Embedded reporter comes away from front lines torn

Boston Globe | 4/22/2003 | Scott Bernard Nelson

[LavaDog]

BAGHDAD - A funny thing happened on the way home from Iraq this week: I found myself scoffing at the rear-echelon soldiers for how little they knew about war. About the real war, the one I had experienced, with enemy AK-47 rounds buzzing over your head and the smell of burning flesh and metal filling your nose. About enduring four weeks on the front lines, sleeping in open foxholes you'd dug to avoid shrapnel in the night. About looking terrible, smelling worse, and seeing people die.

Where were the headquarters Johnnies then, I smugly asked myself this week as I walked the former headquarters of the Iraqi secret police, now home to the US Marines' First Division. Probably drinking coffee, eating hot meals, sleeping on cots in canvas tents, and moving arrows around on wall maps.

My line of reasoning was patently ridiculous, of course. The men and women who wear the uniforms are professional soldiers; I'm a professional reporter. And not a particularly brave one, at that. Before the war, I wrote about bank presidents and insurance contracts and mutual funds for The Boston Globe's business section.

Look up Stockholm syndrome in the dictionary, though, and you'll get a pretty good idea about what I was going through in those first hours away from combat. I had lived so closely for so long under such extreme circumstances with the Second Battalion, 11th Marines, fighting their way through Iraq, that I began to think and feel like a Marine.

Therein lies the quandary for the hundreds of ''embedded'' reporters and photographers who covered Gulf War II and the editors who paid them to go. Did we sell our souls as journalists for access to the death and destruction at the front lines?

As part of a first-ever war correspondents' partnership between the Department of Defense and media organizations, we reporters signed contracts limiting what we would say and when we would say it. In return, for the duration of the conflict the Pentagon let us eat, sleep, travel - and sometimes die - with the military forces we covered. (More than a dozen journalists died in combat.)

Over time, it was inevitable that we would begin to view at least some things from the grunt's perspective.

When the battalion I'd been living with drove into an ambush April 6 north of Iraq's capital, I did more than just empathize with the soldiers. I helped them in the battle.

Like the other troops behind us in a convoy of Humvees, seven-ton trucks, and armored reconnaissance vehicles that day, I saw muzzle flashes coming from a window as we passed a squat building about 60 yards away. Several bullets skipped off the road in front of us, but nobody else in my vehicle saw where they were coming from.

I yelled to the first sergeant in the gun turret above my head, telling him which building and which window the gunfire came from. He wasn't sure to where I was referring, so I yelled again, leaning out of the window to point out the location to our right. That's all he needed. He fired nearly 100 rounds out of his .50-caliber heavy machine gun into the building as we rumbled by. The muzzle flashes ended.

We later learned that the gunman inside that building was among four members of Saddam Hussein's fedayeen militia who died in that failed ambush. No Marines were hurt.

The ambush provides the most dramatic, although hardly the only, example of how I came to identify with the Marines over time. Other embedded journalists, including my Globe colleague Brian MacQuarrie and Jules Critten den of the Boston Herald, told similar stories of their time on the front lines. Whether I acted out of self-preservation that day or because of an affinity with the soldiers I was covering hardly matters. The question is whether the coverage I provided during the war was tainted as a result.

I'd like to believe it wasn't. I'd like to believe mine was one of many diverse voices The Boston Globe used to tell the story of this war, and that good editors back home kept everything balanced and in perspective. I'd like to believe that, if nothing else, all of the embedded reporters added something worthwhile to the big-picture stories other journalists were writing from newsrooms, the Pentagon, and the armed forces central command in Qatar.

In the end, it will be for someone else to decide. Big thinkers in both the media and the military will at some point begin to analyze whether the embedding program worked, from their various perspectives.

Like the soldiers who fought on the front lines of this war, I just want to go home at this point to spend time with my family and think about something else for a while. We'll have to leave it to those rear-echelon guys to figure out how and when future wars will be fought - and covered.

[shhrubbery!]

This young man's rather full of himself, isn't he?

He sure is. Sounds like an obnoxious snot, but at least he's reached a little higher plane than the one he occupied before his war experience.

[_Jim]

Look up Stockholm syndrome ... I had lived so closely for so long under such extreme circumstances with the Second Battalion, 11th Marines, fighting their way through Iraq, that I began to think and feel like a Marine.

Stockholm Syndrome involves being held by captors and adopting their 'way of thinking' ...

[DannyTN]

"We mainly heard about the two Americans, Michael Kelly and David Bloom. There were a number of journalists of other nationalities, mainly European or Aussie, who were killed. "

But were they embedded with soldiers or freelancers? A reporter who went into Iraq without the protection of the military is brave but perhaps a little stupid also. Of course they probably didn't know that Saddam had been torturing CNN's staff for years.

[Blood of Tyrants]

He was honest with himself and admited that he did not have the personal bravery that being in or near combat required. It also appeared that he never bonded with he Marines he was with. That bond will allow you to do things that are ordinarily beyond your courage and ability because you can draw from your brothers' strength and courage to achieve the impossible.

