Thomas Marshall, B.A., B.A., L.L.B., (L.L.M. Candidate, University of Ottawa)
Killing the Messenger: Journalists at Risk in Modern Warfare. By Herbert N. Foerstel. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishing, 2006. 160 pages.
There is ‘something different about Iraq’ - at least that is a perception anyone would be forgiven for maintaining. This might be particularly so for journalists. To everyone who is aware of the present issues in Iraq, a recurring and pressing one is the acute vulnerability of these ‘messengers in the field.’ Whereas once upon a time, journalists could, and did, freely roam between friend and foe, gathering the facts along the way, today one is more likely to find a war correspondent pinned down behind the ‘Green Zone’, or huddled inside the safety of a bombproof Hummer Jeep. This is because journalists – our messengers in the field – have themselves increasingly become objects of attack. Is this a new phenomenon? That question is debatable. What is not debatable, however, is that journalists in Iraq (and in many other war zones) are receiving unprecedented levels of violent attention from insurgents, gangs, militias, and many others. In this way, contemporary armed conflict is different – and dangerously so.
Killing the Messenger , by Herbert Foerstel, is a book about this difference. Foerstel, former head of Branch Libraries at the University of Maryland, advocate and author of books on free press issues, has undertaken the great task of bringing attention to the current plight of journalists in conflict zones.
At just 160 pages, Killing the Messenger is a short – but punchy – read. The author has painstakingly packed into his book an array of information concerning journalists in conflict zones – everything from whimsical (and fun) personal tales of adventure, to more philosophical and pressing issues like, “Why Do They Hate Us?”
In Chapter 1, “The Dangers of Reporting Conventional War,” Foerstel introduces the reader to the real-life dangers, in past wars, of correspondents. Foerstel instantly engages the reader through a series of short interview-style passages recounting the personal war stories of legendary war correspondents like Martha Gellhorn, Ernie Pyle, and Walter Cronkite. In discussing the conventional dangers of working in war zones, for example, Foerstel writes of Martha Gellhorn, “(she) would walk along, hearing the normal city sounds of streetcars and automobiles, and suddenly would come the huge booming of a falling shell. There was no place to run…because how would you know that the next shell would not be behind you, or ahead, or to the left or right?” That bomb, of which Gellhorn spoke, landed not far from where she had been just minutes before, in the middle of a crowded market. She later learned that, “[a] small piece of twisted steel, hot and very sharp” had sprung from the shell’s explosive power catching a small child in the throat. This, to Martha Gellhorn, was a powerful example of the dangers journalists face daily in order to bring information back from the front. It was a danger she could live with.
There was however, in those days, and according to Foerstel, more to be feared than falling bombs and flying metal. Ernie Pyle, for example, the great World War II correspondent, while advancing with American troops in the Pacific, was killed by a ‘lucky’ shot taken by a hidden Japanese sniper – an unexpected and untimely death for a journalist who had survived so many other dangerous encounters. Just months before his death, Foerstel tells, Pyle had been in what seemed an even greater danger from friendly fire. Allied Forces had been bombing Saint Lo, France, where Pyle was stationed – and instead of advancing in the opposite direction, Pyle noted that allied bombs and machine gun fire were in fact coming in his direction. Of this close encounter, Pyle later wrote; “as we watched, there crept into our consciousness a realization that windrows of exploding bombs were easing back towards us, flight by flight, instead of gradually forward, as the plan called for…An incredible panic comes over you at such times…it was bombs by the hundreds, hurtling down through the air above us.”
Perhaps most exciting for readers is Foerstel’s passage about Walter Cronkite. Cronkite, one of the most famous U.S. reporters of our age, is similarly nostalgic, and yet reserved, about the dangers past wars posed for journalists in ‘the zone’. Cronkite was working as a writer for the United Press in New York City when the 1941 tragedy of Pearl Harbor struck a cord deep within him. Deciding he wanted to “get into the war as a correspondent” Cronkite set off for the European war theatre with little idea of what lay before him. Soon, he became a member of the ‘fabled’ ‘The Writing Sixty-Ninth ’ - and a man looking for action. Cronkite states of his experiences: “We were out there with the guys (soldiers) in the foxholes, in the airplanes, in the parachute jump groups, in the gliders. It was entirely voluntary, and the frequent question asked by GIs was, ‘what the hell are you doing here?’”
Of course, as Foerstel suggests throughout the first chapter, these were the old dangers encountered by young men using new technologies like real-time radio communications. To them, and to many other brave reporters, this combination of ‘old’ and ‘new’ made the war zone both a familiar and exciting place – and often translated into fame and notoriety. The risks were calculable, and knowable – as much as they could be to anyone in a battlefield – and that was real comfort to the messenger in the field.
The new face of war, on the other hand, is anything but calculable. In Chapter 2, “Journalism and the New Face of War” , Foerstel takes the reader on a graphic journey that illustrates just how much things have changed for journalists engaged in conflict zones such as the Middle East. “Gone is the assumption”, says Foerstel, “that correspondents are more valuable as witnesses than as targets…[T]o insurgents [in Iraq] foreign journalists are just another element of an occupying force.” Terry Anderson, a life-long journalist, who was until recently in Iraq, tells the author that, “today journalists are targeted. During most of the war in Lebanon you could go and talk to anyone, including the most radical groups…I would go and talk to just about anyone during those days.” Today, both Anderson and Foerstel assert that, “it is the purposeful targeting of journalists by combatants that is new.” As the author suggests, “insurgents have (even) begun coordinated attacks on the hotels housing journalists.” This has, in turn led to a situation whereby the entire “way…of covering [wars has] changed.”
