Why Journalists Risk Their Lives To Cover Iraq

“Journalists Killed on Duty: 73.” This is how the independent Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) sums up the casualties of war among the print and electronic press in Iraq.

The number is tragically alarming: With the deaths last week of CBS news cameraman Paul Douglas and soundman James Brolan, the Iraq War—now three-plus years old, with no end in sight—has officially become the deadliest conflict for members of the working media. The loss is now greater than during the entirety of Vietnam (66 journalists), World War II (68) and certainly Korea (17).

But the phrasing on the CPJ site is equally significant: Journalists killed “on duty.” Indeed, serving in Iraq for the press has become a duty, both in its grave dangers and in the sense of mission among those who enlist and attempt to extract truth in the growing miasma of the region.

The Iraq conflict is symbolic of the relatively new, greatly ramped-up threat faced by reporters in the field. In a country where taking a few steps can turn you into a statistic, the media—long the “observers” of action, the voices of reason—have become both pawns and players in the theater of war.

They are also, sadly, their own human-interest story. At present, 41 journalists have endured the fate of Christian Science Monitor’s Jill Carroll in being kidnapped. A January roadside bombing made ABC News’ Bob Woodruff the first U.S. anchor injured in a war zone. And equally serious wounds to CBS correspondent Kimberly Dozier last week again raised questions regarding whether the coverage is worth the cost. (Perhaps acknowledging this, a soldier graciously gave Dozier his purple heart last week.)

We spoke to several of those who have been most affected: the members of the press who risk their lives in Iraq. While their experiences differ, they remain united in one thing at least: a strong sense of duty to report this most vital of news stories.

John Berman: You keep asking yourself: Is it worth it? [But] there are 26 million Iraqis trying to build a country and more than 100,000 American troops there. It is one of few stories where you think you are performing a public service. But you have to evaluate the risks and reward.

James Blue: I’m amazed at what the U.S. and coalition involvement has done to Iraq, both good and bad. Recording and marking that is pretty high on the scale of stories that need to be told. It will affect the life my kids will have. The outcome, the anger, rage and ill will in Iraq will be in effect for ages to come.

Mimi Spillane: It is one of the most polarizing things happening on the planet right now, and the cost in human life and money to the American people needs to be illustrated as best we can.

Clark Bentson: I’d never go, or ask anyone else to go, to Fallujah or Ramadiyah without the U.S. military. We had a freelance cameraman a year ago killed in Fallujah, shot by U.S. military that didn’t understand what he was doing there. I helped organize and was here when Bob Woodruff was here and worked with the 4th Infantry Division to set that up, and we all know what happened there. You take all the precautions that you can, and you’re never safe. It is absolutely Russian roulette every time someone leaves the compound, and you have to make the decision if that interview or picture is really worth it. [Since ABC’s Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt were injured], every time we embed with the military now has to be approved [by ABC News executives]. Our management team who are not in the field now have a better understanding of the risks we take.

Richard Engel: What you can’t do is chase breaking news. If a helicopter crashes in Ramadiyah at 2 a.m., I can’t just get in a car and go there. The risks would be unbelievably high. But you can still talk to people; you can still get out.

[But] it’s difficult to report outside of Baghdad. Even the Iraqi locals not from the area are finding it difficult to go to unfamiliar territory. We couldn’t safely send an Iraqi crew out in Anwar province. They might not come back.

Bentson: Every time we start the approach into the Baghdad airport, I get a little knot in my stomach, and it doesn’t go away until I’m safely inside the bureau. It also happens when colleagues go out to cover what I ask them to. I don’t relax until they come back in the door. The most dangerous situation I’ve been in in Iraq is embedding in Fallujah and in Tikrit. There is an uneasy feeling you have when you’re out riding with the U.S. military, when you don’t know when someone could explode.

Berman: No training can prepare you for the first time you hear shots fired. During the invasion, I was embedded with the Marines, and I was with them during a fire fight. I was in Tikrit when an IED [improvised explosive device] went off 200 yards down the street. During my last trip, I went to Camp Victory, [where] you get dropped off in a parking lot and the military picks you up. A week later, there was a giant car bomb in that parking lot. Who’s to say that couldn’t happen when I was there?

