The vital necessity of the ‘War Correspondent’

(c) Steve Punter

The sad death last week of Daily Mirror Defence correspondent Rupert Hamer, and the grievous injuries suffered by his accompanying photographer Philip Coburn, has thrown into sharp relief the vital work conducted by journalists in areas of armed conflict.  But what are the risks involved in modern journalism?  And how can journalists seek to balance risk versus reward?

Even the most cursory examination of the various comment boards run by newspaper websites shows that the commenting public have little understanding of why journalists would seek to venture to places like Iraq and Afghanistan and risk life and limb to bring us reportage, as best they are able, from these countries.  Hamer’s death was the second death of a journalist this year, following the 97 deaths in 2009 recorded by the Committee to Protect Journalists

Hamer was on his fifth ‘tour’ of Afghanistan and, according to his editor Tina Weaver, believed the only place to report conflict was from the frontline. Clearly, despite having a family of his own, something compelled Hamer to return four times over to Afghanistan.  In a profession that is much maligned, journalism in times of conflict can usually see the very best aspects of that role emerge.  It is simply untrue to say that all journalists who accept assignment are ‘war junkies’; indeed many journalists are leery even of the term ‘war correspondent’.  The BBC’s Gavin Hewitt, in a 2004 interview for the book ‘Journalists Under Fire’, elaborated upon this view:

“If somebody described themselves to me as a war correspondent, I would instinctively mistrust them because I think if you specialise in covering wars, almost by the definition you lose connection with ordinary life and ordinary people.  War, thank goodness, is abnormal… I have met people who just go from one conflict to another.  And often they’re very damaged people and they’re damaged principally because they cannot disconnect themselves from their unreality of war.  And war, I think, delivers great highs to those who are covering it, partly because of the risk, the thrill of escaping danger.  But it is an unreal existence… to my mind the very best reporters who cover wars are those who cover them with a certain degree of reluctance, and then connects them to most ordinary sane people’s view of war that, at best, it is a painful necessity… The idea of being a war correspondent is not a term that I would want to be used about myself.”

So while acknowledging the thrill or reporting conflict, it’s clear that responsible journalists have other motivations for covering them.  Clearly, in the unwritten journalistic hierarchy, war reporting can make or break the careers of journalists – look at the profile boost ‘Scud Stud’ Rageh Omaar achieved following the 2003 Iraq War, for example.

For others, the ‘need’ to be on the ‘front row of history’ is a strong motivation.  In Journalists Under Fire, the BBC Pakistan correspondent Orla Guerin describes her early days at RTE reporting on the tumultuous collapse of the Soviet Union thus:

“You would wake up every morning thinking what amazing, jaw-dropping historic thing is going to happen today and every single day something would happen that you just couldn’t have possibly predicted… you literally did have the feeling that you were the witness for many more people… [a]nd that’s always a great privilege as a journalist, to know that you are reaching an audience…

There’s no doubt that it’s an amazing experience as a journalist to see history being made, and that’s something that’s very tempting for us all.  Covering conflict is in many ways one of the most compelling areas of journalism, and most people who do it want to keep doing it – it’s rare that you find somebody who goes and covers a conflict or a war and who says “I don’t want to do that again”.  It’s normally the opposite – people are compelled to come back and do it again.  And you want to feel that you’re getting at the truth, because that’s not always obvious in a war.” (My emphasis)

Working towards establishing the truth of war or, indeed, any other topic is, as Guerin suggests, is the final, loftiest, motivation for journalists, and is a absolute necessity in any democratic society whose politicians and armed forces purport to act in ‘our’ name.  However it is also a motivation that carries inherent, sometimes life-threatening, risks to the journalist.  The motivation to seek the truth cannot, therefore, be judged in isolation from the wider contexts the journalist operates in.

While Rupert Hamer’s death was the result of enemy action, it is a motivation to keep truth hidden or, at least, positively managed that politicians, in concert with the military and other security services, have sought methods to control journalists’ reporting of conflicts and other ‘sensitive’ topics.

Hamer was ‘embedded’ with US Marines in Helmand.  The embed process is merely the latest form of spin control that the military has sought to place upon journalists ‘in theatre’, and this desire for control is informed by the US military’s bogus reasoning that journalists who reported freely cost America the Vietnam War.  The 1991 Gulf War saw the pool reporting system, which itself was a development from the reporting system in place during the 1983 US invasion of Grenada.  This system failed because most journalists wanted to see what was happening with their own eyes in the field; thus, through interventions in Somalia and Kosovo, the military developed the current embed system.  While this system, along with significant improvements in media technology, allows journalists into the field, it also has the effect of narrowing their perspective to only a small area of the war.   In terms of dry cost/benefit ratios, perhaps the risks taken by journalists in this system are too much.

Further, the competitive nature of news companies, especially those with commercial considerations, allied to the hunger the 24/7 news-media has for content, has created an environment where the pressures on journalists to take risks in finding the ‘big story’ have never been so great.

In it within these contexts that the modern journalist operate, and while the proper functioning of our democracy demands that journalists take risks, there must also be proper scrutiny in news companies to ensure that the wellbeing of the journalist, not the balance sheet, remains paramount.