War reporters and photographers from The New York Times and the Associated Press talked at an ASNE 2012 conference panel Monday about the dangers of working in war zones.
-
- Moderator Susan Bennett posed questions to (left-to-right) C.J. Chivers, Rodrigo Abd and Tyler Hicks.
In one lengthy exchange, Times correspondent C.J. Chivers described his predicament as a journalist who had also served as a Marine infantry officer during the Gulf War. His military experience sometimes leads him to disagree with the tactics of the unit he is embedded with.
In one case, a patrol unit in Iraq decided to take a left before a canal, with buildings on the other side that he thought could house an enemy ambush.
I thought they should scoot over the bridge and walk the other side of the canal. … If they got shot from, I wanted it to be on their side of the canal so they could sweep the building … If we were on the other side we could fight.
I didn’t say anything. It’s not my job. You’re there to watch, to observe and to be a journalist. You’re not there to take over patrol. You start influencing where a patrol goes, and someone gets hurt, from that minute forward you own that casualty. It’s on your soul.
I almost said to him, ‘Man, you might want to scoot over to the other side of the bridge there.’ But I didn’t. We turned left, walked down the road, got shot at from the building and a guy got shot through the spine. I hadn’t said anything.
Now, I didn’t see anything. It’s not like I was withholding information from the patrol. I just had a hunch. You have a lot of hunches that don’t pan out. Every time you have a hunch you can’t interfere with the patrol. Of course not. But this is where it hurts. I think about that patrol … every week. It’s been five or six years.
The hour-plus session drew a standing ovation from a crowd thankful for the insights shared by Chivers and Tyler Hicks (who was with Anthony Shadid when he died in Syria), and AP photographer Rodrigo Abd. C-SPAN aired the session live, and the replay is online.
