has-for-too-long-been-unwilling-to-push-back-against-interference-at-its-journalists-expense-143999">Alberici</a> writes with a simmering, recognisable fury. </p>
<p>She begins with the fiasco that was <a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-politics-explainer-the-mv-tampa-and-the-transformation-of-asylum-seeker-policy-74078">the Tampa incident</a> in August 2001 – “one of the most shameful periods in our political history” – and the subsequent spiking of the scoop she and Terry Ross gathered for Channel 9’s A Current Affair on <a href="https://theconversation.com/aus-nz-refugee-deal-is-a-bandage-on-a-failed-policy-its-time-to-end-offshore-processing-180241">Nauru</a>, where Australia dumped 434 traumatised people, most of them Afghan refugees. </p>
<p>A Current Affair replaced the shattering and shameful story of Australian government callousness Alberici and Ross had filed with an interview with an inventor who claimed to have created a cure for sweating. After 30 hours of getting to Nauru and manically interviewing, writing, filming and filing there, Alberici tells Ross that back in Sydney, their work has been shelved. Ross vomits at the news. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PX3Wu4ClDTE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Emma Alberici called her move from Channel 9 to the ABC, where she became their European correspondent, ‘serendipity’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>She writes of “serendipity” launching her from the commercial Channel 9 to the ABC later that year. Seven years later, she became the ABC’s European correspondent. And then there are several eviscerating pages on <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-news-corp-following-through-on-its-climate-change-backflip-my-analysis-of-its-flood-coverage-suggests-not-179468">the Murdoch press</a>, particularly in the United Kingdom, circling the phone hacking scandal and subsequent <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/leveson-inquiry-report-into-the-culture-practices-and-ethics-of-the-press">Leveson Inquiry</a>. It is a verifiable and considered unpacking. </p>
<p>She writes a tad despondently about the Fourth Estate and <a href="https://theconversation.com/funding-public-interest-journalism-requires-creative-solutions-a-tax-rebate-for-news-media-could-work-146563">public interest notions of journalism</a>, and scathingly about how “media houses continue to undermine the trust bestowed on them”. But she ends hopefully, invoking multi-platform news outlets, writing that “younger audiences and readers are voting with their feet, taking advertisers and philanthropic money with them”. This chapter is a personal perspective from inside an industry still desperately reshaping and reforming itself. It’s cogently argued, with a succinct rhythm.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/honouring-the-journalists-who-bring-us-stories-from-the-frontline-48087">Honouring the journalists who bring us stories from the frontline</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Writing women correspondents back into history</h2>
<p>We all know women are written out of much historical narrative – they have been for centuries. The book redresses this, retrofitting stories of past female foreign correspondents between those of contemporary journalists. </p>
<p>These historical chapters – on <a href="https://www.far-eastern-heroes.org.uk/Keeping_The_Faith/html/lorraine_stumm.htm">Lorraine Stumm</a>, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-13/diane-willman-describes-reporting-from-a-warzone/13947556">Diane Willman</a>, <a href="https://halloffame.melbournepressclub.com/article/kate-webb">Kate Webb</a> and <a href="https://halloffame.melbournepressclub.com/article/margaret-jones">Margaret Jones</a> – are compiled by editors Watson and Roberts. They are shorter by comparison and told in the third person, so give the text a slight imbalance. But they aptly place these women in the vanguard of Australian foreign correspondent work, alongside their contemporary counterparts. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4cThzNsPNqU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Kate Webb covered the Vietnam war and ‘broke the khaki ceiling’, from 1967.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The arc of this text performs an important function, honouring this work between the covers of a book, patching up and correcting the historical imprint of Australian foreign correspondents. The editors write: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Women correspondents are the equal of their male counterparts. They are among the bravest and most insightful journalists we have at a time when the hot zone is more dangerous than it has ever been. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>They argue that the type of journalism historically covered by female journalists, what they call the “soft” stories, are now the “big” stories. This leap, infused with the argument that women report with more empathy than men, is polemical. By making it, the editors inadvertently differentiate between the product that male and female journalists produce. This is less than helpful in chasing equality for women – but I understand it, in this context, as counterbalance.</p>
<p>Each of the 29 stories in Through Her Eyes has the impact of a blockbuster film.
There is some powerful writing. Every chapter is an eye-opening glimpse into a world gone crazy – continuously, for the past 80 years. This is my biggest take-away: the ubiquitous corruption, greed, inequality and hatred we perpetrate on each other. </p>
<p>The granular lens through which most of these chapters are written is scintillatingly thought-provoking: the current <a href="https://theconversation.com/with-his-army-on-the-back-foot-is-escalation-over-ukraine-vladimir-putins-only-real-option-190046">Ukrainian plight</a>; the <a href="https://theconversation.com/protests-biznez-and-a-failed-coup-journalist-monica-attard-on-covering-the-empire-gorbachev-allowed-to-collapse-188469">fall of the Soviet Union</a>; the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-china-combined-authoritarianism-with-capitalism-to-create-a-new-communism-167586">highly surveilled China</a>; coming face to face with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/one-year-into-taliban-control-afghans-face-poverty-and-repression-australia-cannot-turn-a-blind-eye-188727">Taliban</a>; being in Pakistan when a US elite squad executed Osama bin Laden. Beirut, Syria, Gaza, India, Central Africa, the Pacific and more. The stories are as riveting as they are horrifying. </p>
<p>When practitioners lean into their craft and write personally about what they see and feel, it invokes Dan Wakefield’s 1966 foundational text <a href="https://www.commentary.org/articles/joseph-epstein/between-the-lines-by-dan-wakefield/">Between the Lines: A reporter’s personal journey through public events</a>. Clearly a thinker before his time, Wakefield was one of the first to discuss the story behind the story – the story between the lines on the public record. </p>
<p>This is what Through Her Eyes gives us: the rest of the story, imbued with each writer’s personal experience and perspective, separate and additional to what was published or broadcast. It’s the journalist’s experience of gathering the story: what else she saw and felt.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/protests-biznez-and-a-failed-coup-journalist-monica-attard-on-covering-the-empire-gorbachev-allowed-to-collapse-188469">Protests, 'biznez' and a failed coup: journalist Monica Attard on covering the empire Gorbachev allowed to collapse</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Strong and authoritative</h2>
<p>All the book’s chapters are strong and authoritative: Barbara Miller on the Russian invasion of Ukraine; Cate Cadell on technological surveillance in China; Anna Coren in <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-future-lawyer-to-betrothed-to-a-taliban-fighter-august-in-kabul-shows-how-life-changed-overnight-for-so-many-in-afghanistan-188352">Kabul</a>; Kirsty Needham’s expulsion from Beijing; Tracey Holmes in China and the Middle East; Ruth Pollard in <a href="https://theconversation.com/children-are-being-used-as-human-shields-in-syria-what-is-the-world-doing-about-it-175655">Syria</a>; Gwen Robinson in Manila; Sue Williams in Caledonia. </p>
<p>It is a stellar cast of gifted reporters: some dodging bullets, some dodging predatory men (including, for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janine_Perrett">Janine Perrett</a>, former prime minister Malcolm Fraser), some getting deported, some running towards the World Trade Center on <a href="https://theconversation.com/9-11-survivors-exposure-to-toxic-dust-and-the-chronic-health-conditions-that-followed-offer-lessons-that-are-still-too-often-unheeded-166537">9/11</a> when everyone else was running away. Yes, they are as brave, courageous and insightful as their male counterparts – but that is not surprising to any thinking woman. And it should not surprise any thinking man.</p>
<p>Women historically – and still – are blocked, excluded and obstructed in their careers, personal lives and education (more in some parts of the world than others). Just because they are women. Through Her Eyes offers a significant rebalancing act, for what was once deemed a male province. </p>
<p>But what is my real dream? To wrap my hands around a text written by Australian foreign correspondents of diverse identities and genders, within the pages of one book. A balanced, thoughtful and considered compilation of a cross-section of excellent Australian reporting from afar, continuing to speak truth to power through writing.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189962/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sue Joseph does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Does a journalist’s gender matter if their job is to speak truth to power? It shouldn’t but until recently did. A new book, Through Her Eyes, tells the stories of our women foreign correspondents.Sue Joseph, Associate Professor; Senior Research Fellow, University of South AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1859952022-06-30T19:55:39Z2022-06-30T19:55:39ZUkraine Diaries: Donbas, where volunteers pray that fate will spare them<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471845/original/file-20220630-18-k9msag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C2%2C1393%2C913&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo provided by the author.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In his <a href="https://theconversation.com/fr/topics/chroniques-dukraine-120841">Ukraine Diaries</a>, researcher Romain Huët chronicles the way war has changed the daily lives of an entire population. After reporting for The Conversation from the field in April and May 2022, he now provides us with a first-hand look at the conflict. This entry is the last in the diary series.</em></p>
<hr>
<p><em>1 May 2022, Kramatorsk and Severodonetsk.</em></p>
<p>Leaving <a href="https://theconversation.com/chroniques-dukraine-resister-sous-les-bombes-recits-depuis-kharkiv-183402">Kharkiv</a> was a painful and trying experience. I had built a rapport with many of the volunteers. The act of leaving and the discomfort that comes with it reveals the asymmetrical relationship between the observer and the volunteers. They stay, whereas I am free to move on, having spent only a short time in their lives.</p>
<p>After our goodbyes and our promises to keep in touch no matter what, I travel to two other volunteer centres in the Donbas that serve the cities of Kramatorsk and Severodonetsk. The military situation here is much worse than in Kharkiv. Russian forces have surrounded the city and the fighting is particularly fierce. Each day, there are fears that the enemy will push forward enough to capture both cities.</p>
<h2>In the thick of the conflict</h2>
<p>As in Kharkiv, the volunteer centre provides humanitarian aid to the towns and villages caught in the clashes. It is also responsible for evacuating the last war-weary inhabitants who are reluctantly leaving their homes and livelihood behind.</p>
<p>This week, I have been helping the volunteers in their missions. Every day is more or less the same. At 7 a.m., volunteers from all of Kramatorsk come out to their ‘base’ in the suburbs. To access it, one must drive along a badly damaged road, practically crawling for the last 200 metres as one swerves between the various obstacles on one’s path.</p>
<p>The base – a huge disused sawmill – is an unsettling sight to behold. The factory looks like it was abandoned years ago. Stacks of wood and machinery litter the floor.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465699/original/file-20220527-19-rpr5w3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465699/original/file-20220527-19-rpr5w3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465699/original/file-20220527-19-rpr5w3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465699/original/file-20220527-19-rpr5w3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465699/original/file-20220527-19-rpr5w3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465699/original/file-20220527-19-rpr5w3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465699/original/file-20220527-19-rpr5w3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In front of the old sawmill-turned-volunteer base.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Romain Huët</span>, <span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When I arrive, most of the volunteers have already made their way here by minibus or in their own cars. They queue up in front of a makeshift petrol station consisting of two tanks containing a few hundred litres of fuel each.</p>
<p>The volunteers repeat the routine every morning, parking in front of the tanks to fill up their vehicles for the day’s journey. The tanks are stocked up on a provisional, daily basis. The rest of the fuel sits in a massive storage building, which serves as a goods warehouse and loading area. Inside, cardboard boxes are arranged haphazardly, most of them filled with basic necessities supplied by European NGOs. There are also all sorts of sweets and juices with unusual flavours and colours.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465678/original/file-20220527-17-id0q2e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465678/original/file-20220527-17-id0q2e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465678/original/file-20220527-17-id0q2e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465678/original/file-20220527-17-id0q2e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465678/original/file-20220527-17-id0q2e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465678/original/file-20220527-17-id0q2e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465678/original/file-20220527-17-id0q2e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Inside the storage building.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Romain Huët</span>, <span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Not far off, Ukrainian tanks hide from sight. Although we can’t see them, we regularly hear them shoot. Their presence unnerves me, as they make the base a potential target. Others don’t share my concern, however. The volunteers don’t seem to care about the reality on the frontline, military positions or the situation at large. Fed up and saturated with the ever-changing news, they simply accept this new reality and get on with it. They speak of the military situation only in very broad terms.</p>
<h2>When missiles start raining from the sky</h2>
<p>I’m embedded with Vadim for the day. We’re going to deliver packages to Severodonetsk, a city that would usually be a two hours’ drive away. It has been under siege for several weeks. After that, we will attempt to evacuate civilians from the surrounding villages.</p>
<p>We will be driving an old minibus donated to the centre by a Polish NGO. Its seats have been removed to make more room. Vadim, a slightly portly man of about forty with a cheerful face, seldom speaks; when he chooses to do so, he never raises his voice. He’s not the type of guy to cause trouble. He gets the job done without making a fuss. In all our chats, he has never gone into details about his old life, perhaps because he thinks it isn’t relevant to what’s going on now. He was introduced to me as a formidable driver, the best of the best. I understood this to mean that his missions would take him to all the difficult-to-access areas.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465316/original/file-20220525-26-d626e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465316/original/file-20220525-26-d626e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465316/original/file-20220525-26-d626e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465316/original/file-20220525-26-d626e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465316/original/file-20220525-26-d626e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=627&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465316/original/file-20220525-26-d626e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=627&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465316/original/file-20220525-26-d626e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=627&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Vadim driving the minibus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Romain Huët</span>, <span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Before we return to the base, Vadim drops me off outside one of the rare open supermarkets to stock up on cigarettes. It’s not always possible to find them. Many cities have been hit with goods shortages, and basic necessities are not exactly supplied equally. Some might consider cigarettes to be a completely unessential consumer product. But in this time of war the volunteers I’ve met have all been chain-smoking to kill time or to calm their nerves in critical situations. In the shop, I hesitate over whether to get myself a take-away coffee. I usually go for an “Americano”. On the whole, the coffee here doesn’t exactly have the best flavour, but at least it keeps you awake after restless nights filled with explosions and sirens. There are a few people in front of me in the queue. We decide not to wait any longer – we’re in a hurry.</p>
<p>Getting back to the factory is an ordeal because of the terrible state of the road. Making constant stops and starts, Vadim drives slowly across the bumpy surface, taking particular care with the train tracks that could damage the vehicle’s shock absorbers – we don’t want to end up stuck on one of them. The old minibus rocks from side to side under the strain of countless past repairs. Vadim patiently weaves his way forward, on the lookout for patches of road that can support the vehicle’s wheels.</p>
<p>We arrive at the factory and exit the vehicle. As always, we shake a few hands as we wait to fill up. I light a cigarette. At that very moment, we are shaken by a huge blast. The boom is deafening. It causes us to instinctively duck down. The missile has exploded just 200 metres from our position, hitting the potholed road that we crossed just three minutes earlier. A giant cloud of black smoke and debris billows up into the air. Everyone is terrified. “Fuck, that was a close one,” one of the volunteers says. We keep our eyes on the sky in case we see another missile falling on us. The bombs fall so fast that you barely have the time to watch yourself die.</p>
<p>Tapping Vadim’s shoulder, I point toward a second missile falling from the sky. It lands at around the same place as the first. Whether due to the noise or to my stupor in the face of these death machines, I am unable to tear my eyes away from the missile as it follows its trajectory from sky to ground. First, we see more black smoke filled with endless dirt and debris, forming an enormous mushroom cloud of death that floods the sky. Then, we hear the explosion piercing through the air. We run for cover behind a pile of wooden planks all cut up and stacked together – a makeshift shelter to protect from shrapnel. And when you see the sharp steel shards contained in these missiles, you realise that these planks can come in quite handy.</p>
<p>Everything happens so quickly and suddenly that there’s no point in trying to resist the panic. We are overcome with a slew of conflicting feelings; disbelief mixes with a keen sense of present danger. We stare at the sky, and then look all around for possible hiding spots.</p>
<p>Fear and dread are palpable, but expressed by no one. They take hold of our bodies and our innermost thoughts, repeating over and over that something even more horrific might happen. But we must keep these feelings to ourselves.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465853/original/file-20220529-40937-l05iie.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465853/original/file-20220529-40937-l05iie.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465853/original/file-20220529-40937-l05iie.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465853/original/file-20220529-40937-l05iie.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465853/original/file-20220529-40937-l05iie.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465853/original/file-20220529-40937-l05iie.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465853/original/file-20220529-40937-l05iie.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A few seconds after the explosion. The sign on the minibus says ‘Free Evacuations’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Romain Huët</span>, <span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Photographing the destruction as it happens</h2>
<p>Right after the explosion, some are taking photographs of the smoke swirling up into the sky. The purpose of this act is to prove to ourselves that we were actually there, standing just a few dozen metres away from the impact. Vadim even takes a video of himself with the plumes of smoke in the background. There’s a strange buzz in the air. “We were right there and three minutes earlier, we would have been goners.” Throughout the rest of the day, I hear these same words repeated, expressing the danger of the situation and an awareness of our sheer luck. My stomach is in knots.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Ukraine diaries:</strong></p>
