“Journalism is not a profession. It’s a craft.”
I read The Bang Bang Club last year. Before that I didn’t know much about Greg Marinovich, or his close friend Joao Silva. Days after I finished the book, Silva’s legs got blown off by a landmine in Afghanistan. This interview is from April, when Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros were killed in Libya, when Terry Gross had him on Fresh Air. Excellent look at war photography and journalism.
See this photo? This is the Tigris River in Iraq, where it passes though the city of Al Kut, or Kut. I passed through there on my way from COB Delta to Camp Shocker this winter. I remember being amazed to see so much water. It didn’t seem possible amid the country I’d seen.
At 7:45 a.m. yesterday, according to the New York Times, two car bombs exploded there, killing 35 people and wounding 71 more. Those were just two of 42 intertwined attacks around the country that killed almost 90. It was the most violent days there in a long time.
It is chilling to look at this picture, just one of several I snapped out the window of the MRAP as it drove through Kut, and think how exposed the people there are to the daily violence. Yesterday was a bad day to be an Iraqi living in Iraq. If this level of violence continues many more days will be bad days. Last trip I was behind a blast wall almost the entire time. I may do the same for the next trip, but at some point real reporting requires you to walk among the people, even if some of them want you dead. It’s a terrifying proposition, but that’s where the value comes from of having someone there.
Maybe it comes from having just watched The Killing Fields, but the story can’t always come from the mouths of lieutenant colonels. We’ll see where that idea gets me…
I love This American Life. The first time I walked into a radio studio, it was because I wanted to learn how to do what they do. Today I was looking around for something connected to the presidential primary and I stumbled on this critique of this story (listen to the full story below).
Granted, it takes an hour, but you should to listen to it. It is just the type of abuse journalists should be looking for and bringing to the public’s attention. And reporters can’t be timid just because someone threatens to sue. Luckily there are laws protecting reporters who have the courage to criticize people in power. Rock on, Ira, and keep keeping them honest.
I added a new blog post category—Afghanistan—in hopes of needing it in the future. I’m not really sure what the plan is yet (still working on that), or if that is really where I want to go next, but I’ve been kicking it around for a while. We’ll see if I put it to good use. Iraq, I know, was well-loved.
I just finished watching The Paper, Shattered Glass (Vanity Fair article about the true story) and The Killing Fields (New York Times article about Dith Pran, one of the central figures in the film) all in a row for a show I’m doing with a friend on the local public access channel. It was essentially an afternoon packed with reporting.
Between the three there were a litany of pitfalls alongside poignent examples of why reporting is so crucial. Two are based on true stories. They would be striking enough if they were fiction.
I love reporting. When I go back to work after a weekend it never feels like work. It is about trying to catch myself up on what happened over the last few days to try to fill everyone else in. I love it.
But the impact of reporting—whether the story is about about a candidate for selectman with a criminal record or genocide in Cambodia—is central to our democracy. Through all of three movies, even the one filed under fiction, that central tenant of journalism holds true. It holds true for me as well, and that’s why I love it.
Click here to see photos of and by Dith Pran, or here to see a video. They are all worth it. Pran died of cancer in 2008.
I read this last week, and I neglected to post it. It chronicles Seal Team Six as they raided the compound in Abbottabad to kill Osama Bin Laden. It’s an amazing perspective, the kind of reporting that really gets inside the national security apparatus. Reading Limits of Power right on the heels of reading this article raises some interesting questions about the path and future of the American military. “Success,” but at what cost?
This is what I stumbled on today: a 145-foot long wind turbine blade on a trailer with ruptured brakes. Who even knew brakes could rupture?
It was a cool find, and I had a great time talking with the team transporting this thing to the North Country about it. It weighs five tons and is made out of balsa wood and fiberglass. To me it looks like an eel, a whale fin or a dinosaur part (think stegosaurus plate), but everyone who came up asked if it was an airplane wing. How unimaginative!
Last night I read this about the formation of Michele Bachmann’s political ideology, and tonight I finished Andrew Bacevich’s The Limits of Power: The end of American Exceptionalism. What differing worlds: Bachmann’s view is founded in faith, while Bacevich argues our best days are behind us if we don’t start owning up to our difficulties.
The blade exemplifies their differences perfectly: to Bacevich it’s the future, to Bachmann it’s a farce. It’s amazing that they both are part of serious political dialog, considering how far apart they are. And it’s equally amazing that both of them can find legions of supporters.
I’m watching the Republican convention roll inexorably toward New Hampshire, and this trifecta got me that much more excited. Ideology is a crazy thing, particularly if deeply rooted. Washington already has too much of it oozing out every window. I’m not sure more is called for, but we’ll see how the voters turn.
I had to think, however, that God and ideology determine the division of our energy sector. For some people, though, there’s more power in the devine than can be harnessed from wind. I wonder what that worldview would do in the White House.
Parting shot:
This is fantastic visualization of something everyone has felt, at least for the last three years. Pages like this reassure me that modern media is an asset for reporters, not a liability. Click the photo for the real thing.
Every once in a while you get a note that really is nice. Today was just such a day.
Lately I’ve been doing a bunch of work on stories that I think are really interesting, but then again sometimes I’m interested in mundane intricacies of finance and such that regular people just breeze past. But today I got the note below from the editor, which says to me I might be on the right track. Cool, huh?
I’m starting to brainstorm for the next cool thing.
It’s been a bit over six months since I flew back from Kuwait. I’d like to think the experience changed me forever, but that would be a lie. I look back on the photos and my posts from that trip and it’s like another world, one of many I get to dive into briefly as a reporter.
But unlike most other trips, it’s the one with the story most worth telling. I’m in the midst of War, the book by Sebastian Junger about the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan. His descriptions have dredged up feelings and memories from my brief trip and reminded me of some of the lessons I learned.
It’s an incredible feeling, to read a book like that and feel a bit like you understand. I’ve read many classics in the genre, from The Things They Carried to The Forever War, but the fear and the camaraderie experienced by soldiers was only abstract. Now when Junger describes the stress soldiers feel waiting to be attacked, I get it. I remember my night ride to Camp Delta in the back of an MRAP, feeling woefully vulnerable, like I was in the middle of a drum about to get pounded.
Those memories scare me, but they also remind me of what is still going on out there, what kinds of stories are always happening. I love my job and have no intention of leaving it, but I am starting to look for a way to tell more of those stories. Where will the next one come from?
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