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Bang Bang Abroad:
Following It, Reporting It, Writing It
Spring 2018, J298, Mondays 2 – 5 pm, North Gate 106
Mark Danner
It’s a dirty little secret that few things are more fascinating, more absorbing, more sheer fun than covering a war. Conflict, as a statesman overthrown in a coup once said, strips bare the social body, the better to see what lies beneath the skin. In this seminar, we’ll delve into the intricacies of covering political conflict: wars, coups, revolutions. We will study some of the classics of foreign and conflict reporting, discuss the fundamentals of international affairs and workshop some student articles, including masters projects. By the by we will track and analyze the peculiarities of US foreign policy as it evolves during the Trump era – and the exceptional demands this places on the correspondent in the field.
Class Requirements This seminar will be a mixture of lectures and discussion, backed up by a large amount of reading and some writing. The most important requirements are that students
*Attend all class sessions
*Keep up with reading and writing assignments
*Participate in discussions
*Deliver at least one presentation to the class
A student’s record of attendance and participation in class discussion, together with the quality of his or her writing, will determine the success of our class and contribute the better part of the grade.
Reading Our primary reading will draw largely from a number of books of foreign reporting, classic and contemporary. They are listed below. I strongly urge you to obtain these books in your own copies and in the edition specified, either from local bookstores or from online suppliers, so that you will be able to highlight and annotate them.
Tracking the News A significant part of the class will be given over to tracking and discussing foreign reporting and US foreign policy as it emerges during the Trump administration. Following these events closely in various publications, beginning with the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other newspapers and websites, and getting to know the work of the leading contemporary foreign correspondents, is essential. Even if you are not a habitual newspaper reader, you must become one for this class.
Presentations Each student will make a presentation in class on the work of a given foreign reporter, ideally one working now. I encourage you to get in touch with the correspondent and conduct an interview. The class will read at least one major work by the correspondent. Use of multimedia and social media during the presentation is strongly encouraged.
Writing Depending on response to the reading there may be an occasional in-class quiz. To bolster the clarity and vigor of your English prose, I strongly suggest studying two works: George Orwell’s essay, “Politics and the English Language,” which can be readily found on the web, and Strunk and White’s little manual, The Elements of Style.
Office Hours I will count on meeting with each of you individually at least once during the course of the term. We will make these appointments on an ad hoc basis. I am best reached via email, at mark@markdanner.com. My office is North Gate 32. My writing, speaking and other information can be found at my website, markdanner.com.
Attendance 25 percent
Participation 25 percent
Presentation 25 percent
Writing 25 percent
Those who miss multiple classes will not do well in this course.
Films. During the semester we should be screening a number of films that bear closely on the subject of covering wars. We will hope to find an evening that works for everyone.
Tentative Syllabus
January 22 – Introduction. The Classroom and the Battlefield. The Current State of Foreign Wars. Wars Coups Revolutions. What’s Been Written. Writing With Your Ears. Long and Medium Form. An Approach to a Format. Long, Medium, Short. Presentations: Getting to Know a Correspondent and Her Work. Work Shop.
January 29 – Mark Danner, The Massacre at El Mozote: A Parable of the Cold War (Vintage, 1994)
February 5 -- Anjan Sundaram, Stringer: A Reporter’s Journey in the Congo (Anchor, 2014)
February 12 – John Reed, Ten Days That Shook the World (Penguin, 2007 [1919])
February 19 – President’s Day (No Class)
February 26 – George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (Harcourt, 1980 [1938])
March 5 – Martha Gellhorn, The Face of War (Atlantic, 1994 [1959])
March 12 -- John Hersey, Hiroshima (1985 [1946])
March 19 – Michael Herr, Dispatches (Vintage, 1991 [1977])
March 26 – Spring Break (No Class)
April 2 – Ryszard Kapuscinski, Shah of Shahs (Vintage, 1992 [1982])
April 9 – Edward N. Luttwak, Coup d’Etat: A Practical Handbook (Harvard, 2016 [1968])
April 16 -- Dexter Filkins, The Forever War (Vintage, 2009)
April 23 – Jeremy Scahill, Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield (Nation Books, 2013)
April 30 -- Sebastian Junger, War (Twelve, 2011)
May 7 – Janine di Giovanni, The Morning They Came For Us: Dispatches from Syria (Liveright, 2017)
Final Assignment Schedule
January 22 – Introduction. The Classroom and the Battlefield. The Current State of Foreign Wars. Wars Coups Revolutions. What’s Been Written. Writing With Your Ears. Long and Medium Form. An Approach to a Format. Long, Medium, Short. Presentations: Getting to Know a Correspondent and Her Work. Work Shop.