<ol>
<li><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-diaries-our-ethnographic-correspondent-documents-the-war-184184">Our ethnographic correspondent documents the war</a></p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-diaries-art-in-the-face-of-the-war-184199">Art in the face of the war</a></p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/chroniques-dukraine-volontaire-pour-entrer-en-guerre-182161">Volunteering for war</a> (in French)</p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/chroniques-dukraine-peut-on-tourner-le-dos-a-sa-guerre-182192">Can we turn our back on “their” war?</a> (in French)</p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/chroniques-dukraine-les-ruines-linsouciance-et-la-banalisation-de-la-guerre-182601">Ruins, carefree attitude and the trivialisation of war</a> (in French)</p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/chroniques-dukraine-resister-sous-les-bombes-recits-depuis-kharkiv-183402">Standing firm as the bombs fall (in French)</a></p></li>
<li><p>Donbas, where volunteers pray to be spared by fate.</p></li>
</ol>
<hr>
<p>Vadim and I don’t stick around. We have to head back to Severodonetsk to deliver the packages and evacuate any willing residents. He fills up the fuel tank and we drive away from the site of the explosion. Along the bumpy road, a few metres from the massive factory, a number of soldiers emerge from their hiding spot. They are on high alert, but appear at a loss. Once a missile explodes, it is too late for the soldiers to retaliate. Utterly powerless, all they can do is observe the sky and pray that they will be spared.</p>
<h2>Gifts at the checkpoints: two packets of Oreos and two bottles of orange juice</h2>
<p>The trip to Severodonetsk lasts an hour and a half.</p>
<p>There are many checkpoints on the way, which we pass through with no trouble. Vadim takes this road every day and he has his little habits. He exchanges a few words with the soldiers, some of whom are old acquaintances. He doesn’t come empty-handed. To each of them, he offers two packets of Oreo biscuits and two bottles of orange juice.</p>
<p>The soldiers are amused by Vadim’s generosity. They joke around but are happy to take the gift. For my part, I have only been checked once in the city of Severodonetsk. The soldier asked me where my helmet was and I told him that it was in the boot of the vehicle. Vadim wasn’t wearing one and I didn’t really want to stand out in those sorts of situations. The soldier eyed me up scornfully, annoyed by the apparent carelessness of the “war tourist”.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Think you’re Ironman or something?” he asks. “If there’s an explosion, your whole body will be blown to pieces.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Watching his sweeping gesture, simulating how my flesh would be scattered through the air, I secretly harboured a few doubts about the helmet’s usefulness. “You can just give it to me if you’re not going to wear it,” he continued. Not possible. The helmet and bulletproof vest were <a href="https://theconversation.com/chroniques-dukraine-un-chercheur-sur-le-terrain-pour-documenter-la-guerre-181540">on loan from Reporters Without Borders</a>. I had left a deposit of €2,500, so I had better hold on to it.</p>
<h2>The same emptiness spreading out before us</h2>
<p>Severodonetsk is just as sinister as the north-eastern neighbourhoods of Kharkiv. The same emptiness spreads out before us: streets reduced to rubble, bullet-riddled blocks of flats, collapsed roofs and charred buildings. Explosions are very frequent.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465684/original/file-20220527-23-a9ew15.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465684/original/file-20220527-23-a9ew15.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465684/original/file-20220527-23-a9ew15.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465684/original/file-20220527-23-a9ew15.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465684/original/file-20220527-23-a9ew15.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465684/original/file-20220527-23-a9ew15.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465684/original/file-20220527-23-a9ew15.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Severodonetsk.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Romain Huët</span>, <span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Russians surround the city, located just 3 km (2 miles) away. On our way, we pass several Ukrainian tanks looking to position themselves. As we travel through the city, Vadim insists that I take some videos. After all, my role is to document, and “footage” is vital in attesting to this reality.</p>
<p>He reminds me to hide my camera as we appear to approach a checkpoint. But the streets are empty of people. Vadim has forgotten one important thing: we are at the frontline where there are, of course, no checkpoints.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GgMXzbiTDOo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The video ends abruptly when the soldiers tell us to stop the minibus.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As I film the wreckage from a slow moving mini-bus, four soldiers appear out of nowhere. They stand 20 metres away, their guns aimed at us. Vadim stops the vehicle and opens the door. One of the soldiers draws his weapon closer. He yells at us to stay still – one move and he’ll shoot. The air is thick with tension. They surround the vehicle located a few metres away. It wouldn’t take much for them to shoot us down based on the ‘precautionary principle’. War does not always offer a valiant death. I remember that in Syria, not far from Idlib, two fighters were killed right after a significant victory over Bashar Al-Assad’s forces. In a festive mood, they had fooled around with SUVs they had taken from the regular army. They collided; two fighters died.</p>
<p>From the driver’s seat, Vadim shouts that we are volunteers. They ask us to slowly step out of the vehicle, with our hands up. Without lowering their weapons and still eyeing us suspiciously, they approach us. After asking some questions and checking our papers, they relax a little. Surprisingly, they do not go through my phone. The check shouldn’t last too long. We’re all totally exposed and vulnerable. After a few minutes, they let us go, ordering us not to take any photos. They don’t have to ask me twice.</p>
<p>Once the check is complete, we soon reach the volunteer centre. It’s a narrow building of around 70 sq. m. The interior is hollow because the living room wall was blown apart yesterday. The chairs are still here, though, now facing a gaping hole that looks out on a heap of rubble. The house has barely been cleared of the detritus. A coffee pot sits on the floor near an electrical socket. Assorted cardboard boxes are strewn around. It is a dodgy, unsafe place to be. But it is here that a dozen or so volunteers are still working away to bring aid to the citizens of Severodonetsk.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465689/original/file-20220527-19-osrm79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465689/original/file-20220527-19-osrm79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465689/original/file-20220527-19-osrm79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465689/original/file-20220527-19-osrm79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465689/original/file-20220527-19-osrm79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465689/original/file-20220527-19-osrm79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465689/original/file-20220527-19-osrm79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The volunteer centre in Severodonetsk as seen from the outside…</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">William Nessen</span>, <span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465686/original/file-20220527-17-uhpjgp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465686/original/file-20220527-17-uhpjgp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465686/original/file-20220527-17-uhpjgp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465686/original/file-20220527-17-uhpjgp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465686/original/file-20220527-17-uhpjgp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465686/original/file-20220527-17-uhpjgp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465686/original/file-20220527-17-uhpjgp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">… from the yard…</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">William Nessen</span>, <span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465687/original/file-20220527-11-7d3pzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465687/original/file-20220527-11-7d3pzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465687/original/file-20220527-11-7d3pzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465687/original/file-20220527-11-7d3pzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465687/original/file-20220527-11-7d3pzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465687/original/file-20220527-11-7d3pzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465687/original/file-20220527-11-7d3pzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">… and from the inside.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">William Nessen</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is also where I happen to meet an American journalist by the name of William Nessen (whose story of his stay in the Donbas can be read <a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2022/5/18/journalist_billy_nessen_frontline_report_ukraine">here</a>). He’s been here a fortnight already and doesn’t intend to leave “until the Russians are gone”. Holding a packet of crisps, he munches away while giving me a rapid summary of all the different lives he has led covering wars in Indonesia, Iraq, and many other locations. His nonchalant, carefree manner puts me at ease. Nothing seems to bother him, not even the dull sounds of explosions that can be heard almost constantly.</p>
<h2>A strange void</h2>
<p>After delivering the goods, we hastily leave the volunteer centre. We make our way out of Severodonetsk and head toward a village under threat of siege by Russians forces. Our mission is to evacuate any willing inhabitants. Sometimes, evacuation is done with the help of the army, but nothing has been organized today. We speed along another road, cracked by rocket attacks.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465692/original/file-20220527-25-gv7o2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465692/original/file-20220527-25-gv7o2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465692/original/file-20220527-25-gv7o2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465692/original/file-20220527-25-gv7o2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465692/original/file-20220527-25-gv7o2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465692/original/file-20220527-25-gv7o2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465692/original/file-20220527-25-gv7o2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">On the road.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Romain Huët</span>, <span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is lined by trees and fields that conceal a number of tanks. All around are sparse, thin columns of smoke. People often ask what the front is like. This is what it is: an empty space, fighters hiding in plain sight, smoke all around, sounds of explosions coming like clockwork. Gunshots can also be heard here and there, likely missing their target. It is an eerie landscape that offers nothing in the way of comfort. All stands still, in waiting.</p>
<p>In the minibus, Vadim is quiet. We are on edge, our bodies restless. We smoke nervously. Speeding along the treacherous roads, our senses are hyper-receptive, watching for dangers that might pop out of anywhere. All I see is a strange void; a desolate scene that gives off an intensely destructive, lethal vibe. We arrive at the village, perched on top of a little hill. A few residents are smoking in front of their homes against this grim barren backdrop. Vadim rolls down the window and offers his help. They wave us away. They’re staying here. Even though they risk ruin and occupation, they have made their choice. Emptying these towns of all their citizens is no mean feat.</p>
<p>Vadim continues to drive up and down the virtually empty streets. At a street corner, a guy holds a plastic bag, waving frantically. He seems relieved by our presence and hurries over to us. “Yes, I want to evacuate,” he says, his voice trembling. He looks particularly shaken, his features worn out by fear. Vadim asks for his ID. He has it. Carrying nothing more than a plastic bag and his papers, the young man leaves his life behind.</p>
<p>Just one person has agreed to evacuate today. Rational choice theory suggests that decisions should be made by weighing up potential risks to be met and the benefits to be gained following a certain action. That theory does not apply here. Our vehicle leaves the village at breakneck speed.</p>
<p>“We can’t stop; it’s dangerous here,” Vadim says, as he focuses on the road.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465694/original/file-20220527-11-l05iie.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465694/original/file-20220527-11-l05iie.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465694/original/file-20220527-11-l05iie.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465694/original/file-20220527-11-l05iie.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465694/original/file-20220527-11-l05iie.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=662&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465694/original/file-20220527-11-l05iie.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=662&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465694/original/file-20220527-11-l05iie.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=662&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Romain Huët</span>, <span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465696/original/file-20220527-13-ylly66.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465696/original/file-20220527-13-ylly66.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465696/original/file-20220527-13-ylly66.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465696/original/file-20220527-13-ylly66.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465696/original/file-20220527-13-ylly66.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465696/original/file-20220527-13-ylly66.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465696/original/file-20220527-13-ylly66.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Romain Huët</span>, <span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Time is of the essence. Silence suddenly falls in the minibus, slipping in among us. Words seem meaningless at this point. The road is a total wreck, every inch of it cracked, but Vadim appears to be speeding up even more. He positions the right wheels on the other side of a trench, while the left side remains on the undamaged part of the road. The vehicle flies on in this insane balancing act. I hold on tight, as terrified as I am helpless. Branches clatter against the windscreen, already well worn from many previous trips of this kind. I gaze out at the road as if I am the one driving. I consider all the different ways we might crash, imagining the windscreen shattering to pieces. Completely caught up in the action of our race, I have forgotten about the bombs. Vadim continues to send the vehicle hurtling forward until he finds some solid road.</p>
<p>It’s now looking more navigable. As the road starts to widen, the danger seems to move farther and farther away. Our tense bodies slacken. We are a bit calmer, but remain silent. I regain my bearings. As we drive on in silence, my reflections on war turn over in my head.</p>
<p>In this disempowering reality, how is it possible to feel like we have made any difference at all?</p>
<p>A cough from the passenger in the back pulls me back into reality. Even when the world is crumbling around you, you can still find some outlet; some feeling of having acted and stood up against the violence. Of course, the quest for such meaning might send you straight to your death. Incredibly, however, throughout all my time with the volunteers, not once was death mentioned. It has not yet become ubiquitous. Only if war drags on and hopelessness settles in will it become par for the course. For the time being, however, all their energy is being poured into the resistance, which they believe will be victorious.</p>
<h2>At the limit of all expressions, there is silence – (Chris Marker)</h2>
<p>A few minutes later, we light up cigarettes and manage to start speaking again. Vadim says that this used to be a pleasant drive before the road was taken over by tanks.</p>
<p>The scene was one of lush vegetation. Verdant plains stretched on for miles and the road was shaded by beautiful trees. The silence that took hold of us a few minutes earlier reflected our general sadness. It is a sadness not told in words, but rooted in the body. In his essay <a href="https://esprit.presse.fr/article/chris-marker/les-vivants-et-les-morts-23760"><em>The living and the dead</em></a>, the multimedia artist <a href="https://chrismarker.org/about/">Chris Marker</a> wrote: “At the limit of all expressions, there is silence.”</p>
<p>Each day, endlessly, Vadim makes these same journeys. When we get to Kramatorsk, he stops outside a bar that is seemingly shut, but which can actually be entered through a discreetly hidden door. We find ourselves in a semi-clandestine grocery shop selling alcohol, cigarettes, and a few food products. Vadim buys a few bottles. All of a sudden, I feel like having a big party, where everyone gets slightly tipsy and we all congratulate each other warmly for an extra day of work.</p>
<p>Instead, he leaves me back at HQ. Before heading home, he asks me to send him the video that I took before the soldiers started aiming at us. That utterly absurd moment really happened, and here’s the proof. But it’s not like people always believe what they see in videos. Real footage, at least, can prevent the memory from being lost, and defend against skeptics who would have you doubt your own experience.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Translated from the French by Enda Boorman for <a href="http://www.fastforword.fr/en">Fast ForWord</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185995/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This article is a continuation of the author's research and ANR 'Ethnographie des guerillas et des émeutes: formations subjectives, émotions et expérience sensible de la violence en train de fait - EGR' <a href="https://anr.fr/Projet-ANR-18-CE39-0011">https://anr.fr/Projet-ANR-18-CE39-0011</a>.</span></em></p>Bringing aid to the residents of bomb-ravaged cities becomes all the more difficult and perilous when the front line is just a stone’s throw away.Romain Huët, Maitre de conférences en sciences de la communication, Chercheur au PREFICS (Plurilinguismes, Représentations, Expressions Francophones, Information, Communication, Sociolinguistique), Université Rennes 2Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1841842022-05-31T18:51:50Z2022-05-31T18:51:50ZUkraine diaries: our ethnographic correspondent documents the war<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466412/original/file-20220531-18-xdhous.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C17%2C1326%2C849&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">I arrived in Lublin, Poland, on 15 April. At the airport, I discovered that my backpack had been lost by the airline. Stunned, anxious. I had planned to cross the border the same day. This is the first step of such a journey: to reach the country as soon as possible.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On 15 April 2022, I travelled to Ukraine, intending to stay there for a month. A simple question underpins my research trip: how do we behave when the world collapses around us? We oppose it with weapons, mutual help, aid, and humanitarian work. We watch it in disbelief. We flee it. We take action.</p>
<p>Throughout my month-long trip, I endeavoured to document the day-to-day experience of the war, based on accounts from civilians who are reacting to this overwhelming chain of events.</p>
<h2>War as an experience of the world collapsing</h2>
<p>War is, above all else, an experience of the world collapsing. It is the loss of loved ones; it is exile and destruction. The disappearance of reference points that usually structure daily life puts people’s psyche to the test. The world’s collapse is not just a tragedy – it gives rise to a host of unexpected emotions in every one of us. That is undoubtedly what gives war its paradoxical texture: it fascinates people as much as it repulses them. In war, life is diminished in tangible terms, yet ordinary people discover individual and collective powers within themselves. War affects life as much as it inspires people to turn to others. It is an experience of decay and altruism. It puts each person squarely <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/93731/i-will-bear-witness-volume-1-by-victor-klemperer/">back in the world</a>, in a world that is collapsing.</p>
