Reflect & Write: Embedded Journalism – David Leeson

Text: Dirck Halstead, “David Leeson Has Seen Hell” (http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0503/halstead_leeson.html)

Envision Connection: Read in conjunction with Chapter 14, “Images of Crisis”

Background: Photographer David Leeson is well-known for his impressive fieldwork and powerful photography. A staff photographer for the Dallas Morning News since 1984, Leeson has covered a variety of stories across the globe: from homelessness in Texas, to death row inmates across the U.S., the apartheid in South Africa, Colombia’s drug wars, and the civil war in the Sudan. While on assignment in 2003, he was embedded with the Third Infantry Division in Iraq, a unit that saw a record 23 days of sustained army conflict. Leeson, along with his colleague Cheryl Diaz Meyers, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his work in Iraq. This interview with Leeson appeared in the Digital Journalist in March 2005.

Reflect & Write

• Analyze the interview for its rhetorical strategies. What might be the purpose in beginning with a vivid narrative? How do the questions work? Where does the interviewer turn from pathos to logos and why? Are there surprising jumps in the arrangement of questions?

• The interviewer claims that “his extraordinary account paints a vivid portrait of the life of a war photographer grown sick of the sight of war.” Find passages that strike you as particularly vivid. What makes these passages so compelling? How might detail work as a tool of argument?

• When Leeson explains that he thought, “I truly believed, deeply and passionately believed, that there existed a series of photographs, or a single photograph, that could end war,” he also explains that he was willing to pay the price of a life. What ethical questions does this point of view raise? What is the value of one life compared to that of many? What is the value of one life killed in war versus one life sacrificed for an image that could change the world? Do images have such power, do you think?

• What do you make of Leeson’s statement that “some people would shoot me for” having this belief? What are the ethics of using such language in the midst of this serious issue?

• Leeson uses rich and vivid language, such as in his question concerning the ethics of whether one would “save a busload of students careening over a bridge”— what is the effect of such visual scenarios on you as a reader? How does this language help construct his persona as a writer?

Christine Alfano & Alyssa O’Brien, Envision In Depth. 2nd edition. NY: Pearson, 2010.

Reflect & Write: Embedded Journalism – David Leeson

What do these examples tell us about his own life experiences?

• How does Leeson bring to light the ethical dilemma of the embedded journalist when he writes, “I stood up at times I didn’t need to stand up because I believed that I should. I mean, if they’re taking fire, I should take it too.” What issues are at stake in this argument?

• Write: What does Leeson mean that coming home is the hardest part? Write a short narrative explaining this perspective by creating an account of a returning photographer or soldier.

• For Added Challenge: “There are images worth dying for,” Leeson states. Compose two responses to this argument.

Christine Alfano & Alyssa O’Brien, Envision In Depth. 2nd edition. NY: Pearson, 2010.