January 29 – Mark Danner, The Massacre at El Mozote: A Parable of the Cold War (Vintage, 1994)
February 5 -- Anjan Sundaram, Stringer: A Reporter’s Journey in the Congo (Anchor, 2014)
February 12 – John Reed, Ten Days That Shook the World (Penguin, 2007 [1919])
February 19 – President’s Day (No Class)
February 26 – Marie Colvin, On the Front Line: The Collected Journalism of Marie Colvin (HarperPress, 2012); Paul Conroy, Under the Wire: Marie Colvin’s Final Assignment (Hachette, 2013)
March 5 – Martha Gellhorn, The Face of War (Atlantic, 1994 [1959])
March 12 -- Michael Herr, Dispatches (Vintage, 1991 [1977])
March 19 – George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (Harcourt, 1980 [1938])
March 26 – Spring Break (No Class)
April 2 – Ryszard Kapuscinski, Shah of Shahs (Vintage, 1992 [1982])
April 9 – Dexter Filkins, The Forever War (Vintage, 2009)
April 16 -- Sebastian Junger, War (Twelve, 2011)
April 23 – Janine di Giovanni, The Morning They Came For Us: Dispatches from Syria (Liveright, 2017)
April 30 -- Rosa Brooks, How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon (Simon & Schuster, 2017)
Annotated Syllabus
January 22 – Introduction. The Classroom and the Battlefield. The Current State of Foreign Wars. Wars Coups Revolutions. What’s Been Written. Writing With Your Ears. Long and Medium Form. An Approach to a Format. Long, Medium, Short. Presentations: Getting to Know a Correspondent and Her Work. Work Shop.
Class Notes
Overview of Syllabus
Read foreign sections of NYT, WaPo, Foreign Policy, Politico
Weekly readings: be prepared to pick a passage to read aloud and say why
Can be a pivot point or example of something good
Presentations: bring a writer and a piece that is fantastic (length of a magazine article) to the class and have it discussed [ex. reported essay]
Recommended films: “Battle of Algiers” and “Only the Dead”
Recommended reads: “Gibraltar” by Ian Jack (Granta); Storm of Steel by Ernst Junger
Discussion - “Delusions of Baghdad” by Mark Danner
Lede of a piece is everything; there are no rules about ledes, you can start wherever you want
This piece begins “in medias res” ? fruitful because it creates suspense
Suspense ? sense in which you’re waiting for something to happen
Entire piece consists of combinations of impression of what’s happening on the street and interviews
List of bombings on page 383 is example of how to analyze a series of seemingly random attacks
Intel people tend to provide this type of analysis; ergo, the source is in intelligence informant
Overall goal of piece: to explain why what’s happening is happening
Additionally: sometimes one needs to get far away from a physical place in order to actually see what is happening in a region
January 29 – Mark Danner, The Massacre at El Mozote: A Parable of the Cold War (Vintage, 1994)
Abner Hauge presented Arundhati Roy’s “Walking with the Comrades.” (Penguin Books, 2011)
Class Notes
Afghanistan News
Q-head – analytic piece
Why NYT & WaPo at the same time? Provide context for the situation
NYT: As American-led forces have escalated in response to Taliban gains, they have unintentionally pushed the Taliban toward grislier violence. Airstrikes have forced the Taliban to lie low in rural areas, where they prefer to operate, seizing territory and extorting from locals.