Engel: My hotel rooms have been trashed by nearby bombs three times. I’ve had bullets in the windows. There have been near abduction attempts. I’ve been shot at. There’s a long list of things that have happened over three years, but, luckily, nothing more than anyone else who spends a lot of time here. And, luckily, less than others who have been kidnapped or killed. Anyone who’s a foreigner here is a commodity.

Lara Logan: One that stays with me is being ambushed on patrol with Marines in Ramadiyah. A Marine was shot right in front of me. He was shot in the leg, and it broke the bone, but he survived. It motivates you even more. When you see an American kid get shot and friends come to his aid and risk their lives, and see how they live day after day, you realize it is very hard for people far away to understand just how great are the sacrifices being made.

Michael Ware: I was once grabbed by an al-Zarqawi organization and readied for execution. [Covering a story in September 2004, Ware was pulled from his car. A gun was held to the back of his head, and, after the pin was pulled, a live grenade was held against him. After a 15-minute negotiation between opposing forces, he was released.] It happened in the short course of an afternoon, but it felt like a lifetime. Fortunately, I was able to get out of that situation and return. That took a long time to get over. [But] I stayed in-country.

Bentson: When I first drove in from Kuwait in April 2003, I went with one unarmed security guy. Then six of us drove ourselves in two vehicles, and we traversed the whole country. It wasn’t always open arms and kisses and roses, but we did not have any problem. Now, if I go to the airport, I am picked up by three heavily armed Western security people, two Iraqi security, in a convoy of three cars. I wear full body armor in the car just to get from the airport to my office. As the bureau chief, I also have to worry about compound security. The vast majority of my time is not editorial; it is on security.

Berman: In the early days, you could go out in the morning with a driver and find a story. Now a typical day is, you wake up and try to do some stories that aren’t dependent on things blowing up and that could air any given day. It takes days to set up the interviews. You have to find the people, and you have to make sure it is safe and check with security consultants. If you want to talk to the Iraqi government, there is incredible bureaucratic red tape. Stories that you can turn around in two hours in New York take two days in Baghdad. You try to get out once a day, even if it is just to the Green Zone, just to stay sane. But you are taking a risk every time you leave the compound.

Logan: The moment the city fell, our Iraqi cameraman who had been in hiding reappeared. We drove all over the city, going to the palaces, community buildings and all the hangouts of Saddam’s sons and secret-police headquarters, their underground vaults. But as Baghdad and this war have gotten worse, so has our freedom of movement. In the last two years, we haven’t been able to go without the American military. As foreigners, you just can’t. You don’t want to accept these parameters. That’s not how we function as journalists; that’s not how we do our jobs. But I also realize you have to stay alive to do your job.

Bentson: I was asked to respond to viewers’ questions online. Some said we don’t cover the good news, only the bad news, and I said there is good news, but it is happening in baby steps. If you compiled a list of things happening in Iraq overall, yes, there are good things happening, and, yes, there are areas of the country where there is not violence. But, saying that, I’ve been coming here for 10 years, during the first Gulf War and the Saddam era, and I’ve never seen the Iraqi people so despondent, particularly those in Baghdad, and upset about what is happening. People are scared more than ever. I want Iraq to be a peaceful, happy place, but I can’t say it is right now.

Blue: You really have to question some of the assumptions behind the criticism. What reporter do you know that would trek to Baghdad to report only from the Green Zone? We are curious people. We want to know things. If the security situation was such that we could really test what is happening, we would do it.

I don’t think it is our job to cheerlead what has to a large extent not necessarily gone according to plan. When we find things that are working, we report it.