Chapter 2 is also the location where, for those who enjoy or can utilize such figures, the author provides shocking statistics about journalists in contemporary war zones. For example, Foerstel writes that by 2004 there were some six thousand journalists registered in the Baghdad Green Zone. And at the time of publication the most recent figures for journalist deaths in Iraq amounted to 46 reporters killed in 19 months of fighting.
In the third chapter the author recounts the more modern tails of ‘near misses’ by journalists in the field. Here the reader finds some fascinating stories of journalists who have been either held in captivity, tortured, abducted, abused, or worse. One fascinating story is of the reporter Jerry Levin who, for over a decade, was held in solitary confinement in Lebanon. This is where Foerstel’s writing style is particularly vivid and effective in keeping readers ‘hooked’. Of Levin’s captivity, Foerstel writes, “by April 1984, Jerry remained in the same tiny room…chained night and day to a radiator. Because the chain was too short to allow him to stand, his leg muscles had begun to cramp horribly. The bare room had a single window, painted over.” Foerstel’s descriptive writing almost makes the reader shiver with Jerry Levin in that dank, stale, room - and his sheer writing talent makes it is hard for anyone to put the book down.
In the fourth chapter, “Why Do They Hate Us?” , Herbert Foerstel tries to address some of the possible reasons for the changes in warfare as they relate to journalists. His subtitles throughout the chapter help illustrate some of the more relevant issues putting journalists at risk: “Real-Time (in the field) Reporting”: “Cash is a Dangerous Magnet”: “Loss of Objectivity”: “Journalists as Intelligence Agents”: and “Death From Friendly Fire”. Perhaps the most revealing of these sub-themes is “journalists as Intelligence Agents.” This is because unlike the other issues raised in Chapter 4, this one is referred to at other times throughout the book. In Chapter 3 for instance, the reader learns that every time a western journalist is held captive, one of the first questions that will be asked of him or her is, “are you a CIA spy?” To most this would seem a rather odd, almost funny thing to ask someone who is clearly a journalist carrying a pad and pen in hand. But, as Foerstel suggests, this is a deadly serious question – and a problem that the United States government may have inadvertently created for ‘real’ journalists. As he says, “In February 1996, when the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) [met, they recommended to] ‘resume sending spies posing as journalists’” into the field. Jerry Levin, who was held for over ten years (see above), states that “no [retraction] could help at this point…no matter what we say…our history [as a country fielding spies posing as journalists] speaks for itself.” Given that an enemy’s suspicions may be well founded, it seems hard, it is suggested, that anyone, anywhere, would want to talk to reporters in the field. It may be more ‘safe,’ – the logic goes - from an insurgent’s point of view, to see journalists as potential threats, and therefore targets, that need to be eliminated, rather than take a chance.
In the final chapter of the book, Foerstel tries to draw all his ‘strings’ together to shed some light on what this all means for the quality of news gathering today. With journalists “embedding” for protection and with the death toll rising, the author asks, ‘are we getting accurate information – are we getting the truth?’ While the latter is a debatable point at any time, the former, according to Foerstel, is not. The new face of war has undoubtedly impacted the quality of journalism in the field. As he suggests, with journalists cowering in the ‘Green Zone’, “Washington, London, and Alawi [are producing] a picture of Iraq which is a fantasy.” Journalists, and indeed whole news agencies, have resorted to hiring local staff as stand-in reporters. This results, no doubt, in a lack of control over what questions are asked, and with whom the local ‘reporter’ speaks. Are we getting good coverage? No one knows. And therein lies the problem.
As noted above, this book is a spry 160 pages – but it is packed with stories and information that keep the reader interested the entire way through, from cover to cover.
If there is one criticism to be made about this book, it might be that more could have been done with the material amassed. While Herbert Foerstel is good at convincing the reader that there really is a “new face” to war, he offers few practical solutions to address the situation. One would have thought that he might have suggested instituting (perhaps through an international legal regime promoted by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)) increased protections for journalists engaged in conflict zones. While it is clear that Foerstel is not an international humanitarian lawyer, it is clear that he is well aware of the current protections afforded by certain legal regimes. It is also clear that he is aware that these regimes seem insufficient – yet he leaves the reader wondering why he proffers no alternative solutions to address this apparent gap. Given his obvious experience in this area, this is a somewhat disappointing end result.
With that said, however, it must be stated that Foerstel is clearly a gifted and evocative writer. Anyone who is interested in the current War on Terror, or in international affairs generally, should read Killing the Messenger. Academics too should not shy away from this book. While the writing is sporty, and tends towards anecdotalism in some parts, there is something to be taken from this book for all. Also, international humanitarian lawyers should note that, while not specifically addressed in the book, the issue of protection regimes for journalists and war correspondents does crop up within the text and is addressed, as a matter of necessity, in the writing.
Thomas D Marshall
