Greg McLaughlin - The War Correspondent

The War Correspondent

Fully updated second edition

Greg McLaughlin

First published 2002
Fully updated second edition first published 2016 by Pluto Press 345
Archway Road, London N6 5AA

www.plutobooks.com

Copyright Greg McLaughlin 2002, 2016

The right of Greg McLaughlin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 0 7453 3319 9 Hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 3318 2 Paperback
ISBN 978 1 7837 1758 3 PDF eBook
ISBN 978 1 7837 1760 6 Kindle eBook
ISBN 978 1 7837 1759 0 EPUB eBook

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.

Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England

Simultaneously printed in the European Union and United States of America

Acknowledgements

Warm thanks and appreciation to the people who helped me see this book through to completion and into production:

At Pluto Press, commissioning editor, David Castle, for his priceless patience and wise counsel; managing editor, Robert Webb, for his expert supervision of the books production; copy editor Nuala Ernest for her guidance and advice; and Melanie Patrick and her colleagues, Emily Orford, Kieran OConnor and Chris Browne, for their superb cover design and promotional work.

At the University of Ulster, my good friends and colleagues Martin McLoone, for his constructive comments on early drafts, and Stephen Baker for his valuable review of the final manuscript; Head of School, Colm Murphy, for giving me time and space when most needed; and Carol, Sally and Lisa for their amazing admin support and for keeping me grounded.

Thanks once again to the journalists who provided such great interview material for the first edition: Christiane Amanpour, Martin Bell, Victoria Brittain, Robert Fisk, Nik Gowing, Lindsey Hilsum, Mark Laity, Jacques Leslie, Jake Lynch, Mike Nicholson, Maggie OKane, John Pilger, John Simpson, Alex Thomson and Mark Urban; and to NATO press secretary, Jamie Shea. Their insights and arguments have stood the test of time so many years later. Special thanks also to Mary Dejevsky and Alex Thomson for giving me such rich interview material for this new edition.

On the home front, the love and faith of my mum, brothers and sisters was as crucial as always. But I dont think I would have made it to the end without Sue and her endless love, belief and support.

Mile buochas do gach duine.

Abbreviations

Introduction

William Howard Russell is widely regarded as one of the first war correspondents to write for a commercial daily newspaper. He became famous for his dispatches from the Crimean War, 1854-56, for The Times and he seemed to appreciate that he was blazing a trail for a new breed of journalist, calling himself the miserable parent of a luckless tribe. Charles Page, an American contemporary of Russell, also seemed to see the miserable and luckless side of the job. In an article entitled An Invalids WhimsThe Miseries of Correspondents, he compared himself and his colleagues to invalids, proverbially querulous and unreasonable. They may fret and scold, abuse their toast and their friends, scatter their maledictions and their furniture (1898, p. 143). The war correspondent, he warned, will inevitably write things that will offend somebody. Somebody will say harsh things of you, and perhaps seek you out to destroy you. Never mind. Such is a part of the misery of correspondents (ibid., p. 146). During the Anglo Zulu war of 1879, a Special Correspon-dent for the Natal Witness (19 June) complained that [To] enthusiastic persons, the position of War Correspondent may be a very pretty one but a little practical experience of such work will rub off a great deal of its gloss (Laband and Knight, 1996, p. v).

More recent and contemporary accounts suggest these impressions have changed little since the nineteenth century. In Dispatches, Michael Herr recalls some of the things political commentators and newspaper columnists called him and his colleagues during the course of the Vietnam War. They were called thrill freaks, death-wishers, wound-seekers, war-lovers, hero-worshippers, closet queens, dope addicts, low-grade alcoholics, ghouls, communists [and] seditionists [] (1978, p. 183). With the growth of media journalism in the 1990s, the media reporting the media, war reporting has become a story itself. Coverage of war is bound to feature articles and TV programmes looking at various issues that reporters face in the war zone. As the first bombs fell on Afghanistan

There are other impressions and depictions of the war reporter in the wider culture. The movies usually depict journalists as hard-boiled, cynical or dissolute scoundrels; but in films such as Salvador (dir. Oliver Stone, 1983) or The Killing Fields (dir. Roland Joff, 1984), the war correspondent is depicted as a hero, risking life and limb to report the story and telling truth to power (McNair, 2010; pp. 57-133). In Evelyn Waughs newspaper satire, Scoop (1938), anti-hero William Boot of the Beast, goes off to report a war in the fictional African country of Ishmaelia, with no experience and for no other reason than he has been sent there by his editor, Lord Copper. In a situation that many experienced war correspondents today would recognise as an example of parachute journalism, Boot recalls his big moment with blas wonderment and naivety:

Two months ago, when Lord Copper summoned me from my desk in the