About the Job

By Pat Walters
Naughton Fellow

For young journalists anxious to cover what many regard as the biggest story of our time, the temptation to go to Iraq is real.

There appear to be jobs available. As far back as Jan. 2005, the Chicago Tribune reported it was having trouble finding people to send to the war. Earlier this month, the Los Angeles Times posted openings in its Baghdad bureau.

But what training does one need to report on this war? What does it take? What would I need to do, I wondered, if I were interested in going to Iraq?

RELATED RESOURCES

Read "Into the Abyss," CJR's oral history of the journalists who have covered the Iraq War. The magazine interviewed 47 journalists about their experiences of the war. It is well-worth exploring, particularly for those of us whose understanding of the war exists only by way of the stories told by the courageous journalists featured in this project, and others like them. Sign up to receive About the Job by e-mail: Click here (sent Mondays and Wednesdays at 9 a.m.)

The beginnings of an answer came in the pages of the most recent issue of the Columbia Journalism Review.


These words belong to Wall Street Journal reporter Farnaz Fassihi, whose private e-mail in 2004 about her experiences covering Iraq generated a wide discussion about the war and about the relevance of the personal opinions of reporters covering it. Her most recent views are included along with those of other correspondents in CJR's extraordinary oral history of the journalists who've covered the Iraq War.

I've thought, but never very deliberately, about what it would be like to travel overseas and write about war. I am young, driven and physically able. But the thought is more a dream than a practical aspiration.

A remark by another journalist, this one an editor, struck me as an echo, and an extension, of Fassihi's message.

Paul Holmes, who is editor of politics and general news for Reuters, told CJR that he advises young reporters to stay out of Iraq.


Perhaps this man knows the answer, I thought. Exactly what sort of experience would he say qualifies someone to go to Iraq? Again, I asked myself, what does it take?

The question, I soon discovered, evades a simple answer.

Holmes -- who has reported from Bosnia, Croatia, Israel, Palestine, Afganistan and Iraq, to name a few -- told me the conditions in Iraq are profoundly worse than he has ever encountered.

Fassihi, the Wall Street Journal reporter, agrees. She spoke with me Friday from Beruit, where she is on leave, working on a book about Iraq. In previous conflicts, she said, journalists enjoyed a degree of immunity; in Iraq, it is gone.

"It doesn't even compare," she said. "Iraq is another planet compared to anywhere else ... In Iraq, it seems all bets are off. For the sheer fact that you are a foreigner, or work for a foreign [news] agency, you are a target."

You cannot simply walk out onto the street, approach an Iraqi and talk to him, Holmes said. You might be shot, or kidnapped. As for your prospective source, he may be beaten or killed, simply for speaking to you.

"I think some people have this view that Iraq is this big story out there that has to be told," he said, "but the fact of it is that you, as a non-Iraqi, are hugely constrained by the danger and the circumstances of it."

So you stay inside. Holmes told me Reuters rents a house in Karada, a neighborhood, across Tigris from the Green Zone, that has become a nest of foreign news organizations. The BBC, Holmes said, sits across the street from Reuters. The New York Times and the Associated Press are just up the road.

The neighborhood is relatively safe, surrounded by walls, barbed wire and checkpoints manned by armed guards, Holmes said. The buildings are secured with similar caution. Sandbags, barbed wire and armed guards protect the journalists inside.

But it is isolating. Some journalists, Holmes said, particularly those who lack experience, cannot handle such conditions. Long days are spent inside, working hard, alongside the same people with whom you socialize, eat and sleep.

"For most of your six weeks there as a Reuters journalist," Holmes said of Reuter's regular rotation, "that's your world."

Fassihi's take: "In Iraq, as important as the story is, it's not particularly a satisfying place to work, journalistically. The conditions are very grave ... The risks are starting to outweigh the benefits."

To go to Iraq alone as a freelancer, lacking protection, Fassihi said, is suicide.

What, then, can an ambitious young journalist do? Stay out of Iraq, Holmes said. And let him send you someplace else.

"They need to gain [the] experience of covering action stories of some sort or another," Holmes said. "Not necesarily stories where you're getting shot at ... but things like demonstrations, disasters, riots."

He sends less experienced reporters to Jordan. He sends them to Israel. And he send them to Afghanistan.

"Kabul is actually a good place to try someone who has promise," Holmes said. "People will talk to you."

You must become street savvy, resourceful and independent, Holmes said. You must be able to work on your own. One place you can learn this without going overseas: New Orleans.

"We send people in there for a month," Holmes said. "And it really helps less experienced reporters get a grip on developing their own stories ... They have to be self-starters to make it work."

Nothing but experience, Holmes said, can prepare you for Iraq. Even some of the best, most experienced war correspondents have said they are hindered by the conditions there. For this reason, both Holmes and Fassihi said, the help of professional and trusted Iraqi journalists has been critical.

"I think that it's fair to say that without an Iraqi staff and Iraqi journalists we couldn't do our work," Fassihi said. "In most other conflicts -- in Afghanistan -- I can hire a driver, a fixer, and work like that. In Iraq, you can't just hire someone off the street."

Of the 70 journalists Reuters has working in Iraq, Holmes said, only seven of them are not Iraqis. The local journalists working for Reuters ask that their names not be attached to their stories. They fear for their lives.

"What I'm telling you now relates to Iraq in late 2006," Holmes said. "It hasn't always been like that since the beginning ... There was a time that reporters could go and walk around and talk to people."

I would like to think that someday reporters will once again walk the streets of Baghdad. That they will talk casually and candidly to the people who live there. But even if that day comes soon -- and I hope it does -- I suspect I'll stay here.

I am young. I am not prepared to work in a place like Iraq. More than anything, I have a lot to learn, and I think I ought to learn some of it here.

I've walked too few of these American streets, talked with too few of my neighbors, I think, to leave them, and their stories, behind.