<p>War unsettles the mind. It requires certainty. Its motives do not square with any sense of nuance. You cannot resist using “however” or “whys”. Otherwise, you would resist hesitantly, and hesitation saps bravery. One unit of meaning clashes with another. “Ukraine supporters” and “Russia supporters” trumpet their certainties, tell their version of history, cling to their geopolitical convictions, and explain the irrational: Russia’s invasion. In this torrent of voices, as confident as they are contradictory, meaning freezes. The longer the war lasts, the more meaning stiffens. Ethnography tries to salvage what geopolitics and ideologies destroy: war is <a href="https://www.franceculture.fr/oeuvre/apres-le-printemps-vie-ordinaire-de-combattants-syrien">also the matter of ordinary people</a>. It affects their existence radically.</p>
<h2>War fantasies</h2>
<p>Whenever an ethnographer travels to a war zone, the questions that haunt them are always the same: What is actually happening? What caused the war? Their perspective is rooted in the field: they report on local situations, the general atmosphere, a few tales told here and there, the subjective experience of the people they meet. Intellectual honesty compels them to keep quiet about all the rest, including sweeping questions about the war’s origins and the geopolitical games that go with it. They stick to a vague response: there is a whole period that paved the path to war. Nothing guarantees them that the local viewpoints they have collected reflect the overall situation. History is also made from the bottom up, by <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/revss/6344">the way ordinary civilians respond to a situation</a> that overwhelms them and justify their disobedience.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458812/original/file-20220420-19-vdnb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458812/original/file-20220420-19-vdnb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458812/original/file-20220420-19-vdnb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458812/original/file-20220420-19-vdnb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458812/original/file-20220420-19-vdnb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458812/original/file-20220420-19-vdnb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458812/original/file-20220420-19-vdnb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Ukrainian family agreed to drive me to the other side of the border. I arrived in Lviv on 17 April.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Romain Huët</span>, <span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Of course, war has its perils. But it comes with entrenched fantasies. Whoever goes to a war zone, whether to record the situation or take part in humanitarian work, makes their loved ones uncomfortable. They all imagine the person – even though they have no links to the situation they are about to engage with – will witness many battles, the forces of resistance, and cruelty of war. Undoubtedly, many adventures await them, and danger will threaten their life. They are honoured, however tacitly, for their bravery as they choose to go to that spot in the world where history is being made. These fantasies make farewells to their loved ones difficult. In the absence of any better words, a few sober, modest phrases see them off: “Have a safe journey. Be careful. Come back in one piece.”</p>
<p>It is good to sense this sudden affection, as if your life had to be endangered for emotional bonds to express themselves. Your pride is puffed up, as much as it is undeserved. This delusion does not stand the test of reality. The horrors of war certainly exist. But a journalist, researcher, or aid worker rarely sees them. They witness them fleetingly. Their lives are supervised. They belong to a category whose lives are especially worthy of protection. Their bodies are seldom exposed to the harshness of war.</p>
<h2>(Dis)organising one’s departure</h2>
<p>War foists the concrete reality of experience on the romantic version of it. To start making such a trip real, you need to organise your departure. This means gathering information and contacts: Where should I go? Who should I meet? <a href="https://larevuedesmedias.ina.fr/fixeur-ukraine-reportage-guerre-travail-journalistes-etrangers">How can I find a trustworthy fixer</a>, someone who can guide me on site, connect me with fighters and act as an interpreter? This is a real job. War opens up careers, and a fixer happens to be one of them. The higher the demand, the higher their rates. Today, it is hard to find a fixer who charges less than 250 euros per day.</p>
<p>I was on Maiden Square <a href="https://theconversation.com/forecast-for-ukraine-stormy-with-rays-of-sunshine-37249">during the 2014 Maiden Revolution</a>. The contacts I was able to make during my stay there were crucial, but not numerous enough to base this specific research trip upon. Searching for information is arduous, especially since mutual help among those who report on the conflict is often weak, mainly because each reporter’s life is plunged into disorder and uncertainty. A plan devised one evening is disowned or altered the next day. Each reporter is consumed with the prospects of possible meetings, relevant places they could go to, people with whom it would be advantageous to work with. Uncertainty is all the more taxing, as our time on site is brief and we have to faithfully reflect the situation and find a subject. So it is better to activate our contacts once we are on site: “I’m in Kiev!”</p>
<p>My presence on the ground confirms I am a valid interlocutor. But there is also a less noble reason – competition between journalists or researchers. Efforts to develop a network come at a cost. Competition is real. Many of my messages to people on site remained unanswered. War and the challenges of documenting it do not always inspire the solidarity we might expect when a population is threatened with extinction. War calls for a certain detached attitude: to understand and to go with the flow of encounters. To go with the flow is the way to go if one wants to stay open.</p>
<h2>What should you pack?</h2>
<p>Little is written about the practical details of such journeys. What should you pack? As a rule, you should travel light to make it easier to get around. But one month is quite a long time. I packed ten or so items of underwear, three tee-shirts, a pair of jeans, a jumper, twenty batteries for my voice recorder, a computer, cash, a bulletproof vest (in France, a level-three bulletproof vest costs more than 2,000 euros) which I borrowed from Reporters Without Borders, a helmet, and four notebooks – one for writing down my thoughts, and three for writing down what the people I meet tell me.</p>
<p>I also brought a few books, although I had a hard time picking which ones. I opted for literature: <em>Promise at Dawn</em> by Romain Gary, <em>Sankhara</em> by Frédérique Deghelt, <em>The Narrow Road to the Deep North</em> by Richard Flanagan. I knew nothing about these novels, about their quality or power, but literature whispers words and helps get a perspective in the fog of war. At the last minute, I also took along <em>Le Témoin jusqu’au bout</em> (<em>The Witness to the End</em>) by French philosopher Georges Didi-Huberman.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458811/original/file-20220420-19-wtrf1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458811/original/file-20220420-19-wtrf1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458811/original/file-20220420-19-wtrf1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458811/original/file-20220420-19-wtrf1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458811/original/file-20220420-19-wtrf1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458811/original/file-20220420-19-wtrf1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458811/original/file-20220420-19-wtrf1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Whereas war gives those who take part in it the feeling they have a hold over the world until it collapses, an ethnographer sees the world escape all subjugation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Romain Huët</span>, <span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On-the-ground research in war zones does not let itself be tamed by rationalisation. It is useful to a have a network that can inform you about the situation, ease administrative procedures, and put you in touch with the right people. But you need to recognise one permanent feature: whereas war gives those who take part in it the feeling they have a hold over the world until it collapses, an ethnographer sees the world escape all subjugation. This kind of journey is paved with uncertainty. It is made up of naive foresight and plans called off as quickly as they are drawn up.</p>
<h2>Bohdan, 21</h2>
<p>I arrived in Lublin, Poland, on 15 April. At the airport, I found out the airline had lost my rucksack. I was stunned and filled with anxiety. I had planned to cross the border that same day. It was the first stage of my journey: getting into the country as quickly as possible. After paying for a hotel room, I went over to a taxi to get to the train station so I could find out about the next trains leaving for Ukraine. This incident had an unexpected consequence that was very fortunate. I met Bohdan, a 21-year-old student who worked as a taxi driver to finance his studies. Bohdan was Ukrainian. I told him about my plans. He decided to help me find the best way to get into Ukraine. At the train station, he did not just drop me off but went along with me to help me find information. I learned the next train for Kyiv would be next Friday – in one week’s time. “Everyone’s going back to Kyiv”, the ticket office worker explained.</p>
<p>I was somewhat disheartened. Bohdan suggested going to the bus station. We checked out the next departures. Because of the Easter holidays, there would be no bus leaving before Wednesday 20 April. I could not wait that long. Bohdan took me back to Lublin city centre. He turned down my money: “I’m doing this for Ukrainians. If it was your firm paying, I’d have accepted the money, but in this situation I won’t.” Bohdan had been in Poland for two years. His family was still in Ukraine. At 21, he already had a taxi business and three cabs. He actually yearned to go with me to Ukraine. He would have liked to fill up his car with equipment he could take to his family or people on site. He told me, “I’m impulsive. I like it when life changes. I’m eager to give my existence a new direction.”</p>
<p>I sensed him hesitating. One does not prepare for this kind of journey in just a few hours. I was in too much of a hurry. My airline found my bag. In the end, he dropped me off at the border in his car. A Ukrainian family agreed to drive me to the other side of the border. I arrived in Lviv on 17 April.</p>
<h2>Progress has entered a pact with barbarity</h2>
<p>I very much doubt these details will enlighten people about the war. They seem trivial and vain, in light of a people being bombed and forced into exile, forced to endure the loss of its world. That is all true. But ethnography works along the margins, in the details.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458814/original/file-20220420-22-8mpkv7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458814/original/file-20220420-22-8mpkv7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458814/original/file-20220420-22-8mpkv7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458814/original/file-20220420-22-8mpkv7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458814/original/file-20220420-22-8mpkv7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458814/original/file-20220420-22-8mpkv7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458814/original/file-20220420-22-8mpkv7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">War is, above all, an experience of the world collapsing. It is the loss of loved ones. It is exile and destruction.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Romain Huët</span>, <span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It contrasts fantasies with the tangible reality of ordinary life’s complications. Given all the anecdotes told here, you might wonder whether exploring such a field is really worth a researcher’s time. The answer is as trivial as the anecdotes. We need to understand what is happening and what we are becoming. Georges Didi-Huberman tells us that Sigmund Freud, in his last work, <em>Moses and Monotheism</em>, tackled the issue with alarming simplicity, just as he was witnessing the dawn of the Third Reich. In his very last preface, he wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“We are living in a particularly strange era. We are discovering with surprise that progress has entered into a pact with barbarity.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>His take still resonates today. There are many ways to resist warmongering passions. One of the most important is to reflect, to question what is happening, to observe so as to find in it something like a “content of historical truth”.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Translated from the French by Thomas Young for <a href="http://www.fastforword.fr/en">Fast ForWord</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184184/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Romain Huët ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>In this series, The Conversation France sends out an ethnographic correspondent to document the war in Ukraine. Here, Romain Huët reflects on what the conflict means for ordinary people and prepares to cross the Ukrainian border.Romain Huët, Maitre de conférences en sciences de la communication, Chercheur au PREFICS (Plurilinguismes, Représentations, Expressions Francophones, Information, Communication, Sociolinguistique), Université Rennes 2Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1306572020-01-28T12:26:04Z2020-01-28T12:26:04ZFergal Keane: hopes that BBC reporter’s courage will help remove stigma of PTSD in journalists<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312218/original/file-20200128-81411-1ov0o1s.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C4%2C708%2C526&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">BBC Africa Editor, Fergal Keane, in a still from the 2001 film about the Rwanda genocide, Hope in Hell.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Comic Relief</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the hard-nosed world of journalism, admitting to suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has traditionally been taboo – a sign of weakness never to be admitted to colleagues in the newsroom where the remedy was often a stiff drink or two. Despite <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2001-05050-011">repeated efforts</a> over the past decade to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/09638230903191231">draw attention to the dangers of mental illness</a> faced by foreign correspondents, that stigma <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.998.6973&rep=rep1&type=pdf">has not gone away</a>.</p>
<p>It can only be hoped that may change now that one of the BBC’s most high-profile correspondents, Fergal Keane, has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jan/24/bbc-fergal-keane-to-step-down-after-revealing-he-has-ptsd">shared publicly</a> the PTSD he has been tussling with privately for several years. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-51236199">The BBC announced</a> that after decades of covering conflict, its veteran war reporter would be changing his role from that of Africa editor to “further assist his recovery”. The corporation’s head of newsgathering, Jonathan Munro, said: “It is both brave and welcome that he is ready to be open about PTSD.”</p>
<p>Keane is not the first correspondent by any means to have shared in public the impact that covering a relentless diet of conflict, crisis and disaster can have on even the most resilient human being. His BBC colleague Jeremy Bowen, Middle East editor, <a href="https://www.radiotimes.com/news/2017-05-17/jeremy-bowen-on-reporting-in-the-middle-east-i-kept-getting-dreams-about-having-to-bury-the-cameraman/">spoke about his own diagnosis</a> of PTSD in 2017, characterised by bouts of depression related to his work.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312219/original/file-20200128-81341-17c2m6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312219/original/file-20200128-81341-17c2m6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312219/original/file-20200128-81341-17c2m6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312219/original/file-20200128-81341-17c2m6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312219/original/file-20200128-81341-17c2m6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312219/original/file-20200128-81341-17c2m6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312219/original/file-20200128-81341-17c2m6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Janine Di Giovanni, winner of the 2018 Courage in Journalism Award.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">World Bank Photo Collection</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Renowned foreign correspondents such as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/jun/26/janine-di-giovanni-war-memoir-family">Janine di Giovanni</a> have also written movingly about the effects of PTSD. In her <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-Reviews/2011/0930/Ghosts-by-Daylight">2011 memoir, Ghosts by Daylight</a>, she confessed that crisis had become normality and “this real life, with all its sharp edges was terribly difficult”.</p>
<h2>Combat fatigue</h2>
<p>Almost two decades ago, research by South African psychologist Anthony Feinstein underscored the importance of efforts to introduce structured trauma training and counselling into news organisations. His <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12202279">first major study</a> of 140 war journalists published in 2002 found that they had significantly more psychiatric difficulties than journalists who did not report on war.</p>
<p>In particular, the lifetime prevalence of PTSD in journalists who cover war was similar to rates reported for combat veterans, while the rate of major depression exceeded that of the general population. In 2018, Feinstein <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0706743718777396">conducted a retrospective study</a> of PTSD data collected over 18 years from journalists who have covered conflict across four continents. </p>
<p>Between 1999 and 2017, data had been collected from 684 journalists covering stories ranging from the 9/11 attacks and the Arab Spring to drug wars in Mexico and the refugee crisis in Europe. The data showed that the majority of the correspondents did not display prominent symptoms of PTSD at any one moment in time. But over a longer time-frame (many correspondents were spending well over a decade covering conflict) the data confirmed that rates of the full PTSD syndrome can approach those experienced by those engaged in actual combat – and he cautioned that news organisations could not afford to be complacent when it came to their duty of care.</p>
<h2>Raising awareness</h2>
<p>Large news organisations such as the BBC and Reuters have made great strides in recognising the issues associated with PTSD and providing both training and support. This has been reinforced by the work of a US-based global charity, the <a href="https://dartcenter.org/">Dart Centre for Journalism & Trauma</a> which offers a range of best practice guidelines and resources to safeguard the mental well-being of journalists.</p>
<p>This is not just about those on the frontline of foreign reporting. Almost every journalist will end up covering traumatic news events in their career – whether this be sexual violence, traffic accidents, or criminal trials. Most recently, there is a <a href="https://medium.com/@emhub">growing awareness</a> of the dangers posed to journalists in the newsroom monitoring incoming, raw user-generated content from the sites of conflict, terror and disaster worldwide – what has been dubbed the “[digital frontline]”.</p>
<p>It is a point that was highlighted in a 2015 survey by <a href="http://eyewitnessmediahub.com/research/vicarious-trauma">Eyewitness Media Hub</a>. This major study on the issue surveyed 122 journalists around the world and concluded that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Office-bound staff who used to be somewhat shielded from viewing atrocities are now bombarded day in and day out with horrifically graphic material that explodes onto their desktops in volumes, and at a frequency that is very often far in excess of the horrors witnessed by staff who are investigating or reporting from the actual frontline.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Slowly but surely, journalism courses at universities in the UK are becoming aware of the importance of trauma training before students enter this professional environment. We would like to think that the work we are doing at Bournemouth University through both education, research and professional practice – in conjunction with the Dart Centre, BBC and others – is starting to make a difference.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tXh512ZjxOI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The aim is to create an awareness of how people caught up in traumatic news might react and how to conduct ethical interviews with victims and survivors of trauma. In addition, we feel it is only responsible to make our journalism students aware of the mental stresses that journalists are exposed to whether on the frontline or in the newsroom.</p>
<h2>Coping strategies</h2>
<p>That doesn’t mean we should assume that every journalist who covers a distressing news story or handles sensitive material will develop PTSD. But it is important to do our best to build resilience and develop coping strategies so that journalists can bounce back stronger from the impact of covering distressing news.</p>
<p>As Keane’s case illustrates, PTSD can often present itself long after events. He has spoken and written about the effects that covering the 1994 Rwanda genocide had on him. It can only be hoped that the courage Keane has displayed in moving himself away from the frontline will send a signal that it is acceptable to recognise mental health issues in journalism. </p>