Logan: How many people in Iraq have access to clean drinking water and electricity? Oil production is not even at pre-war levels. We always have to put it in context. Individuals are often disappointed by a story because, instead of saying how amazing and wonderful it is, when we put it in the broader context of reconstruction in Iraq, it is an abysmal failure. Then, people say we’re not telling the real story of how happy the villagers are. But there are 30 million people in this country, and how many of them are happy? The disconnect comes in the understanding of our jobs. We are not the information arm of the Army or U.S. government.

Ware: Clearly, it’s very hard to distill into one story the reality of life on the ground. Many of the soldiers I was with recently in Ramadiyah feel that people back home are turning off to an extent. They feel they’re fighting this war in a vacuum. That’s where you see the true strength of these men. They continue to do their jobs professionally and bravely.

Engel: We did a lot of work on an orphanage story. We did it on three sisters; both parents were killed early on in the war. They initially went to live with an uncle, who couldn’t afford to keep them and dumped them at this orphanage. It changed their personality, changed their outlook. The orphanage was remarkably well-run. It was clean. The girls were just starved for attention. They asked us to take them home and adopt them. We were able to tell a very simple story. They can’t go out very much. A lot of the time, when they hear gunshots, they still get scared.

Ware: It’s being able to watch history unfolding. It’s as though we’ve been given a front-row ticket to history. Take the battle of Tall ’Afar, on the Syrian border. That’s where the Iraqi and U.S. forces took back the city. I was one of two fortunate journalists to see that take place.

Bentson: The reconstruction of oil fields; the increasing religious authority in the south, which some feel is turning back women’s rights; issues of clean water in certain regions; the Kurdish separation and division in the north. All kinds of stories we can’t get to because of security issues.

Spillane: Everything from being able to follow a family around, being able to illustrate what it must be like for parents to send kids to school every day, not knowing if they’ll be kidnapped, shot or blown up on the way. There are things to tell around the country; it is just the difficulty of getting to them. The government is trying to ramp up tourism. There are wonderful things to see, but we can’t get to them. The things we used to do two years ago, we can’t do now.

Logan: It is utter deception to think that the South is peaceful and stable. There is a real worry in the South that militias have taken over local government, and the oil and water are critical resources that are beyond the central government right now. The British forces’ relationship with local authorities is in serious trouble. They’ve stopped joint patrols; there has been a drastic reduction in cooperation. A lot of people say the British are prisoners in their bases.

Bentson: I just got married last week. My wife knows this is what I do. That is not going to change, but it is a real discussion now. I have been arrested by Serbian police, I’ve been put in jail in Russia, I’ve been in a building that was bombed and collapsed in Sarajevo. I’ve probably used up much of my nine lives.

Blue: One morning, the Iraq [report] was that there were 30 dead in Baghdad. My [6-year-old] son said in a knowing way, “Another bad day in Baghdad,” then looked at me. He didn’t have to say any more than that. He knows I go there for my work. He can tell that’s part of the equation. He’s seen my Kevlar, the fatigues, the things I have to wear on an embed. On the one hand, he thinks it’s exciting; he thinks I work for the U.S. Army. On the other, I think he knows that there’s danger as well.

Spillane: I am due back in July, and I am already starting to think about it. No one’s family is happy about it. Mine keeps saying, well, why do you have to keep going back? Because it is my job and this is a story that has to continue to be told. This week, we are all feeling a bit of anger. These people that do these things—the bombings, the suicide bombings, beheadings, the kidnappings—are not going to force us out of the story.

Berman: It is hard to come back from Iraq and then do a story about Brad and Angelina’s baby. When I was in Iraq, I heard in the background about Barbaro, the horse that was injured. It is a story I probably would be assigned. In Iraq, I couldn’t make myself give a crap about it at all. A horse breaking his leg doesn’t measure up.

Engel: It’s a privilege to be able to see these extreme situations. That can open your eyes and let you see the world in a different way. I wouldn’t want any other job.

It’s horrible with the group from CBS, and we’re doing everything we can to support them. But we are stressing in our reports that it’s not all about us. There are relatively few reporters who have been killed and injured here compared to the troops and all the Iraqis who have been destroyed in all of this. We shouldn’t allow something that happened to us to overshadow that.