Why reporters go to war

Posted by Martin Stabe on 7 February 2006 at 13:03
Tags: International, War reporting

In the wake of the kidnapping of Christian Science Monitor freelancer Jill Carroll and last week’s injurty of ABC presenter Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt, American journalists are debating why so many reporters are willing to take dangerous assignment to cover warzones.

Writing in the Boston Globe, University of Maine journalism professor Michael Socolow recently argued that a major reason so many hacks yearn for war assignments is that the industry rewards taking dangerous risks:

There is a dirty little secret in journalism: War reporting is the fastest way to get ahead. The trade-off is obvious. In exchange for putting one’s life on the line for a story, a journalistic organization will reward that courage with a promotion. Being in the right place at the right time is the essential journalistic value, and war zones always qualify as “right” places. Nothing burnishes a journalistic résumé like time spent “in country.”

Yet the combat journalist is not motivated solely by careerism — if at all. An enormous amount of ego gratification is involved as well. The heroic ideal of the globe-trotting war correspondent provides an inspirational model. Whether it is Edward R. Murrow on a bombing mission over Berlin or Christiane Amanpour dodging bullets in Sarajevo, the public display of courage attracts a certain kind of idealistic yet narcissistic personality.

It’s primarily an affliction of young hacks with few family committments, he writes, noting the recent case of the London-based veteran ABC News correspondent Richard Gizbert, who won an employment tribunal case when he was sacked after refusing to go to Iraq.

At the time, the former BBC correspondent Martin Bell, who acted as an expert witness in Gizbert’s case, said the case would be important for younger journalists who might not refuse an Iraq assignment for fear of losing their jobs.