<p>Far from turning his back on the profession, according to the BBC he intends to “continue to provide original and compelling journalism” and hopes to draw on his experiences to guide and nurture young journalists. This can only be positive for the next generation of journalists.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130657/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Jukes is a trustee and chair of the Dart Centre for Journalism & Trauma in Europe. Before moving into the academic world he worked as a foreign correspondent and was the Global Head of News at Reuters.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Karen Fowler-Watt works for Bournemouth University and is a member of the BJTC and NCTJ industry councils. She was formerly a BBC journalist.</span></em></p>Keane is stepping back from his role as the BBC’s Africa editor due to a long struggle with PTSD after years reporting from conflict zones.Stephen Jukes, Professor of Journalism, Bournemouth UniversityKaren Fowler-Watt, Senior Principal Academic, Centre for Excellence in Media Practice (CEMP), Bournemouth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1065162018-11-13T14:56:14Z2018-11-13T14:56:14ZMarie Colvin: Lindsey Hilsum’s revealing biography of courageous war reporter is compelling stuff<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245138/original/file-20181112-83573-7b3m7x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Marie Colvin, who died after being targeted in a shell attack in Homs, Syria, in 2012.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51045820">Wikipedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/oct/27/lindsey-hilsum-interview-marie-colvin-in-extremis-biography">Marie Colvin</a>, it was Lebanon’s <a href="https://www.merip.org/mer/mer133/war-camps-war-hostages">War of the Camps</a> that brought home the power of journalism. In April 1987 <a href="https://www.upi.com/Archives/1987/04/09/The-Red-Cross-today-evacuated-47-seriously-wounded-Palestinians/4460544939200/">Burj al Barajneh</a>, a Palestinian refugee camp, was besieged by <a href="http://countrystudies.us/lebanon/88.htm">Amal</a>, a Shia militia backed by the Syrian regime.</p>
<p>Colvin and her photographer <a href="https://breathepictures.com/tom-stoddart-photojournalist-podcast/">Tom Stoddart</a> paid an Amal commander to briefly hold fire while they ran into the camp across no-man’s land. The assault on the camp was relentless and women were forced to run a gauntlet of sniper fire to get food and water for their families.</p>
<p>One young woman, Haji Achmed Ali, was shot as she tried to re-enter the camp with supplies. As she lay there wounded, no man dared pull her to safety. But then, Colvin reported:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Two [women] raced from cover, plucked Achmed Ali from the dust and hauled her to safety. It is the women who are dying and it was women who tired of men’s inaction.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Despite the best efforts of volunteer medics, Achmed Ali would not survive. At the hospital another woman appealed to Colvin to tell the world the young woman’s story.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245118/original/file-20181112-83579-1vfa1mv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245118/original/file-20181112-83579-1vfa1mv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245118/original/file-20181112-83579-1vfa1mv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245118/original/file-20181112-83579-1vfa1mv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245118/original/file-20181112-83579-1vfa1mv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1116&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245118/original/file-20181112-83579-1vfa1mv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1116&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245118/original/file-20181112-83579-1vfa1mv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1116&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Penguin</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>War on Women, the powerful piece Colvin wrote, was splashed across the front page of the <em>Sunday Times</em> on 5 April 1987. “The facts were clear and brutal,” writes Lindsey Hilsum in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/nov/03/in-extremis-by-lindsey-hilsum-review-life-war-correspondent-marie-colvin">In Extremis: The Life of War Correspondent Marie Colvin</a>, “as Marie had seen it with her own eyes”.</p>
<p>The effect was almost immediate. Three days later the Syrian regime ordered its proxy militia to stand down and for the first time the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was able to enter the camp. A herd of journalists soon followed. “In a few days the War of the Camps was over,” writes Hilsum.</p>
<h2>Complexity</h2>
<p><em>In Extremis</em> is Hilsum’s riveting story of how Colvin went from a carefree idealistic youth in Oyster Bay, NY, to an audacious war correspondent who reported from sites of merciless violence in <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-14649284">Lebanon</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-prison-called-gaza-new-book-offers-a-startling-insight-into-everyday-life-in-the-territory-88200">Palestine</a>, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3293441.stm">Chechnya</a>, <a href="https://asiafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Timor-Leste-StateofConflictandViolence.pdf">East Timor</a>, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-12004081">Sri Lanka</a>, the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17632399">Balkans</a> and <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/04/libya-story-conflict-explained-160426105007488.html">Libya</a>. Until <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/feb/22/marie-colvin">her death</a> at the hands of the Syrian regime, Colvin remained indefatigable, never losing her idealism or youthful energy. </p>
<p>By eschewing hagiography for complexity, Hilsum has created a captivating portrait. The Colvin that Hilsum reveals is shaped by the loss of a beloved father, by the spirit of competition, by being a woman in a male-dominated field, and, above all, by a moral commitment to bearing witness and a natural affinity for the underdog.</p>
<p>By casting Colvin’s triumphs against the demons that pursued her – the turbulence of failed romances, the struggles with alcohol, the traumas of war – Hilsum gives a truer sense of the challenges that she faced. By capturing Colvin’s vivacity, generosity, humour and affability, Hilsum also shows how this inveterate raconteur came to be loved and admired in equal measure. </p>
<p>Like Ernest Hemingway, Colvin had invested in her own legend and sometimes strained to live up to it. But there was nothing inauthentic about her capacity for empathy or her commitment to the truth. Though in times of peace she struggled to distinguish herself, in times of crisis she unfailingly outshone her peers. While the Middle East remained her main beat, she also ventured farther afield, from Chechnya to Sri Lanka and East Timor.</p>
<p>But if East Timor was the site of her <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/baby-clothes-on-the-barbed-wire-as-militias-close-in-9g8kchs5xv8">greatest triumph</a> (her defiant refusal to abandon trapped refugees eventually led to their safe evacuation), Sri Lanka became the site of her <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1316434/Wounded-reporter-may-lose-her-sight.html%22%22">greatest trauma</a>, losing an eye to a soldier’s grenade while returning from a visit to the Tamil-controlled north. But while the trauma would haunt her and briefly sapped her confidence, she remained undeterred. She courted greater danger in subsequent years and turned the eye-patch into part of her legend.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XL-okvk34qk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Colvin’s last report from Syria, hours before she died.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The making of a legend</h2>
<p>By the time Colvin entered <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-35806229">Syria</a> in 2012, the reporting landscape had changed. Israel and Putin’s Russia had demonstrated that journalists could be targeted with impunity and killers elsewhere had taken note. Before Colvin entered the besieged Syrian enclave of Baba Amr with photographer <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/paul-conroy-marie-colvin-syria-homs-war-photographer-ptsd-free-syrian-army-a8520576.html">Paul Conroy</a>, they had been warned that regime soldiers had orders to summarily execute journalists found in the area.</p>
<p>But Colvin and Conroy agreed that the story was worth the risk; they crawled through three kilometres of a drainage pipe to infiltrate. They found Baba Amr’s only functioning hospital inundated with the dead and the dying; they met nearly 150 widows and orphans in a crowded basement sheltering from the regime’s shelling. <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/final-dispatch-from-homs-the-battered-city-0ntg7xk3397">Widows’ Basement</a>, Colvin’s haunting last story for the <em>Sunday Times</em>, was also her most poignant. </p>
<p>What happened next fused Colvin’s life and legend and placed her convictions beyond any cynic’s doubt. Five days before her death, Colvin had made it safely out of Baba Amr. But having seen what she had seen, she felt a moral compulsion to return. Conroy had misgivings, but he shared Colvin’s sense of commitment.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3GpTBx3P4dg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The regime meanwhile had tightened the siege and an informer had alerted it to the journalists’ presence. Colvin was conscious of the risks but made a fateful choice: hoping that her reporting would once again stir the international community into restraining a killer, she spoke to the BBC and CNN, emphasising the urgency of the situation. The regime used the signal from her satellite phone to pinpoint her location and killed her with artillery. The regime would lay many more sieges and no western journalist would dare enter another. </p>
<p>At a 2006 <a href="https://www.frontlineclub.com/about-us/">Frontline Club</a> (a London hub for foreign correspondants) event about the killing of Russian journalist <a href="https://cpj.org/data/people/anna-politkovskaya/">Anna Politkovskaya</a>, Colvin interrupted the panellists’ abstract digressions and encouraged everyone to ask the more pertinent question:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Who killed Anna? That’s the best thing we can do … That’s what we can do as journalists.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Now Colvin’s family is trying to establish the same about her killers. And this is also the best thing we can do as citizens: support the investigation and ensure that Colvin’s killers don’t enjoy the impunity that Politkovskaya’s did. Until we resolve to protect our truthtellers, truth will remain fragile and justice will be denied.</p>
<p>For all her emotional turmoil, personal flaws and misjudgements, Colvin was an exemplary friend, human being and journalist. She maintained an unwavering commitment to showing “humanity in extremis” – with truth, empathy and responsibility. Hilsum has written a book as compelling as its subject.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/106516/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Idrees Ahmad has received funding from the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland. </span></em></p>The American reporter killed in Syria was a complex figure, but her commitment to the truth was authentic and unwavering.Idrees Ahmad, Lecturer in Digital Journalism, University of StirlingLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1006052018-07-30T13:54:25Z2018-07-30T13:54:25ZHow peace journalism can help the media cover elections in Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229634/original/file-20180727-106524-1l7k42k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Voting in the presidential run-off elections in Mali, recently.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Tanya Bindra</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Several countries in Africa, including Zimbabwe, Mali, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Cameroon, hold crucial elections this year. Some of the polls are likely to be marked by protests as well as clampdowns on dissenting voices as well as the news media and internet access. All this amid the spread of <a href="https://portland-communications.com/pdf/How-Africa-Tweets-2018.pdf">fake news</a>. </p>
<p>It’s important to consider the role of the media in this heady mix.</p>
<p>A great deal of attention has been paid to the role of the media in <a href="https://www.sfcg.org/articles/media_for_conflict_prevention.pdf">instigating, maintaining, and exacerbating violence</a> through their news coverage. War and conflict <a href="https://www.macmillanihe.com/page/detail/the-media-at-war-susan-l-carruthers/?sf1=barcode&st1=9780230244566">sell and make the headlines</a>. </p>
<p>And, the news media are predisposed to using frames and a language that conform to what peace scholar Johan Galtung has labelled <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01296612.2003.11726720">“war journalism”</a>. This is reporting that emphasises conflict over peaceful resolutions, differing viewpoints over common ground, and sensationalism over depth and context. The result is that audiences are given the impression that conflict is inevitable, and that peace or conflict resolution are beyond reach.</p>
<p>This can also happen during the coverage of elections when a great many things can go wrong leading to best practice and ethics being overlooked. When this happens the media can be party to <a href="http://www.undp.org/content/dam/brussels/docs/Other/JTF%202011.06_Summary_report-Barcelona_workshop_Elections&conflict.pdf">exacerbating conflict and violence</a>. </p>
<p>A different approach is therefore required. The media are responsible for reporting accurately and efficiently on different political parties, candidates, political party programmes and policies. This also extends to providing platforms for debate between contesting parties as well as forums for discussions with the public.</p>
<p>A few simple criteria can be used to judge whether or not the media are doing a good job. How balanced and fair are they in their coverage. Are all parties getting a fair share of coverage? Are the media playing a role in monitoring fair play by all parties before, during and after elections? And are the results covered fairly?</p>
<p>The media can play a role in creating <a href="https://www.idea.int/data-tools/tools/electoral-risk-management-tool">peaceful and non-violent elections</a>. They can do so by following some simple approaches set out under the alternative model of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01296612.2003.11726720">peace journalism</a>. This puts emphasis on conflict resolution, analysis of the underlying causes of conflict, the use of alternative news sources, and the use of language that doesn’t over-emphasise or play up conflict. </p>
<h2>Where the media has played a negative role</h2>
<p>The media were implicated in fuelling violence in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-media-covered-kenyas-general-election-82324">Kenyan elections in 2007-2008</a>, playing up divisions between the two main contesting coalitions parties and their candidates. Importantly, the Kenyan media failed to mitigate hate speech, spreading violent imagery pitting communities against one another. </p>
<p>Equally, the media were implicated in the controversies surrounding the controversial <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/election-observers-in-zambia-report-media-biased-in-vote/a-19473207">Zambian presidential elections in 2016</a>. They were accused of waging a propaganda war, with the private media backing opposition parties, and the public media supporting the governing Patriotic Front party and its incumbent candidate, President Edward Lungu.</p>
<p>In Africa, biased media coverage in favour of incumbent presidents has been cited as among the reasons voters have little faith that <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-role-of-the-media-is-so-important-to-free-and-fair-elections-in-africa-77568">elections are credible</a>, and the outcomes legitimate.</p>
<p>Here, social media, and Twitter in particular, have reinforced the role that the media play as a force for both <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2017/12/8/16690352/social-media-war-facebook-twitter-russia">good and bad in elections</a>. No more evident is this through the spread of <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-vicious-online-propaganda-war-that-includes-fake-news-is-being-waged-in-zimbabwe-99402">fake news</a>. </p>
<p>How can elections be covered differently?</p>
<h2>Doing things differently</h2>
<p>The media can play a role in creating <a href="https://www.idea.int/data-tools/tools/electoral-risk-management-tool">peaceful and non-violent elections</a>. Research <a href="https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/365">shows</a> that journalists are well aware of the pitfalls of playing up conflict at the detriment of conflict resolution. There is an openness to change, and to adopt new reporting practices, including entirely new models of journalism. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01296612.2003.11726720">Peace journalism</a> has been highlighted as such an alternative model because it emphasises conflict resolution, analysis of the underlying causes of conflict, the use of alternative news sources, and the use of language that does not over-emphasise or play up conflict. </p>
<p>But peace journalism has also been <a href="http://www.cco.regener-online.de/2007_2/pdf/loyn_reply.pdf">criticised</a> for being too philosophical and idealistic. In some instances critics have likened it to “sunshine journalism”. Foremost, it’s the model’s practical application and implementation that has been queried.</p>
<p>So, can the peace journalism model work?</p>
<p><a href="http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/83770208/reframing-south-african-tv-news-as-peace-journalism-interim-findings-from-field-experiment">Research </a> in South Africa shows that audiences who were shown television news inserts reworked according to the peace journalism model, were more likely to pick up on as well as understand the underlying causes of conflict and to see opportunities for conflict resolution; rather than seeing conflict as inevitable and without any chance of being resolved.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.cco.regener-online.de/2007_1/pdf/lynch.pdf">Research</a> from the Philippines and the Middle East shows similar results. </p>
<h2>Solutions</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/365">Research</a> among journalists shows that they are well aware of the many pitfalls of covering conflict. But they also argue that it’s not their role to act as “peacemakers”. </p>
<p>That said, there is agreement that <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/23736992.2015.1020379">journalism practices could be changed</a> to reflect alternative views, thus showing that consensus or common ground can exist, even between two warring or opposing factions. </p>
<p>It seems peace journalism provides a good model for reflection and for training journalists to be more sensitive when <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1750635210378944?journalCode=mwca">reporting on conflict</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100605/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ylva Rodny-Gumede does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In Africa, biased media coverage is one of the reasons voters have little faith in credible elections.Ylva Rodny-Gumede, Professor of Journalism in the Department of Journalism, Film and Television, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/836822017-09-15T20:12:58Z2017-09-15T20:12:58ZHow the Pentagon tried to cure America of its ‘Vietnam syndrome’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186097/original/file-20170914-9021-1w45zl0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A couple watch film footage of the Vietnam war on a television in their living room.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/item/2011661230/">Library of Congress</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In August 1965, Morley Safer, a reporter for “CBS News,” accompanied a unit of U.S. marines on a search-and-destroy mission to the Vietnamese village of Cam Ne. Using cigarette lighters and a flamethrower, the troops proceeded to burn down 150 houses, wound three women, kill one child and take four men prisoner. Safer and his crew <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD-RlWdhAIc">caught it all on film</a>. The military command later claimed that the unit had received enemy fire. But according to Safer, no pitched battle had taken place. The only death had been the boy, and not a single weapon had been uncovered.</p>
<p>In describing the reaction, Safer would later say that the public, the media and the military all began to realize that the <a href="http://www.pbs.org/weta/reportingamericaatwar/reporters/safer/camne.html">rules of war reporting had changed</a>.</p>
<p>The New Yorker’s Michael Arlen <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Living_room_War.html?id=NIXK7RkTgncC&source=kp_cover">dubbed</a> Vietnam the “living room war.” The images of the war – viewed on evening news shows on the country’s three networks – enabled the public to understand the war’s human costs. In this sense, media coverage contributed to the flow of information that’s vital to any functioning democracy, and pushed Americans to either support or oppose U.S. involvement in the conflict. </p>
