Reporting from the frontline

What is it that makes war correspondents put their lives on the line? Is it worth it?

At a time when journalism’s shadier side fills the headlines, it was pleasant to be reminded of nobler possibilities recently thanks to Life and Death on the Frontline (Radio 4). John Simpson, the BBC’s redoubtable World Affairs editor, began with the recent death of Marie Colvin of the Sunday Times and reflected on what the job of reporting from theatres of conflict means. And why, despite the risks, so many still do it.

Technological change was, unsurprisingly, a key issue. Reports from the Crimea could take eight weeks to trickle home, while nowadays journalists can blog, tweet and transmit live from the events around them. Though it is not all progress. Martin Bell, former MP and BBC foreign affairs supremo, suggested that war reporting changed with 9/11. Since then, correspondents have been transformed into targets themselves.

Bell also claimed that the war reporting of old was no longer possible, journalists kept on a tighter leash by foreign authorities and no longer able to roam as once they could. He predicted, rather apocalyptically, that ‘the wars of this century…are being fought out in a kind of medieval darkness’. Citizen journalism fills in some of the gaps, of course, but whether it earns its spurs as reportage – aiming at level headed impartiality – seemed in doubt.

One of the most fascinating parts of the programme concerned the issue of safety. We heard from the BBC head of newsgathering and the foreign editor of the Times about how cultures differed when it comes to broadcasting versus print, print being less ‘bureaucratic’ apparently, nimbler with its sparse equipment. Journalists can be fleeter of foot when entrusted with only a notepad and pen. But safety is a serious concern, though here proved ripe for some light relief. Clips from one of the BBC’s ‘hostile environment’ refresher courses steered close to an extract from Scoop. Nick Robinson, the BBC’s political editor, and team were plunged into a fictional country called ‘Hostalia’. Shouty theatrics filled the background; cut-glass accents fretted and flailed. Evelyn Waugh couldn’t have done much better.

Any hint of levity was soon expunged, however, as John Simpson brought the grim realities of the job back into focus with a tale about his own experience in Iraq, subject to an episode of friendly fire in which eighteen people – including the team’s translator – were killed. The live recording from that event encapsulated the knife-edge nature of the frontline better than anything I’ve yet heard or seen. Simpson was similarly candid about motivation, admitting that alongside starrier impulses:

“It’s also a matter of self-image. Going to unpleasant places isn’t just what I do, it’s become who I am. If I didn’t do it anymore, I’d feel myself diminished,” he said.

A concluding vignette about the time he was subject to a mock execution in Beirut pushed the point home. Luck, derring-do and an unquenchable appetite for it all surfaced as the main ingredients for a successful war correspondent. A ‘basic drive’ that the old 9-to-5 just can’t satisfy.

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• Jan Baykara

  Let’s be honest, it’s so we can relive hollywood on 24hr news >_>

• porkfright

  “War reporting changed after 9/11″. Everything changed after 9/11. That was by design.

• tizab12

  Matrin Bell was right. But they don’t explain why “everything has changed”.
  For instance, why journalist don’t have the same respect now as they used to command amongst people say before 1980s?
  Thinking back the things for journalist had begun to change from 1980s, the time when Mr. Terry Waite negotiated the release of Iranian hostages and later ( 1985 onwards) when he went to negotiate the release of the hostages ( Brian Keenan,Terry Anderson, Tom Sutherland and John Mac Carthy from Beirute. Of course, he himself also was taken as a hostage.

• Citizen Bidet

  I thought they were all embedded now.

• Rideintothesun

  We are asked to conceive of war journalism as a noble enterprise in which self-sacrificing journalists act as the conduit of human solidarity in the face of unfathomable suffering? Let’s not delude ourselves – the self-referential overtones of this premise are all the more objectionable once we cut out the middleman to consider what should be our main focus – the civilians who are often reconstituted as the backdrop to the ornate creations of the war correspondent. To adapt Tom Stoppard’s Night and Day: a war correspondent is somebody who arrives in a foreign country and thinks that the main story is the fact that they’ve arrived to cover it. Contemporary ‘war journalism’ is redolent with this narcissistic self-aggrandisement (John Simpson being a prime proponent) – if nothing else, its authors should be more honest and admit that they help to perpetuate/reproduce strategic power complexes, moralistic self-aggrandisement and a prurient lust for ‘war porn’.

• Al Warren

  I think the issue needed widening.

  Where does the Andrew Gilligan and Dr David Kelly outing the Dodgy Dossier fit with reporting?

  Where does the media and politicians banging on about the activities of the Murdoch activities with regard to illegal access to data and communications and the state easing the buyout of BSkyB fit with decapitating the BBC for telling the truth on the Dodgy Dossier?

  Where’s our free press and why does it seem the politicians only want the media telling us what they want us to hear?

• porkfright

  Well, since this author mentions the sadly recently deceased correspondent, I will register my disquiet about all so-called “War Correspondents”. I have a feeling that all is not what it seems-as is often the case with the media.