[mabelkitty]

Liberal reporter trying to get "street cred" for the next time he trashes the conservatives.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Yes, about a dozen. Don't forget that you have to count the cameramen and techies that got killed, too.

[Feckless]

Part of it is his being a journalist. Part of it is being shot at and living to tell about it.

[Beck_isright]

"Like the soldiers who fought on the front lines of this war, I just want to go home at this point to spend time with my family and think about something else for a while."

That's what being a professional soldier is all about. You do your job and when the time comes after the bleep is over with, you just want to unwind. Maybe now they will hold back their "baby-killer" mentality of the 60's era of journalists, like Ted Koppel.

[theDentist]

Did we sell our souls as journalists for access...?

They do it all the time. It was becoming a joke in the Clinton WH.

[txzman]

This young man's rather full of himself, isn't he?

My thought's exactly.

[r9etb]

This young man's rather full of himself, isn't he?

Yes, he is. The fellow's problem is that he sees himself as an "Authority on The War," when in fact his role was to report on the battles, and the men who fought them.

Maybe he'll grow out of it....

[Celtjew Libertarian]

Good question.

I did a quick search on Google (< 2 minutes) and found "Spanish journalist Julio Anguita Parrado from the daily newspaper El Mundo and German reporter Christian Liebig from the weekly magazine Focus" were killed while embedded with the 3rd Infintry. ITN's (British, I think) Terry Lloyd was killed, but was not embedded.

[BlessedBeGod]

I did more than just empathize with the soldiers. I helped them in the battle.

Congratulations, you've turned into a real American.

[WOSG]

The fact that he is even asking about 'tainting' by being with US soldiers shows that the journalistic professional has their heads up you-know-where so long, they have lost all perspective on common sense.

The news is about telling us *what is going on* - I dont WANT a "balance" between the world-view of Saddam and his killers and our Marines - I want the story! How are OUR boys doing? Are WE winning or not? Good jounralists dont lose their biases, they just manage to NOT let biases get in they of telling us the FACTS.

This lunacy of 'balance' between the US and some foreign dictatorship really gets my goat. We all know how UNBALANCED the Boston Globe is when it comes to pro-life vs pro-choice, or conservative vs liberal (they wear their bias on the front pages), so why is this 'balance' question so pertinent only when we ar fighting a war with lives at stake? Why are they desperately fighting do the RIGHT thing, and simply report in a way that is supportive of our country? Is it a hidden agenda opposing the war?
Or simply Liberal obtuseness posing in the old "we are objective" garb?

This is why the journalistic community is wrong - and knows it - when they bleat about an 'objective press'. There is no such thing, never was and never will be. All media has a viewpoint. But given a choice between FoxNews cheerleading vs BBC gloom-and-doom spreading, i'll pick the one on *our* side - which btw happened to give the more accurate picture of how the war was really progressing.

This guy did a good job as an embed reporter, and is second-guessing himself due to destructive things he's been 'taught' in journalism school. LOL!

[r9etb]

Stockholm syndrome -- the situation where a hostage actually starts hoping the Bad Guys win. This reporter (a BUSINESS reporter for the Globe!) seems to feel that he was a victim of this syndrome when he started feeling warm thoughts toward American soldiers.

IF you grant his preconceptions -- that his embeddedness makes him an Authority on the War, and that "Journalists Aren't Supposed to Differentiate Between Good And Bad" -- then you'd have to agree with his comment.

The guy got to do an amazing thing -- but as I said above, he was reporting on men and battles, not The War. Once he realizes that, his angst should dissipate.

[johnb838]

mainly European or Aussie, who were killed.

Not to mention Arab -- who were the ones killed at the Palestine? Then there were the non-embeds who thought their press credentials would save their lives.

[CaptRon]

Did we sell our souls as journalists for access to the death and destruction at the front lines?

In all of the debate about this (reporters calling them "our" troops, reporters wearing American flag pins) the underlying assumption seems to be that unless you are reporting negatively about the U.S. you aren't being "objective".

Maybe it's just me.

[WOSG]

I dont think any embed reporter died from combat.

The deaths of reporters I know of: A few in baghdad (remember US firing on palestine hotel), Al Jazeera guy killed by a bomb, and then various freelancers caught in crossfire (couple near basra), and a couple killed stepping on landmines. Finally one killed by fedayeen/AlAnsar suicide bomber.

Michael Kelly died in a car accident, Bloom from an embolism (??).

All things being equal, being surrounded by marines is probably the safest way to report on the war.

[cake_crumb]

It's not quite as great and blunt as 'Screw them. They weren't there,' the immortal (I hope) answer to the rear-echelon intel-LEKKKK-TUUUUUUULE's back home who will ask whether front line reporting is somehow tainted by the soldiers the front-line reporters are traveling with in order to report from the front lines....

But it's good nonetheless. Welcome to the real world, Mr. Nelson.

[Consort]

These newly enlightened embeds are being accused of "succumbing to the military mystique" by their liberal elite colleagues. For many liberal embeds, this was their first exposure to real Americans and it will have an long-term impact.