<p>However, in the country’s myriad military conflicts since Vietnam, this flow of information has been largely transformed, and it is now more difficult to see the human consequences of military operations. Despite a digital revolution that’s created even more opportunities to transmit images, voices and stories, the public finds itself further removed from what’s really happening on the front lines. </p>
<h2>A false narrative exposed</h2>
<p>Issues of truth, representation, interpretation and distortion lie at the core of the media’s presentation of war. So do power and control. </p>
<p>Governments aren’t always afraid to show the public what war looks like. During World War II, journalists <a href="http://www.pbs.org/thewar/at_home_communication_news_censorship.htm">were subject to censorship</a>. Yet in September 1943, President Roosevelt and the War Department allowed Life magazine to publish George Strock’s <a href="https://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/wwii-buna-beach-george-strock-01.jpg?quality=85">moving photograph of three dead American soldiers</a> sprawled on Buna Beach in the Pacific. </p>
<p>That decision pointed to the administration’s confidence that the public would continue to support the military, even after being brought – as the accompanying Life editorial <a href="http://time.com/3524493/the-photo-that-won-world-war-ii-dead-americans-at-buna-beach-1943/">noted</a> – “into the presence of their own dead.”</p>
<p>But Vietnam destroyed the assumption that the public would always support their government’s military policies, and the images accompanying the conflict were partly responsible.</p>
<p>In Safer’s case, after a heated debate among CBS officials, the footage of American troops setting fire to a Vietnamese village was shown on “The CBS Evening News” with Walter Cronkite. </p>
<p>The government seemed to recognize the power of this footage: It reacted swiftly – and from the top.</p>
<p>The next morning, President Lyndon B. Johnson called CBS president Frank Stanton to berate the network for airing the footage. </p>
<p>“You know what you did to me last night?” <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/controversial-report-changed-war-coverage-in-america/">Johnson asked</a>. </p>
<p>“What?” Stanton replied. </p>
<p>“You shat on the American flag.”</p>
<p>The Pentagon was also furious because the story challenged their own narrative – that enemy troops had died, and that American troops were able to distinguish the Viet Cong from the local population.</p>
<p>Safer’s images would resonate in American culture. Torching a village or field <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2171404/Zippo-lighters-U-S-troops-fighting-Vietnam-unique-insight-war-life.html">came to be called</a> a “Zippo mission,” while scenes of setting villages on fire appeared in many Vietnam War films.</p>
<p>More dramatic images emerged from the war, many of which remain familiar today. There’s Nick Ut’s <a href="http://i2.cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150512085932-31-seventies-timeline-0512-restricted-super-169.jpg">photograph of nine-year-old Kim Phoc</a> fleeing her napalmed village; <a href="https://www.worldpressphoto.org/sites/default/files/styles/gallery_main_image/public/1968001.jpg?itok=afH6hnEE">Eddie Adams’s shot</a> of South Vietnamese General Nguyen Ngoc Loan summarily executing a Viet Cong on a Saigon street; and <a href="http://www.cleveland.com/plain-dealer-library/index.ssf/2009/11/plain_dealer_exclusive_my_lai_massacre_photos_by_ronald_haeberle.html">Ronald Haeberle’s devastating pictures</a> of the 1968 My Lai massacre. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186083/original/file-20170914-8984-5amuqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186083/original/file-20170914-8984-5amuqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186083/original/file-20170914-8984-5amuqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186083/original/file-20170914-8984-5amuqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186083/original/file-20170914-8984-5amuqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186083/original/file-20170914-8984-5amuqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186083/original/file-20170914-8984-5amuqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Eddie Adams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a Viet Cong prisoner in Saigon.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-AP-I-VNM-NYOTK-Vietnam-War-Saigon-Execution/b49e001a13424d62a117e02fb640823f/1/0">Eddie Adams/AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>They didn’t automatically create public backlash. But viewers couldn’t ignore the chaos that seemed to be emerging from the battlefield. And this had the net effect of debunking the government’s claim that the military was making significant progress in Vietnam. A growing number of critics outside – and, significantly, inside – the administration argued the war could not be won.</p>
<h2>A new media strategy emerges</h2>
<p>On balance it would seem that more skepticism when it comes to judging the need to go to war is a good thing.</p>
<p>Not everyone, however, would agree. In the years after Vietnam, some members of the political and military establishment wanted to be able to use military force without feeling hamstrung by the possibility of public opposition. </p>
<p>To them, public exposure to bloodshed and the resulting aversion to going to war had become a major problem. They even <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2013/01/22/its-called-the-vietnam-syndrome-and-its-back/">had a name for it</a> – the “Vietnam syndrome” – and it required a new media strategy.</p>
<p>One solution involved imposing strict control over the movements of journalists. The government could no longer afford to allow – as it had in Vietnam – enterprising reporters to run around the battlefield, going wherever they wanted and speaking with whomever they pleased.</p>
<p>During Grenada, Panama and the Gulf War, they organized journalists <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03064229108535103?journalCode=ioca">into small “pools”</a> that had tightly controlled access to the battlefield (if at all).</p>
<p>Even with these restrictions in place, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=CagFseu-p1wC&lpg=PP1&dq=Live%20from%20the%20Battlefield%3A%20From%20Vietnam%20to%20Baghdad%2C%2035%20Years%20in%20the%20World's%20War%20Zones&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false">the Pentagon bristled</a> at CNN’s dramatic broadcasts of the bombing of Baghdad during Operation Desert Storm. It’s not as if the cable network was even criticizing the attacks; it was the very images of U.S. aircraft bombing a major city that defense officials found so unsettling. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NktsxucDvNI">The soundtrack alone</a> – the thump of high-yield explosions, the sirens of emergency vehicles, the staccato of anti-aircraft fire – ran counter to the administration’s preference for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V30vSPFLeoE">their own soundless footage</a> of smart bombs being smoothly guided to their military targets.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4Qq3L6EY3zg?wmode=transparent&start=75" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">CNN broadcast live footage of coalition forces bombing Baghdad in 1991.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Entertain – but don’t inform</h2>
<p>Some journalists started to complain about the pool system and tried to strike out on their own. By the 1990s, the most astute media managers within the Pentagon realized that censorship and other efforts to directly control the media were likely to incite criticism and public backlash.</p>
<p>So other strategies emerged. Instead of denying access to the battlefield, they hoped to shift what journalists would report from the battlefield. The war would become localized through human interest stories, told by “embedded reporters” attached to units. Behind this was a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Are-Americans-Becoming-More-Peaceful/dp/159451299X">communication strategy</a> to make reporters more inclined to describe the daily lives of soldiers, rather than the broader military and political objectives. Quiet heroism would replace loss; hometown celebrations would replace critical reviews of policy and strategy. </p>
<p>At first glance, the Pentagon’s preference for “embedded reporting” evokes the Vietnam-era practice of allowing journalists to work among combat soldiers. But in Afghanistan and Iraq there was a key difference. Vietnam provided an approximate window to the consequences of combat. In Iraq, journalists were close to the fighting but provided a very different type of drama.</p>
<p>Viewers back home were treated to green-hued images from night scopes and the shaky footage from hand-held cameras. The jumpy videos created tension, but didn’t bring the audience any closer to the pain of war. Viewers understood war through powerful but distracting footage, rather than through the visceral images of destruction, chaos and tragedy that the media was able to capture during the Vietnam era.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186079/original/file-20170914-9021-1kd22sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186079/original/file-20170914-9021-1kd22sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186079/original/file-20170914-9021-1kd22sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186079/original/file-20170914-9021-1kd22sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186079/original/file-20170914-9021-1kd22sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186079/original/file-20170914-9021-1kd22sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186079/original/file-20170914-9021-1kd22sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186079/original/file-20170914-9021-1kd22sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Embedded Associated Press reporter Chris Tomlinson, right, eats at a temporary camp about 100 miles south of Baghdad in March 2003.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-International-News-Iraq-Advanc-/195a77ebdee6da11af9f0014c2589dfb/177/0">John Moore/AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Furthermore, government officials <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/20030617.pdf">discovered that they could enjoy more sympathetic reporting</a> from those who became an accepted member of a “band of brothers.” At the same time embedded reporters offered a kind of credibility that government spokespeople didn’t possess. Pictures and stories of troops providing food, medical aid, and other forms of assistance to Iraqi civilians – and even to wounded Iraqi soldiers – emerged easily. </p>
<p>But the pain of the battlefield – the physical and psychological repercussions – remained remote. It wasn’t even possible to see pictures of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/world/americas/27iht-photos.1.20479953.html?mcubz=3">returning body containers</a> until the Obama administration reversed the policy in 2009. </p>
<p>There are exceptions. Some excellent journalists <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/30/world/asia/afghanistan-doctors-without-borders-hospital-strike.html?mcubz=3">did manage to communicate the costs</a> to America’s military and to the local population. In some cases, revelations emerged from the proliferation of new media outlets.</p>
<p>Today, “the living room war” is now a distant memory. The public no longer receives all of its information from the same three channels. Instead, there are thousands of media outlets all covering the same conflicts, from different perspectives – with some war coverage <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Militainment-Inc-Media-Popular-Culture/dp/0415999782">veering into entertainment</a> and even celebration. </p>
<p>“Let the atrocious images haunt us,” Susan Sontag <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/11/books/books-of-the-times-a-writer-who-begs-to-differ-with-herself.html">once wrote</a>. </p>
<p>It’s an invocation to not turn away from the dramatic images of battle, no matter how painful or disturbing. Going to war is arguably one of the most important decisions a country can make; for this reason, access to the true sacrifices, costs and horrors should not be restricted.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83682/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Joseph does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>After footage from America’s first ‘living room war’ shocked the public, the government would clamp down on media coverage of future military conflicts.Paul Joseph, Professor of Sociology, Tufts UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/565592016-04-05T20:06:31Z2016-04-05T20:06:31Z‘Our man elsewhere’: Alan Moorehead in war and peace<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117414/original/image-20160405-27150-9s3b8a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Journalists Alexander Clifford of the Daily Mail and Alan Moorehead of the Daily Express in the North African desert, 1942.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Imperial War Museum, via Wikimedia Commons.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Alan Moorehead was once one of the most famous Australians alive. A celebrated correspondent during World War Two, his bestselling popular histories ranged in subject matter from 19th century Africa to Captain Cook. </p>
<p>Beginning in 1956 with <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/877614.Gallipoli">Gallipoli</a>, his books such as <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/345912.The_White_Nile">The White Nile</a> (1960), <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/618802.The_Blue_Nile">The Blue Nile</a> (1962) and <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2152416.Cooper_s_Creek">Cooper’s Creek</a> (1963) were gracefully written accounts of men (never women) encountering hostile and alien environments.</p>
<h2>Fleet Street beginnings</h2>
<p>In 1936, Moorehead was the model of an Australian expatriate bunking off to London. His ambition, self-discipline, talent and luck took him from just one of a large number of jobbing Australian journalists on Fleet Street to famed war correspondent. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117413/original/image-20160405-27125-jgbe42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117413/original/image-20160405-27125-jgbe42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117413/original/image-20160405-27125-jgbe42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117413/original/image-20160405-27125-jgbe42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117413/original/image-20160405-27125-jgbe42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117413/original/image-20160405-27125-jgbe42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117413/original/image-20160405-27125-jgbe42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117413/original/image-20160405-27125-jgbe42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Eclipse, Alan Moorehead, 1946.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Soho Press (2003 edition).</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He covered the Desert War in North Africa from its outset in 1940 to the end of the conflict in Europe, the final stages of which he described in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/877617.Eclipse">Eclipse</a> (1946), my favourite of his works. By then he was one of the most important figures at Lord Beaverbrook’s Daily Express.</p>
<p>After 1945, Moorehead, with his Australian accent eliminated, turned his back on lucrative offers from Beaverbrook to stay in his job. He decided to change shape again and become a proper writer like his idol Hemingway. </p>
<p>As a child in the 1960s, many of his books were on our family bookshelves. The derring-do of the imperial explorers fascinated me – though when I re-read them years later, the locals were often secondary to the colonial narrative. </p>
<p>The war books are better, yet they suffer a little from the inevitability of repetition when years of conflict are being described. Moorehead used language well but his stock of terms and expressions was often limited. </p>
<p>His novels were not a great success, but as a writer of popular history incorporating his own love of travel and with a feel for larger than life characters, Moorehead’s non-fiction books won prizes, sold well, and ensured a steady flow of work offers. They were on shelves everywhere.</p>
<h2>Our boy made good</h2>
<p>Many books have been written about Moorehead. There was Tom Pocock’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2152414.Alan_Moorehead">1990 biography</a>, Ann Moyal’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/676614.Alan_Moorehead">more recent study</a> (which concentrates on his post war historical work), and of course, Moorehead’s own <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3143239-a-late-education">hybrid autobiography</a>, published in 1970. </p>
<p>I say “hybrid” as this work was patched together from disparate drafts by Mooreheads’s wife, Lucy, after the writer was incapacitated after emergency surgery for a blocked artery that went horribly wrong. </p>
<p>Restricted in speech, incapable of writing, Moorehead’s career was over by the end of 1966. He was then just 56, but he lived on until 1983, surviving Lucy by four years. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117405/original/image-20160405-27112-1kg6ah5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117405/original/image-20160405-27112-1kg6ah5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117405/original/image-20160405-27112-1kg6ah5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117405/original/image-20160405-27112-1kg6ah5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117405/original/image-20160405-27112-1kg6ah5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117405/original/image-20160405-27112-1kg6ah5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117405/original/image-20160405-27112-1kg6ah5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117405/original/image-20160405-27112-1kg6ah5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Our Man Elsewhere: In Search of Alan Moorehead, Thornton McCamish. 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Penguin Books Australia.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The latest biography is Thornton McCamish’s <a href="http://www.blackincbooks.com/books/our-man-elsewhere">Our Man Elsewhere: In Search of Alan Moorehead</a> (2016). It’s a handsome looking book with a striking cover photograph: Moorehead close up, enormous eyes, staring out of the past at the reader. </p>
<p>In this book, McCamish combines an elegantly written account of Moorehead’s life in all its various phases with detailed analysis of the work – from potboiling travel articles to the histories. Within this framework, McCamish also examines his own changing attitudes to Moorehead: as an individual, as a writer, as an Australian living abroad.</p>
<p>What can McCamish offer in the way of new interpretation? There are few secrets in Moorehead’s life. McCamish argues that earlier studies have each concentrated on different aspects of Moorehead’s work but taken together the field has been pretty thoroughly covered.</p>
<p>That said, to say McCamish doesn’t offer any major reassessment of Moorehead (though the analyses of his many books and articles are discerning) is to misunderstand what this book is about. </p>
<p>This is not a conventional biography, though all the materials are there and the research is impeccable. Instead, McCamish is part of the story. </p>
<p>The opening chapter, “Notes on a Disappearance”, reviews Moorehead’s current status: largely unread, obscure, revived by scholars but without the general public he once possessed.</p>
<p>McCamish takes us though his visit (with family) to Italy, where Moorehead once lived, his discussions of Moorehead with his friends and how he read all of Moorehead’s works devotedly, tracking down even the most marginal magazine piece. </p>
<p>Later on we are told that, “at some murky, furtive daydreaming level”, McCamish wants to be Moorehead. This is a biography where the author often stands in front of the scenery.</p>
<p>Personally, I would have liked McCamish to have stepped back and left the story to Moorehead. But that is to impose my own preferences, rather than take this book on its own terms.</p>
<h2>Finding the personal</h2>
<p>Often this personal approach works well, as when McCamish interviews Moorhead’s surviving family members. Here, Moorehead’s gift for personal friendships is treated delicately and his warmth and loyalty to those close to him come through. </p>
<p>At other times it’s less successful. At the end of the book, when McCamish has returned to a cheap motel on the outskirts of Canberra – which, from my own bitter experience, are as vile as he says – the personal stuff reads like filler.</p>
<p>Yet, when McCamish discusses Moorehead’s work he does it very well. One of the best parts of Our Man Elsewhere is the analysis of just how poor a novelist Moorehead turned out to be. The flowing prose of his war years, the eye for detail, the structure and material supplied by events swirling around him – all these go missing. They are replaced by stilted characterisation, cornball psychology, and paralytic plots.</p>
<p>McCamish shows how Moorehead was subject to the fickle opinions of Australians back at home. He could be our boy made good or he could be a self-appointed expert, resented for his success. </p>
