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A Foreign Correspondent's Retrospective On ABSTRACT Title: "THERE WILL ALWAYS BE ANOTHER WAR": A FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT’S RETROSPECTIVE ON REPORTING FROM AROUND THE WORLD Sharon Maria Behn, Master of Arts, 2014 Directed By: Associate Dean Ira Chinoy, Philip Merrill College of Journalism Every day, hundreds of journalists risk their lives to cover news developments in volatile areas of the world. They have been beaten, kidnapped, tortured, and killed. Yet they continue to do their jobs, and new reporters join the fray. Their work as foreign correspondents in challenging environments carries a high price that is not fully recognized by news organizations, the public, and often not even by the correspondents themselves. This thesis helps provide an understanding of that human cost. The methodology is autobiography, which allows for an intimate look at the behind-the- scenes experiences and personal toll during a 30-year career in journalism. Salient themes include employment status – staffer vs. freelancer or stringer – as well as gender, ethics, and fear and its consequences. The need for such understanding has become increasingly relevant as many media organizations, under budgetary pressure, ask reporters to deliver more and ever faster from a dangerous world. "THERE WILL ALWAYS BE ANOTHER WAR": A FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT’S RETROSPECTIVE ON REPORTING FROM AROUND THE WORLD Sharon Maria Behn Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts 2014 Advisory Committee: Associate Dean Ira Chinoy, Chair Professor Maurine Beasley Associate Professor Christopher Hanson © Copyright by Sharon Maria Behn 2014 Dedication To my children. ii Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge, in roughly chronological order: Sandy Sloop, the UPI editor who first hired me; Pascal Fletcher of Reuters, who was unfailingly kind; Peter Wise, then with AP, for being a constant friend in need; Beni Ammar for his coat; the Maryknoll sisters for a roof over my head in Juba; Oxfam; Thorir Gudmundsson of ICRC; David Jones, a great editor; Willis Witter for his support; Semoud, a loyal driver; all my journalist friends who have reached out and helped me cross treacherous territory; all the of interpreters and fixers who put their lives on the line to help me get the story; the House of Ruth; Associate Dean Ira Chinoy for his patience and insights and without whom this thesis never would have been written; those who gave me the room to write; my best friends Tamara Laird and Cornelia Sarvey for never giving up on me; and above all, my children, Aphra, Nicholas and Allegra, whose love and strength have made me a better mother, person and reporter. Jose Miguel and Stephanie, may you always rest in peace. iii Table of Contents Dedication ........................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ iii Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... iv Chapter 1: Introduction ....................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2: Staff Correspondent vs. Stringer and Freelancer ............................................ 14 Chapter 3: Gender ............................................................................................................. 34 Motherhood ................................................................................................................... 45 Chapter 4: Ethics ............................................................................................................... 54 Chapter 5: Fear and Its Consequences .............................................................................. 72 A Final Trip to Baghdad ............................................................................................... 84 Coming Home ............................................................................................................. 100 "Anyone Here Been Raped and Speaks English?" .................................................... 107 Chapter 6: Conclusions ................................................................................................... 110 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 116 iv Chapter 1: Introduction There are very few heroes in the world, and I am not one of them. I am a street journalist: I cover events as they happen on the streets and alleys of the world. I flinch when things get rough, and things get rough a lot. But I wouldn't give up my work for anything. I was once asked what I would do if I had a million dollars. I would be doing the same thing, just staying at better hotels. Maybe taking a few more breaks. It takes a certain toughness to be a foreign reporter, to land in a foreign country, sometimes without cash, organize travel, cars, translators, and fixers in a place where you don't always speak the language and where there is often conflict or all-out war. And to do it alone. It can be dangerous and lonely work. And scary as hell. From the reactions I have had to my work, it appears that many people don't fully understand how journalists get the information from far away – whether from bombed out cities, refugee camps, remote villages or anger-filled capitals from Africa to Asia – that becomes the news on their doorstep, television or computer screen later the same day. A stranger in an airport once asked me if I was flying to Iraq to tell more lies. Why would I fly into a war zone to tell lies? What would I gain from that? Another person accused me of being a traitor because I was flying to Iraq but not telling the real story of American success and sacrifice. Really? A traitor? This from someone who had never stepped foot in Iraq. I have received emails with amazing photographs of soldiers scrambling up hills in Afghanistan under fire, sent to me by people who were asking furiously why the press was not covering these events – photographs taken by Associated Press and other photojournalists. Somehow lost on the senders was the fact that journalists were 1 shooting the pictures, or recording sound, or taking notes, while working in exactly the same dangerous places as the soldiers, but without guns. Most foreign reporters live a pretty pedestrian life much of the time. We don't have stables of researchers, comfortable cars, drivers or satellite trucks following us around. We do all of our own research, sometimes stay in places that resemble hell, and watch wide-eyed as our hotels are bombed, repeatedly. We have been shot at, threatened, harassed, arrested, and abandoned on the border between Iraq and Kuwait with nothing but a backpack in the middle of a war. We have begged and, when needed, bribed hotel operators and other Internet providers to get our stories out. But sometimes the hardest part is coming home. It took me years to figure out that the hair-trigger temper, the feelings of isolation, alienation, and anger were part of my inability to cope with the return to normality, which is no longer normal for me. I realize now that soldiers and aid workers go through the same thing. But unlike them, outside of a circle of journalists, and the occasional "What is it really like over there?" I have heard comments more like these: "Well, nobody told you to go, you asked for it," or "you like the adrenaline rush," or even "what kind of mother are you?" There is a rush, no doubt about it. It's the rush of being at the center of something important, of moving fast, of uncovering lies and telling people's stories, and being able to do hard things. But it is not the rush of horror, or pain, or seeing others suffer, or fear. Everyone hates the fear, the horror. Everyone hates the suffering their families go through – even when their families manage to stay together. 2 Twenty-four hours a day, journalists around the world report on political, social, cultural and religious developments, allowing a global audience to better understand the world they live in. The reports are written informatively, contextually, sometimes ironically or even amusingly. But perhaps we should also know how these stories are found and who explores, writes and produces them. Perhaps in understanding the process, we will better understand the context and the true cost of the news. There are many different kinds of journalism. Some people choose to write about the intricate world of local or national politics, and in some countries, this can cost the reporters their lives. Others are passionate about long, painstaking investigations into financial or criminal issues. And there are foreign correspondents who spend their lives moving from country to country, or from conflict to conflict. This thesis will focus on what it means to be a foreign correspondent, the challenges and rewards of reporting in often unstable situations, and how the news received every morning in a daily paper, radio show or Internet page actually gets there. How did the story start? Who wrote it? How did they find out about it, who did they talk to? What decisions did they make along the way? What compromises did they make to protect their lives or the lives of those helping them or the lives of the people whose stories were being told? And in particular,
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