<p>This, incidentally, was grossly unfair to an author who did not assume the role of the expat who knew more about this country than those who had stayed behind. Moorehead might have rejected Australia in 1936 but he spent some time rediscovering it.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117417/original/image-20160405-27131-1scbcby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117417/original/image-20160405-27131-1scbcby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117417/original/image-20160405-27131-1scbcby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117417/original/image-20160405-27131-1scbcby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117417/original/image-20160405-27131-1scbcby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117417/original/image-20160405-27131-1scbcby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117417/original/image-20160405-27131-1scbcby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117417/original/image-20160405-27131-1scbcby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lucy and Alan Moorehead with their children.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And then the silence. His still active mind was trapped within a body that refused to work. Gradually his fame eroded. The support of his family and friends was crucial. Throughout, Lucy was Moorehead’s most valued reader and critic, the centre of his domestic life. </p>
<p>Given Moorehead’s commitment to “serial infidelities”, as John Lack expressed it in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, McCamish is right in stressing Lucy’s loyalty and the strength of the marital bond. Still, I’d go further than McCamish: I think Lucy deserved a bloody medal.</p>
<h2>A balanced look at a fading past</h2>
<p>McCamish is a fan though, not a fanatic. He is aware that Moorehead has faded, perhaps unfairly, but that is the lot of almost all writers. Times change, histories are superseded. Les Carlyon and Peter FitzSimons have replaced Moorehead as chroniclers of Gallipoli and other Australian military exploits. </p>
<p>Even the nature of war journalism has changed in many ways, with conflict going live to air, and the demand for instantaneous reporting often replacing close analysis. Al Jazeera is the go-to outlet for news on the Middle East today, not the correspondent from the Daily Express. </p>
<p>War correspondents might become nostalgia themselves.</p>
<p>If you’re interested in Australia’s rich tradition of war reporting, it’s time to leave the world wars and their famous names alone, and resuscitate the journalists who shaped our history. </p>
<p>One of these might be <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/willoughby-howard-4862">Howard Willoughby</a>, our first warco, way back in 1863, in the third New Zealand War – a great candidate for a full scale biography. So is <a href="http://old.melbournepressclub.com/halloffame/inductees/williamlambie">William Lambie,</a> the first Australian war correspondent to be killed in battle (during the Boer War in 1900). </p>
<p>Women war reporters certainly deserve more attention. A good beginning was made by Jeannine Baker in her recent book, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25942655-australian-women-war-reporters">Australian Women War Reporters: Boer War to Vietnam</a> (2015). </p>
<p><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2007/may/15/guardianobituaries.pressandpublishing">Kate Webb</a>, who covered wars from Vietnam to Afghanistan, and who has to be Australia’s greatest woman war correspondent, is crying out for a biographer as sympathetic, as hard working and as skilled as Thornton McCamish.</p>
<p><br></p>
<hr>
<p><em><a href="http://www.blackincbooks.com/books/our-man-elsewhere">Our Man Elswhere: Searching for Alan Moorehead</a> (2016) by Thornton McCamish is published by Black Inc.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/56559/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Trembath does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Alan Moorehead’s accounts of the second world war revealed his vital and gripping talent, but his peacetime novels were stilted and corny. A new biography delves into his life and language.Richard Trembath, Lecturer in history, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/480872015-09-24T20:16:12Z2015-09-24T20:16:12ZHonouring the journalists who bring us stories from the frontline<p>Australia formally recognised the contribution of war correspondents to our democratic tradition this week, with the unveiling of a memorial in the sculpture garden of the <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au">Australian War Memorial</a>. It is inscribed with the following message:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Amid dangers known and unknown war correspondents report what they see and hear. Those words and images live beyond the moment and become part of the history of Australia.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The unveiling took place just hours before it was revealed that Australian journalist <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-24/al-jazeera-journalists-freed-fight-not-over-greste-fahmy-mohamed/6800414">Peter Greste’s</a> Al Jazeera colleagues had been <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/caught-on-camera-the-moment-peter-greste-learnt-of-pardons-in-egypt-20150924-gjtnnb.html">pardoned by Egyptian authorities</a>. </p>
<p>In the midst of these celebrations, the memorial reminds us of the perilous conditions war correspondents operate in. Conditions <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/listeningpost/2015/08/law-war-manual-pentagon-responds-150829095950357.html">media commentators</a> fear could be further complicated under guidelines set out in the Pentagon’s new “<a href="http://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/Law-of-War-Manual-June-2015.pdf">Law of War</a>” manual, which states journalists in conflict zones may be classified as “spies” or “unprivileged belligerents”. </p>
<h2>In the line of fire</h2>
<p>In 2008, Australian photojournalist <a href="http://www.stephendupont.com">Stephen Dupont</a> was on assignment in Afghanistan when he was hit by shrapnel from an explosion set off by a suicide bomber. </p>
<p>With blood trickling down his face, in shock and having narrowly escaped with his life, Stephen turned the lens on himself and unleashed this stream of consciousness piece to camera. Footage of his response was later used in an episode of <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/default.htm">Foreign Correspondent</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I don’t know why I do this job. F…ing suicide bombers! Jesus Christ I’m so lucky. I feel really lucky. I just feel so lucky. I’ve got a daughter back home and a partner. I’ve family but I just can’t help feeling for the people that I’ve just been filming and photographing you know. It’s like fifteen people, there’s fifteen people killed including a young child. It was just horrible. Just horrible.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96006/original/image-20150924-2497-1fxf1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96006/original/image-20150924-2497-1fxf1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96006/original/image-20150924-2497-1fxf1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96006/original/image-20150924-2497-1fxf1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96006/original/image-20150924-2497-1fxf1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96006/original/image-20150924-2497-1fxf1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96006/original/image-20150924-2497-1fxf1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96006/original/image-20150924-2497-1fxf1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stephen Dupont, immediately after a suicide bomb hit nearby civilians.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stephen Dupont</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What started off as a poppy eradication assignment in Afghanistan quickly turned into a <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/oldcontent/s2464877.htm">personal story on surviving a suicide bombing</a> and the perils of conflict reporting. </p>
<p>For Stephen Dupont and others like him, reporting on war and life in conflict zones is more than just a job: it’s a calling to bear witness.</p>
<p>A year later, he was back covering the troop advancement of marines in Helmand province.</p>
<p>The incident in Afghanistan wasn’t Dupont’s first near death experience; in Zaire in 1995 he and the CNN crew he was working with were captured by rebels and marched to a ditch. Their hands were tied behind their backs and they were made to kneel in a mock execution. Their local driver saved their lives.</p>
<p>Dupont says its vitally important for him to be out there covering the world of “humanity and inhumanity”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I still to this day get itches to go out and cover certain stories. It has more to do with the stories I feel passionate about and I believe in and that my photos might have some importance in terms of history and to bring about change. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Dupont acknowledges that not everyone is suited to this line of work.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>To become a war correspondent - it’s an extreme lifestyle and it takes a certain type of person to be that passionate and to risk his life. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Remembering the fallen</h2>
<p>The Australian War Memorial sculpture honours the sacrifice that journalists, photographers and media workers make every time they take on a dangerous assignment. </p>
<p>The design is an oculus, or all seeing eye, a testament to the eyewitnesses and writers of the first draft of history and was devised by the by the <a href="http://www.npc.org.au/cew">CEW Bean Foundation</a> named after <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/about/charles-bean/">Charles Edward Woodrow Bean</a>, Australia’s official war correspondent and historian of the Great War. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/95983/original/image-20150924-14304-1moivxl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/95983/original/image-20150924-14304-1moivxl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/95983/original/image-20150924-14304-1moivxl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95983/original/image-20150924-14304-1moivxl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95983/original/image-20150924-14304-1moivxl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95983/original/image-20150924-14304-1moivxl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95983/original/image-20150924-14304-1moivxl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95983/original/image-20150924-14304-1moivxl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Charles Bean watching the Australian advance on the Hindenburg line (1917).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Herbert Baldwin: E00246: AWM</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In one of his first official duties as Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, a former journalist, gave the <a href="http://www.malcolmturnbull.com.au/media/tribute-to-war-correspondents">dedication address</a> at a ceremony attended by families of media workers who’d lost their lives.</p>
<p>He paid tribute to Charles Bean and <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/murdoch-sir-keith-arthur-7693">Keith Murdoch</a> who refused to be part of the military’s propaganda machine and whose <a href="http://www.gallipoli.gov.au/battle-of-the-landing/ellis-ashmead-bartlett/military-censorship-at-gallipoli.php">truthful dispatches</a> from Gallipoli were rejected for not being jingoistic enough.</p>
<p>Approximately 26 Australian journalists have died in combat zones. The memorial honours them all, from the first - <a href="http://old.melbournepressclub.com/halloffame/inductees/williamlambie">William Lambie</a> during the Boer War, to <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/people/P10676622/">Damien Parer</a> who was killed by Japanese bullets as he was filming, <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/people/P2684/">Neil Davis</a> who recorded his own death during a Thai coup, the <a href="http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/fact-sheets/fs238.aspx">Balibo 5</a> who were slain by Indonesian Special Force soldiers in East Timor - to the most recent, freelancer <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/corp/memorial/paulmoran.htm">Paul Moran</a>, killed during a suicide bombing in Iraq, and <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/07/07/1057430142482.html">Jeremy Little</a>, a sound recordist, who died from injuries sustained in a rocket attack during an ambush in Iraq. </p>
<p>Laying wreaths at the memorial were Shirley Shackleton, the widow of one of the Balibo 5 reporter <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/shackleton-gregory-john-11661">Greg Shackleton</a> and Peter Greste – who spent nearly 400 days in an Egyptian jail and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/sep/23/turnbull-says-australia-will-continue-to-press-egypt-to-pardon-peter-greste">risks being sent back there</a>. </p>
<p>Prime Minister Turnbull offered Greste the following reassurance: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Australian government continues to support you and your colleagues and will continue to press the government of Egypt to pardon you and the others journalists with whom you worked and are still imprisoned in Egypt.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The Law of War</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/95999/original/image-20150924-14324-duwvn0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/95999/original/image-20150924-14324-duwvn0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/95999/original/image-20150924-14324-duwvn0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95999/original/image-20150924-14324-duwvn0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95999/original/image-20150924-14324-duwvn0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95999/original/image-20150924-14324-duwvn0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=972&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95999/original/image-20150924-14324-duwvn0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=972&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95999/original/image-20150924-14324-duwvn0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=972&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The USA Department of Defence Law of War manual contains guidelines for combat behaviour, and is not legally binding.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.dod.mil/dodgc/images/law_war_manual15.pdf">Department of Defence</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But war correspondents could soon be facing more dangerous circumstances at the hands of the leader of the free world – the United States of America.</p>
<p>At issue is the Pentagon’s new Law of War manual.</p>
<p>Released in June, the 1,174 page book is an instructional manual on the rules of war, and while it is not legally binding, it has caused alarm bells to ring in newsrooms around the world. </p>
<p>It labels some journalists as “unprivileged belligerents,” or people who could be detained indefinitely and would not be offered the rights of the Geneva Conventions.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.alliance.org.au">Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance</a> (MEAA), the union and industry advocate for Australia’s journalists, believes the manual is a dangerous and confusing document that threatens press freedom.</p>
<p>The MEAA has criticised the manual for its potential to undermine the legitimate role of journalists reporting on conflict situations.</p>
<p>Speaking to The Conversation, MEAA CEO Paul Murphy said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Pentagon is trying to cloud the work of journalists and journalism. This language poses a considerable danger to journalists because, while some countries may be clear on the role of journalists in reporting conflict, others may use this language to legitimise the repression of journalism.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In its section on journalists the manual equates journalism with spying:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Reporting on military operations can be very similar to collecting intelligence or even spying. A journalist who acts as a spy may be subject to security measures and punished if captured.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Stephen Dupont says the manual is “dangerous and outrageous” and harks back to the Bush-Cheney era of 2001-2009:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s dangerous enough as it is without having to worry about what the Americans are going to do to you in the field.</p>
<p>I was so angry. It labels you as a terrorist in a way in the same area as enemy combatants and gives the Americans permission to arrest you, kill you, do whatever they want to do to you without repercussion. It puts you in the same box as the terrorist in the post 9/11 era.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Pentagon has <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/listeningpost/2015/08/law-war-manual-pentagon-responds-150829095950357.html">tried to downplay concerns</a> raised by media companies
by claiming that its rules only apply if journalists abandon their civilian roles and join the enemy; this of course is what the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-12-30/australian-journalist-peter-greste-among-al-jazeera-reporters-d/5179070">Egyptian government has claimed</a> that Peter Greste and his colleagues did by engaging with the Muslim Brotherhood. In other words: it’s all about interpretation.</p>
<p>The MEAA’s Paul Murphy says so far this year around 80 journalists have been killed in combat zones around the world, with many others jailed and detained.</p>
<p>In May, the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted <a href="http://www.un.org/press/en/2015/sc11908.doc.htm">Resolution 2222</a> calling upon the Secretary-General to appoint a special representative on the protection of journalists and instructing peacekeepers to provide regular reports on the safety of journalists.</p>
<p>The session drew attention to the growing threats against media workers and bloggers including kidnappings, killings and executions by groups like ISIL.</p>
<p>Making a submission at the UN was <a href="http://marianepearl.com">Marianne Pearl</a>, the widow of Wall Street Journal reporter <a href="http://www.danielpearl.org/home/about-us/about-danny/">Daniel Pearl</a> who was abducted and beheaded by terrorists in Pakistan in 2002.</p>
<p>She told the session that we are facing “a troubled time in our profession” and that “the neutral space in which journalists could operate as independent witnesses was shrinking.”</p>
<p>“Somewhere, along the wars we, journalists, have lost the old, unspoken agreement that we were a neutral and fair profession,” she said.</p>
<p>But the MEAA’s Paul Murphy goes further to remind us that the threats to press freedom are closer to home than we think:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have seen this with our own defence forces operating in Afghanistan and Iraq. We have seen it during the militarisation of immigration in Operation Sovereign Borders and restricted media access to asylum seeker detention centres. We see it with the new tranches of Australia’s national security laws that pursue whistle-blowers and criminalise legitimate journalism.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/48087/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Vatsikopoulos does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A memorial unveiled in Canberra this week honours the work of Australian war correspondents, but a new Pentagon “Law of War” manual identifies journalists in conflict zones as “spies and belligerents”.Helen Vatsikopoulos, Lecturer in Journalism, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/479702015-09-22T16:59:42Z2015-09-22T16:59:42ZBrian Williams returns to the air – and memory research says we should give him a break<p>After being suspended without pay from NBC in February, Brian Williams <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2015/09/21/brian-williams-msnbc-return/72577410/">returns to television</a> this week. He won’t be heading back to the Nightly News desk (now anchored by Lester Holt), but he will be reporting breaking news updates on MSNBC, beginning with the pope’s visit to the United States.</p>
<p>Williams’ fall from grace at NBC came after he misrepresented, during a newscast, events that occurred while he was in Iraq in 2003. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/11/business/media/email-to-nbc-news-staff-about-brian-williams-suspension.html?_r=0">In a memo to staff</a> announcing Williams’ suspension, president of NBC News Deborah Turness also expressed concerns about Williams’ misconstrued accounts of other events that had taken place while reporting in the field.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/12/business/media/frantic-efforts-at-nbc-to-curb-rising-damage-caused-by-brian-williams.html">News reports indicate</a> those concerns included Williams’ claim that he’d seen a body floating in the French Quarter in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and even that Williams may have exaggerated rescuing puppies when he was a volunteer firefighter as a teenager.</p>
<p>The staff memo from Turness quoted Stephen B Burke, chief executive of NBC Universal, who said Williams’ actions were “inexcusable” and “jeopardized the trust millions of Americans place in NBC News.”</p>
<p>Of course, it would have been inexcusable if Williams had <em>intentionally</em> misled viewers about his reporting experiences to bolster his credibility.</p>
<p>But there’s also a body of research that suggests these recollections could be honest mistakes, made over time – that his memories of the events may have gradually melded together, becoming confused with other news reports he’d seen on TV. </p>
<p>After all, let’s not forget that Williams’ initial eyewitness accounts of his experiences in Iraq were accurate. A colleague and I <a href="http://doi.org/10.1207/s15506878jobem5001_3">studied</a> embedded reporting during the Iraq War. We found that embedded reporters used more personal pronouns in their reporting than non-embeds did, but they did so in the context of factual eyewitness coverage, and rarely offered personal opinions. So Williams’ reporting style is precisely the type of reporting that ensures – rather than violates – reporter objectivity. </p>
<p>It was only years later that Williams <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/07/brian-williams-rpg_n_6637014.html">incorrectly recalled</a> being behind the plane that was shot by a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG), and not in another formation.</p>
<p>Even then, the gist of much of what Williams recalled was not fabricated: he was traveling with troops in Iraq in 2003 and there was a plane that took on enemy fire from an RPG. Undoubtedly, it was a terrifying and highly memorable event. </p>
<p>Though something that frightening should be recalled in vivid detail, sometimes those vivid details, despite their verisimilitude, <a href="http://pss.sagepub.com/content/19/9/919.short">are wrong</a>. Numerous studies have shown that memory is fallible, that even <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/?fa=main.doiLanding&doi=10.1037/0033-2909.112.2.284">recollection of highly emotional events</a> can be distorted over time. </p>
<p>Studies of “flashbulb memories” – memories of highly emotional news events – show people’s recollections of how they learned of those events (such as what they were doing and with whom) <a href="https://theconversation.com/flashbulb-memories-why-do-we-remember-learning-about-dramatic-events-so-vividly-39842">are still quite detailed years later</a>. </p>
<p>But they’re not always accurate. </p>
<p><a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511664069.003">One study</a> looked at the flashbulb memories of how people learned of the Challenger explosion. The researchers found that those memories were often inaccurate years later. And when they were wrong, the original memory of how they found out about the explosion was often replaced by a memory of watching it on television.</p>
<p>The authors of that study did not explore this television link further, but as a media scholar I did in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Media-American-Crisis-Studies-September/dp/0761831843">a study</a> of flashbulb memories and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. </p>
<p>Unlike the Challenger study, I looked at memories of the event months, rather than years, after the terrorist attacks. I found no false memories, but participants did report viewing television almost immediately after learning about the event. And they continued watching for hours. </p>
<p>So is it any surprise that, after watching TV so soon after hearing of a horrific news event, people might, years later, falsely remember that they first learned about it while watching television? And that journalists who were on the ground might conflate TV reports with memories of their own experiences? </p>
<p>How much video did Brian Williams watch of the Katrina aftermath? His recollection of the floating body happened in 2006, a year after covering the event. That’s less time than the three-year study period of the Challenger flashbulb memory research, which did find that television intrudes into memories, but more than the three-month time period of my study, which did not. </p>
<p>It’s certainly possible that Williams’ recollection a year later confused what he’d witnessed firsthand and what he later viewed – most likely repeatedly – in recorded coverage of this highly emotional event.</p>
<p>Williams is smart enough to know it would be foolish to intentionally exaggerate his experiences, especially when there’s a record of his initial accounts to contradict them – and that he had a lot to lose if he did. </p>
<p>While NBC executives may insist this doesn’t excuse making incorrect statements from the anchor desk, it may at least explain <em>why</em> it happened.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/47970/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julia Fox does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the years after a traumatic news event, we’re prone to confuse things we saw on TV with what we witnessed in person.Julia Fox, Associate Professor in the Media School , Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/314392014-09-09T14:14:56Z2014-09-09T14:14:56ZSecret soldier burials scandal shows heroic journalism is still alive in Russia<p>If you are a Russian journalist on a trip abroad, the first question you’re asked once your companion finds out about your profession is: “How come you’re still alive?” </p>
<p>Then comes something about how all media in Russia is totally under state control anyway – and you quickly find yourself automatically pigeon-holed as a government lackey. </p>
<p>This is a great disservice to the respectable number of independent journalists still at work in the country. Given the fate that <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/who-really-did-kill-russian-journalist-anna-politkovskaya-9535772.html">can befall journalists</a> who cross the Putin regime, stories of successful investigative journalism in Russia are indeed fairly rare – but those that exist are very powerful indeed, and dispel the myth that all Russian journalists are working in the pay (or terror) of the Kremlin. </p>
<p>Even as international criticism of Putin’s Russia reaches an all-time high, efforts like these on the part of Russian journalists are still not being recognised worldwide.</p>
<h2>Hard graft</h2>
<p>When they examine the Russian media landscape from afar, European and US commentators tend to concentrate on <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26411396">the admittedly propagandistic role of Russian television</a>. The hard work of the few independent news outlets or concrete journalists still doing quality investigations and balanced reporting <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/10/putin-war-dozhd-russias-last-independent-tv-channel">rarely gets much credit</a>. </p>
<p>But even as good-quality independent reporting is <a href="http://theconversation.com/as-pressure-on-russian-media-increases-balanced-news-is-harder-to-find-than-ever-25560">becoming harder in Russia</a>, a number of media titles still pursue it, while <a href="http://mashable.com/2014/09/05/pussy-riot-members-launch-media-site-dedicated-to-russian-justice-issues/">newer titles are appearing</a> even under today’s tight conditions.</p>
<p>In one important recent example, independent Russian journalists have done sterling investigative work exposing the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-28949582">secret burials across the country of Russian solders killed in Ukraine</a>. This reporting has contributed to a striking trend: support at home for Russia’s actions in Ukraine has noticeably declined for the first time since the crisis started. </p>
<h2>Out in the open</h2>
<p>The burials story was discovered by a number of bloggers and journalists who analysed the social media pages of a few Russian troops from the Pskov division, compared those facts against recent awards presented to the division, and finally found out about the upcoming funerals. </p>
<p>When a few journalists from Moscow, St Petersburg and Pskov tried to visit the secret funerals, they were <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28949582">attacked</a> – Lev Shlosberg, a local newspaper editor and member of the Pskov parliament from an opposition party, was <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/08/31/mp-probing-russian-troop-deaths-attacked">severely beaten</a>. </p>
<p>The case was picked up by a prominent Russian journalist, Oleg Kashin, who wrote an opinion piece for the website Colta.ru entitled “<a href="http://www.colta.ru/articles/society/4372">Five questions to the Defence Ministry</a>” (a rough translation is available <a href="https://www.facebook.com/UkraineinCrisis/posts/759465720761906">here</a>). His article provoked a number of official inquiries to the <a href="http://echo.msk.ru/blog/dgudkov/1389770-echo/">Defense Ministry</a> from NGO groups and opposition members of parliament.</p>
<p>For a number of days, only select independent media reported the story. The Russian media research and monitoring company Mediaologia calculated that 66% of “the most quoted Russian media” <a href="http://kashin.guru/2014/08/26/vdv_pskov/">didn´t report the story at all</a>. </p>
<p>It was only after Russia’s officials, including Putin spokesperson <a href="http://russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/politics-and-society/dmitry-peskov/">Dmitry Peskov</a>, had commented on the matter (still denying any military presence in Ukraine), that more online and print outlets picked up on the story. </p>
<h2>Breaking through</h2>
<p>Until now, many state-controlled news outlets presented the official version of Russian troops either getting lost in Ukraine, accidentally crossing the border or taking a vacation and going to fight in Ukraine on their own.</p>
<p>Yet the burial story provoked a storm of outrage in Russia, especially on social networks. Various friends, until recently rather supportive of Russia`s actions (including the annexation of Crimean) have posted surprisingly critical and perplexed remarks, asking about the lack of official clarification. </p>
<p>This reaction chimes with research, such as <a href="http://www.levada.ru/29-08-2014/ukrainskii-krizis-vnimanie-uchastie-rossii-budushchee">a recent poll carried out by Levada center</a>, that shows diminishing domestic support for Russia’s policy in Ukraine – with the decline apparently stretching back to the very start of the conflict. </p>
<h2>Erosion of support</h2>
<p>According to the Levada poll, conducted at the end of August, support for direct military action in Ukraine has fallen noticeably. More Russians than ever now oppose an open military conflict with their neighbouring country: whereas in March, 74% said they would support Russia’s leaders in the event of war with Ukraine, by the summer that figure had declined to 41%. </p>
<p>The same poll also found that the sending Russian troops to Ukraine is now only supported by 16% of respondents, down from 28% in April – though approximately half the poll’s respondents still think Russia should actively support pro-Russian forces in South-Eastern Ukraine. </p>
<p>This is not, of course, simply down to the fact that the secret burials had actually been widely reported – but it would be wrong to underestimate the reports’ impact at this hugely sensitive time.</p>
<p>As political analyst Boris Makarenko argued in an <a href="http://top.rbc.ru/politics/29/08/2014/945781.shtml">interview with RBC Daily</a>: “Unlike the bloodless ‘taking’ of Crimea, the conflict in the south-east of Ukraine has grown into active military action, while Russian mothers do not want to get death notices and see the coffins of their boys.” </p>
<p>And to remind the Russian people of this reality, there are still independent Russian journalists working both within the country and at the site of the conflict, often under harsh and dangerous conditions. Their efforts to inform the Russian people and the wider world about the realities of the Ukrainian conflict deserve to be recognised and valued.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/31439/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Angelina Davydova is affiliated and/or working with a number of NGOs, including the German-Russian Exchange (<a href="http://www.austausch.org">www.austausch.org</a>), The German-Russian Office of Environmental Information (<a href="http://www.rnei.ru">www.rnei.ru</a>) and the journalistic network n-ost (<a href="http://n-ost.org/">http://n-ost.org/</a>). She is also a member of the Russian union of environmental journalists. She regularly writes for Russian and international media. </span></em></p>If you are a Russian journalist on a trip abroad, the first question you’re asked once your companion finds out about your profession is: “How come you’re still alive?” Then comes something about how all…Angelina Davydova, Senior Lecturer, St Petersburg State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/303832014-08-12T12:58:32Z2014-08-12T12:58:32ZDealing with graphic content is a moral minefield for journalists<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56290/original/r7ghrppr-1407839920.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Covering atrocity on August 12 2014.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daily Mirror, The Times, The Sun.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Even for a world accustomed to news reports of conflict and disaster, the past three months seem to be unprecedented for the frequency of horrific events. From the continuing tragedies in <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/syria">Syria</a>, to the kidnapping of Nigerian schoolgirls by <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/boko-haram">Boko Haram</a>, to the downing of Malaysia Airlines <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/flight-mh17">flight MH17</a> and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Very recently, we’ve seen the Israeli government’s assault on civilians in <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/israel-palestine">Gaza</a> and now there are the terrible accounts of atrocities committed by the Islamic State (IS) in <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/iraq">Iraq</a>. </p>
<p>These events have once again demonstrated that the maxim “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/robertburns/works/man_was_made_to_mourn/">man’s inhumanity to man</a>” continues to apply in what seems to be an enduringly violent world. And our news media offers us graphic evidence of this inhumanity. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2719991/Horrific-new-photographs-ISIS-atrocities-prompted-Obama-act.html">Mail Online</a> invites us to watch a video showing a mass execution carried out by IS in Iraq. <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/does-this-footage-show-a-gaza-neighbourhood-being-flattened-by-air-strikes-in-an-hour-9635443.html">The Independent</a> gives us the opportunity to watch “disturbing video footage” purporting to show the moment a whole neighbourhood in Gaza is flattened by Israeli air strikes.</p>
<p>Then, we were shown appalling evidence of how violence and hatred corrupts the young. Newspapers around the world <a href="http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/the-photo-that-will-shock-the-world-jihadist-khaled-sharroufs-son-7-holds-severed-head/story-fni0cx12-1227019897582?nk=2f0eaa3bf7d5b9745261f4e9594db056">reproduced the tweet</a> believed to have been sent by Australian terrorist Khaled Sharrouf, fighting in Syria. It depicts a boy, thought to be Sharrouf’s son, holding aloft a severed head. Though the boy’s eyes are blacked out and we cannot see the severed head, the photograph is both shocking and chilling.</p>
<h2>Difficult decisions</h2>
<p>The obvious question is: should such images appear in the mainstream media? This is something picture editors and news editors contemplate every single day. When we are prone to criticise the coverage we get it would be right to consider the constraints under which journalists operate. </p>
<p>Roger Tooth, the Guardian’s head of photography <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/23/graphic-content-photographs-too-upsetting-to-publish-gaza-mh17-ukraine">has written</a> of the images coming out of Gaza and Ukraine:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Conflict-weary picture editors have shed tears and wondered aloud if counselling might be needed as they have shifted through thousands of pictures provided by the photo agencies’ all-seeing lenses. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Indeed, it is <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/journalism/article/art20131115115510034">now widely recognised</a> that journalists who deal with so much of this graphic content can suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, as a result. It’s been argued that the use of more graphic material in mainstream media is at least partly due to the rise of social media. As <a href="http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/tag/julie-posetti/">Julie Posetti rightly points out</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Journalists and traditional news publishers are no longer the primary information gatekeepers of public discourse; neither are they able to impose their professional publication standards and ethics on social media users and bloggers.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But audiences do still rely on conventional media to make sense of world events and to provide analysis where social media cannot. In this sense, the responsibility of the traditional media is great. As Tooth writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s all out there on the internet or on your timeline. All I can do is try to help keep the Guardian’s coverage as humane and decent as possible.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Plus, the photos that are chosen to represent conflicts play an important role in making the public aware of the realities of wars that their governments are involved in, or are contemplating getting involved in. If certain images are not included by journalists – such as <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/08/the-war-photo-no-one-would-publish/375762/">that of an Iraqi man burned alive</a> in the first Gulf War – this can perhaps inadvertently influence how opinions are formed.</p>
<h2>Differences of opinion</h2>
<p>When it comes to images of war and terrorism in general, there are two main arguments. On one hand, the brutality and horror of warfare must be conveyed. On the other, some images are just too gruesome and too graphic for public consumption, and they only provide images for other fanatics to replicate.</p>
<p>The death of Colonel Gaddafi in 2011 provoked this type of debate. Then, most front pages showed close up pictures of a physically crushed man, bloodied and beaten, at the very end of his life. The Mirror showed a lifeless corpse <a href="http://ghanasuperstars.com/2011/10/how-colonel-gaddafis-death-made-headlines-around-the-world/">with the headline</a>: “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”</p>
<p>Responding to the fact that the BBC and ITV decided to run grainy footage of Gaddafi’s last moments, Igor Toronyi-Lalic <a href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tag/col-gaddafi/">wrote in The Telegraph</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Ignore the fact that the last, the death of Gaddafi, was deserved. Barbarity was still the result. The sort of barbarity that we mock our medieval ancestors for. Yet there it is: death, murder and suffering open to all at one scroll and click. And, judging by the prominence of the clips on sites around the world, we were lapping it up as much as any 14th-century peasant.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/oct/21/muammar-gaddafi-death-images-media">For Mark Lawson</a> the worry was the risk of “the development of a culture of death porn.”</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For me, as a simple moral position, Gaddafi merits as much privacy in his final extremities as did his victims in the Lockerbie bombing, a germane example from the past of a time when the media by common consent suppressed horrific images in the cause of taste and privacy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Jonathan Jones in the Guardian was of a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/oct/25/dead-gaddafi-photos-war-hell">different view</a>. For him, this was war as it should be seen by all: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>For once, with the death of Gaddafi, we have seen the face of war, washed in blood, bathed in cruelty. The horrible and haunting pictures of his last moments and his public exhibition simply show us, for once, what the wars of our time and all times look like. If we don’t like what we see we must stop this foolish pretence that war, however ‘just’, can ever be anything but a brutal mess. If we were more properly conscious of what war really means we might have a different perspective on our nation’s involvement in them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Whether or not a news organisation is right to use graphic material is a matter of opinion. But what this article has hopefully illustrated is that in certain cases the decisions to print or broadcast are taken with care and with a genuine desire to “do the right thing”. </p>
<p>The mainstream media, if we can speak so generally, has its multitude of failings. But let’s not forget that when dealing with upsetting and harrowing imagery, journalists do not exist in a vacuum, unencumbered by the moral uncertainties that we all face. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/30383/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Jewell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Even for a world accustomed to news reports of conflict and disaster, the past three months seem to be unprecedented for the frequency of horrific events. From the continuing tragedies in Syria, to the…John Jewell, Director of Undergraduate Studies, School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/222012014-02-12T08:48:38Z2014-02-12T08:48:38ZGlory, farce and despair: the many stories of World War I<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40019/original/zzrcdknd-1390911992.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tomes of war stories.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">gfpeck</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Anniversaries encourage reflection. Now, 100 years after the start of the Great War, anyone who follows current affairs or reads a newspaper is part of a cultural conversation, a widespread reassessment of how our views of the war have been shaped. This has happened through stories, of course, but of what kind? Family stories, perhaps, but also those found in fiction, or poetry, or crafted by researchers into their accounts of the war. Some last longer than others. Why?</p>
<p>In 2005, two historians set out to summarise their discipline’s contribution to World War I literature. Jay Winter and Antoine Prost’s <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Great_War_in_History.html?id=QRhcnK5rSP4C&redir_esc=y">book</a> opened with a head-count of relevant titles. There were more than 50,000 listed in the Paris library in which they had been working; a number they called “dizzying” then. And as the centenary approaches, bookshop tables are groaning under the weight of accumulated tomes, especially those published in recent months.</p>
<p>The versions keep on coming. New titles range from the acme of academic history, such as Winter’s own three-volume <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/twentieth-century-regional-history/cambridge-history-first-world-war-volume-1">Cambridge History of the First World War</a>, to more popular books, such as Mark Bostridge’s <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jan/05/fateful-year-1914-mark-bostridge-review">The Fateful Year: England 1914</a> or Florian Illies’ <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/review-1913-the-year-before-the-storm-by-florian-illies-trs-by-shaun-whiteside-and-jamie-lee-searle-8744832.html">1913: The Year Before the Storm</a>, to <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/historybookreviews/10382547/Catastrophe-by-Max-Hastings-review.html">Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914</a>, by prominent historian Max Hastings. </p>
<p>They are on display in every town in the country, and are being reviewed on a daily basis. Classic texts by <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jul/31/featuresreviews.guardianreview10">Paul Fussell</a> and <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/books-obituaries/9447744/Sir-John-Keegan.html">John Keegan</a> join them on the tables, while poetry sections display multiple editions of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/sassoon_siegfried.shtml">Siegfried Sassoon</a>’s and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/owen_wilfred.shtml">Wilfred Owen’s</a> verse. </p>
<p>With an increase in books comes an increase in views. Max Hastings’ Catastrophe is marketed as a counter-attack to the “poets’ view” of the war, summarised on its dust-jacket as the argument that war “was not worth winning”. A related <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2339189/MAX-HASTINGS-Sucking-Germans-way-remember-Great-War-heroes-Mr-Cameron.html">article by Hastings</a> in the Daily Mail in the summer of 2013 unleashed a tidal wave of media interest in what has also become known as the “<a href="https://theconversation.com/german-historians-have-little-time-for-goves-blackadder-jibes-21826">Blackadder version</a>” of the history of the war, with its supposed emphasis on futility. The hold that this version of the war above all others has on the nation’s imagination is clear from the lengthy coverage of the row – one in which senior politicians as well as writers and educationalists have become involved.</p>
<p>Michael Gove’s accusation that “left-wing academics” are seeking to hijack the story of war with self-serving myths of futility points to the heart of the matter: it is the supposedly “true” or “correct” story of war that is felt to be at stake. But the concept of a single story of war is itself a myth, and one that needs consigning to history, even as the lived memory of that war also passes away.</p>
<h2>A very literary war</h2>
<p>From the available evidence, it is at first hard to see what is mythical about the story of war. The patterns in the narrative leap out from multiple media. There are important visual clues to the ways in which we approach the war, or the ways in which publishers think we should, among the books on those tables. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41038/original/9x5t48jn-1391792498.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41038/original/9x5t48jn-1391792498.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41038/original/9x5t48jn-1391792498.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41038/original/9x5t48jn-1391792498.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41038/original/9x5t48jn-1391792498.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41038/original/9x5t48jn-1391792498.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41038/original/9x5t48jn-1391792498.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Idyll in the fields in 1912.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/brizzlebornandbred/11491935746/sizes/l/">brizzle born and bred</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Cover photographs of the Edwardian idyll are paired with those of dead soldiers, harshly dramatising before and after. Bostridge’s opening conceit, for example, is a camera shutter capturing a “carefree scene” on London’s Thames on Monday 3rd August, 1914. We note the doomed attempt at preservation and understand that all that is carefree is about to be lost: 1914 in this way becomes a watershed between the good old days and the horrors of the trenches. The starkness of this periodisation is undercut by the best history, but it’s the starkness that sells books, and it is as old as the war itself, as demonstrated <a href="Link%20to%20Mr%20Britling%20Sees%20it%20Through">by H. G. Wells in 1916</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The familiar scenery of life was drawn aside, and War stood unveiled. ‘I am the Fact’, said War, “and I stand astride the path of life. I am the threat of death and the extinction […] There can be nothing else and nothing more in human life until you have reckoned with me.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41040/original/3rk4zrnw-1391793417.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41040/original/3rk4zrnw-1391793417.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41040/original/3rk4zrnw-1391793417.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41040/original/3rk4zrnw-1391793417.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41040/original/3rk4zrnw-1391793417.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41040/original/3rk4zrnw-1391793417.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41040/original/3rk4zrnw-1391793417.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Soldiers killed in retreat.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Loss and trauma, of course, are the prominent themes, and the transformative effects of World War I on language have been repeatedly explored. Wilfred Owen’s disillusioned poetry is the familiar face of World War I in British schools: Jeremy Paxman rightly surmises in <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/03/great-britain-war-jeremy-paxman-review">Great Britain Goes to War</a> that "we have all come to see the war through Wilfred Owen’s eyes”. Michael Gove might not like this story, but Owen’s poetic explosion of what he calls “the old Lie”, told by the establishment about the glory of sacrifice, is one that it is hard to overwrite.</p>
<p>And World War I was an intensely literary war. Education reform in Britain in the decades before the war extended literacy and therefore the ability to engage meaningfully with the ever-increasing amount of printed matter. This mass reading public, and the widespread participation of civilians in the war effort, meant that all parts of society were engaged in news about the conflict. The lack of competition from other media meant that it was a textually consumed war. </p>
<p>It was also textually mediated. One well-known literary critic, <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v12/n20/pn-furbank/condys-fluid">Sam Hynes</a>, describes the war as a “great imaginative event”. He means that it was thought about, and then copiously written about, as well as prosecuted militarily and politically. </p>
<p>The story of the war that gradually evolved – the one that coalesced around Wilfred Owen and others from the 1930s, and the one that Michael Gove does not like – proved very powerful, so powerful that <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/dec/13/long-shadow-great-war-david-reynolds-review">one historian</a> has recently claimed that by 2013 the war had become a literary war, “detached from its moorings in historical events”.</p>
<p>The war needs to be wrestled back from literature, restored to and anchored in history, one infers. But of course, this would be impossible. One of the reasons for this is that the single powerful story itself falls apart on interrogation. Hynes is right that the war was a great imaginative event, but we need to re-approach the nature of that imagination, and its results in print.</p>
<h2>Forgotten stories</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.dacorumheritage.org.uk/article/colonel-francis-brereton/">F S Brereton</a> might not be represented on school syllabi, but he wrote 48 novels, some of them about the 1914-1918 war, in which he served as a surgeon. Heroes, heroines, and evil spies populate his fiction, not war-ravaged trauma victims or alcoholics. Similarly, the reality of war encoded in <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15033/15033-h/15033-h.htm">Tell England</a>, by Ernest Raymond, can be almost summarised by the narrator’s exclamation greeting the likelihood of war: “what fun!”. </p>
<p>Sales of Ernst Jünger’s <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Storm_of_Steel.html?id=j3XNeuiucdoC&redir_esc=y">In Stahlgewittern</a> (published in English as Storm of Steel in 1929) went into six figures. Jünger’s version of war may have been more realistic about the experience of fighting than the tub-thumping adventure narratives of Brereton, but there’s no question of futility in his account. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41274/original/8tpkd6fb-1392134017.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41274/original/8tpkd6fb-1392134017.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41274/original/8tpkd6fb-1392134017.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41274/original/8tpkd6fb-1392134017.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41274/original/8tpkd6fb-1392134017.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41274/original/8tpkd6fb-1392134017.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41274/original/8tpkd6fb-1392134017.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Siegfried Sassoon, 1915.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What these examples demonstrate is that to an eager readership in the 1920s the story of war was very far removed from disillusionment. More than that, it was varied, and simply became more so once the now dominant novels and poetry found their way into print. And even these dominant examples reward scrutiny. Sassoon’s <a href="http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/siegfried-sassoon/the-kiss-7/">The Kiss</a> recounts a soldier’s “good fury” and pleasure in a successful kill: the kiss is the discharge of a weapon into a body already prone.</p>
<p>Historical narratives are no more singular. The idea of a <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/348402/Lost-Generation">“lost generation”</a> for example, central to many in the past, is now regularly challenged. And the routine and boredom of the frontlines are as integral to some accounts as the trauma is to others. Hastings admits “many alternative interpretations” of the war are possible – though one imagines the Blackadder version would not make it onto his list. A dominant narrative, once you train the gaze to look farther back, or wider afield, or explore the edges of the book tables, emerges as unattainable.</p>
<p>A dominant narrative should also be thought to be undesirable, whether or not it affirms what we think we know, or helps to sell books. It is only through acknowledgement of the multiplicity of stories, and the maintenance of an educational system that equips readers of all ages to interpret them, that World War I can come closer to being known and understood. Michael Gove is right to attempt to complicate the narrative, but not to try and produce for ideological reasons a new “story” of war.</p>
<p>The centenary cannot offer a complete picture of the Great War, but it does offer the opportunity to deepen and broaden our knowledge of the many stories that war tells.</p>
<p><em>This is a foundation essay for The Conversation’s new UK Arts + Culture section. If you are an academic or researcher with relevant expertise and would like to respond to this article, please use our <a href="https://theconversation.com/pitches/new">pitch facility</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/22201/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sara Haslam does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Anniversaries encourage reflection. Now, 100 years after the start of the Great War, anyone who follows current affairs or reads a newspaper is part of a cultural conversation, a widespread reassessment…Sara Haslam, Senior Lecturer in English, The Open UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/199192013-11-11T06:08:22Z2013-11-11T06:08:22Z100 years on, war reporting is dangerous, difficult and essential<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34802/original/p24tqf63-1383927493.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Michael Herr's Dispatches</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">WIkimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The anniversary of Armistice Day is chance to reflect on a shameful chapter in the history of journalism. Millions were killed and maimed during World War I, about a million from Britain and its empire alone. The mechanisation of war made possible killing on a scale never foreseen. Today, some stretches of trench and craters from explosions still remain, scars on land which once was battlefield. They help us to imagine the soldiers’ lives: terror, boredom, discomfort, despair. </p>
<p>What a challenge, what an opportunity this conflict was for journalists – a challenge, alas, to which they largely proved unequal. As Philip Knightley concludes in his excellent <a href="http://phillipknightley.com/2004/09/the-first-casualty/">The First Casualty</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>More deliberate lies were told than in any other period of history, and the whole apparatus of the state went into action to suppress the truth.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The state censored; correspondents frequently cooperated. </p>
<p>Now, as the centenary of the start of the war draws near, it is the war’s poets, and not its reporters, whose writing is remembered. There must have been some uneasy encounters. In “<a href="http://modernism.research.yale.edu/wiki/index.php/Siegfried_Sassoon">Editorial Impressions</a>”, Siegfried Sassoon shows us a correspondent recounting the “glorious time he’d had/While visiting the trenches.” The reporter rabbits on before a wounded soldier’s bitter words end the poem, “Ah, yes, but it’s the Press that leads the way.” </p>
<h2>Chequered history</h2>
<p>The history of the reporting of conflict is not a story of steady and certain progress. Much of the journalism from the First World War failed to match the standard set by <a href="http://www.greatreporters.co.uk/reporterswhrussell.htm">William Howard Russell</a>’s dispatches from the Crimea more than half a century before.</p>
<p>Russell’s account of the Charge of the Light Brigade is unlikely ever to replace Tennyson’s evocation of the “Valley of Death” in the popular imagination, but his description of the aftermath of a later action in the Crimea campaign is incomparably hard-hitting in its eyewitness realism:</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34840/original/82yq9bw6-1384108041.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34840/original/82yq9bw6-1384108041.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34840/original/82yq9bw6-1384108041.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=817&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34840/original/82yq9bw6-1384108041.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=817&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34840/original/82yq9bw6-1384108041.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=817&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34840/original/82yq9bw6-1384108041.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1026&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34840/original/82yq9bw6-1384108041.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1026&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34840/original/82yq9bw6-1384108041.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1026&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">William Russell: set the standard.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Open Library</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<blockquote>
<p>It was agonising to see the wounded men who were lying there under a broiling sun, parched with excruciating thirst, racked with fever, and agonized with pain – to behold them waving their caps faintly, or making signals towards our lines, over which they could see the white flag waving. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The reader can almost feel the dying soldiers’ blinding headaches. </p>
<p>After the failures of the First World War, journalism’s reputation was restored in the Second by reporters such as Richard Dimbleby, Ed Murrow, and Vassily Grossman. Michael Herr’s <a href="http://entertainment.time.com/2011/08/30/all-time-100-best-nonfiction-books/slide/dispatches-by-michael-herr/">Dispatches</a>, written about his experiences in Vietnam, combines reportage with literary style. It still packs a punch and remarkable freshness almost 40 years after publication. </p>
<p>The Second World War also inspired the poetry of Keith Douglas – even though one of his most memorable works, “I listen to the desert wind”, takes as its theme desolation and heartbreak, rather than soldiering. Before being killed in Normandy in 1944, Douglas had fought in the Middle East. The region was a battleground in both World Wars – and, in Syria and Iraq, has been much more recently.</p>
<h2>Dangerous assignment</h2>
<p>From 2002-2004, I was the <a href="http://www.chiswickw4.com/default.asp?section=info&page=jamesrodgers002.htm">BBC’s correspondent in Gaza</a>. In December 2003, I travelled to Iraq for a reporting assignment. A couple of weeks before I left, there was due to be a Remembrance Service in one of Gaza’s two Commonwealth War Cemeteries, the final resting places of soldiers engaged in a campaign against Ottoman forces in the First World War. </p>
<p>That year, as the second Palestinian intifada – or uprising against Israel – wore on, the ceremony was cancelled. It was too dangerous. I remember, on a later visit to one of the cemeteries, finding gravestones chipped by recent bullets. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34839/original/z9487v3y-1384107871.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34839/original/z9487v3y-1384107871.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34839/original/z9487v3y-1384107871.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34839/original/z9487v3y-1384107871.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34839/original/z9487v3y-1384107871.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34839/original/z9487v3y-1384107871.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34839/original/z9487v3y-1384107871.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34839/original/z9487v3y-1384107871.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Killed in action: Marie Colvin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Iraq, officially at least, I encountered optimism among the occupying powers. While I was there, Saddam Hussein was captured. I thought then of Siegfried Sassoon’s character, a “<em>gross, goggle-eyed</em>” father, whose “<em>eldest lad/Writes cheery letters from Baghdad</em>.” I wondered if another father, perhaps somewhere in the shires, was now saying something similar some 90 years later. </p>
<p>If he was, it was premature. Ten years on, there are far fewer people who think the invasion was wise. The Iraq War produced some memorable war reporting, especially once the insurgency began in 2004. The coverage of the run up to the invasion was less creditable. The New York Times was just one of the news organisations which “fell for misinformation”; at least they had the courage to admit it. </p>
<p>Where will future generations look for their first-hand accounts of that conflict - to reporters’ dispatches, or to writers’ poetry and prose? Perhaps to Kevin Powers’ <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/aug/31/the-yellow-birds-kevin-powers-review">The Yellow Birds</a>, widely praised on publication last year. </p>
<p>Powers himself addressed the journalism or fiction issue in an <a href="http://www.bookbrowse.com/author_interviews/full/index.cfm/author_number/2236/kevin-powers">interview with Jonathan Ruppin</a> of Foyle’s bookshop. His answer was that fiction worked “in a different way,” and, he concluded, “The work that journalists do during wartime is utterly essential and, to me, incomprehensibly difficult.”</p>
<p>“Essential” and “difficult”: words to describe any great writing about war - be it journalism or literature. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/19919/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Rodgers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The anniversary of Armistice Day is chance to reflect on a shameful chapter in the history of journalism. Millions were killed and maimed during World War I, about a million from Britain and its empire…James Rodgers, Lecturer in Journalism, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.