The Massacre at El Mozote
Reporting on this Story
Arundhati Roy Article
February 5 -- Anjan Sundaram, Stringer: A Reporter’s Journey in the Congo (Anchor, 2014)
Padmini Parthasarathy presented excerpts from Burning Country by Leila Al-Shami and Robin Yassin-Kassab (Pluto Press, 2016)
Class Notes
Read front page article of NYT: To Counter Russia, US Signals Nuclear Arms are Back in a Big Way
START Treaty went into effect 2/5/18
What was Obama’s ideology regarding nuclear weapons? – he was pushing agenda of utopian disarmament; negotiated START Treaty w/ Russia within his first year in office
Stringer
An outlier on the reading list, this book was assigned because:
Burning Country excerpts
Mark Danner presented "Beyond the Mountains," from Stripping the Body Part I, pp 3 - 46. (Nation Books, 2009)
Suggested Reading: “Discovering John Reed” by Howard Zinn from Howard Zinn on History (Seven Stories Press, 2000)
Class Notes
Covering revolutions are both fun and unpredictable because suddenly the world changes as all the things you took for granted becomes changeable – who has money? who has power?
Ten Days that Shook the World by John Reed
Tone: immediacy
Book is about a guy (the author) going around the city trying to figure everything out
Note: the author didn’t speak Russian & had a translator – therefore, many of the interviews were with people who spoke French; this creates an inherent bias about who you’re speaking to
When there is a political revolution/violence, you can see the different political forces at play when you can’t during times of peace – who’s strong? who’s weak? what might happen next?
Not a perfect book – very messy book & hastily written so some things are wrong
Style:
What is in the author’s favor? – it’s in first hand; has a quality of breathlessness to it
Advantage: ability to convey excitement of what’s going on
Manages to generate a good deal of suspense
Has a driving/propulsive power – from a lack of sleep
The book was written months later but maintains a constant sense that something is about to happen
Difference between a historical and a journalistic account
Historical account assumes something is about to happen – Reed shows anything could happen in his account
Pacing in book seems deliberate, especially in the transitions between chapters – ellipses are omnipresent
Has a way of placing the reader in the scene and bringing the reader along
Constantly interviews people on the street
Introduces a lot of turning points when you don’t know what’s going to happen
Much of what is happening politically is hard to depict (i.e. sessions that go on for 8 hours)
Shape of the book – chronological order; day by day
This writing reflects a “first draft of history”
Reed wanted to get down what he believes are the important speeches of history
Criticism: there is too much of the speeches
Author’s POV: pro-Bolshevik; wants workers and peasants to hold power
Far from an objective account
Believes the Bolsheviks should win but doesn’t know how it’s going to happen and keeps being educated by people on the street – therefore, his information is incomplete
In Russia, there had been a revolving door of power/political revolution, so now there needs to be a social revolution
This is about contesting who the power belongs to
Political revolution: took power from the traditional aristocracy (March Revolution/French Revolution) for representational democracy
“Power fell onto the street” – unclear who has the power at the beginning of the book
Power is different from legitimacy
WWI factored into this revolution – where the weapons and weary soldiers came from
Revolution wouldn’t have happened with the war – WWI was a catastrophe from Russian perspective and people were starving on the homefront
Laid ground for revolution and coercive power (arms) to be in play – soldiers/deserters were coming back from the war (at first, they were supporters of the czar)
Pg. 98: “Trotsky coldly…”
Following the eyesight, several dependent & descriptive clauses
Descriptive paragraph giving a lot of exposition about the current situation
Common technique of his – what is looks like/smells like and then a joke
Pg. 105
Combining narrative with description; shows what’s in front of his face while he moves; doesn’t stop the narrative; followed by a key moment
The most basic things are in question and he shows is by telling
Very good about pointing out moments of absurdity (i.e. Winter Palace scenes) – could not have pulled this narrative off without a sense of humor
Pg. 110-111
Idea of reporting at an unsettled time – you can walk into places you clearly shouldn’t be and no authority is present – beneficial to reporter (and dangerous)
About the author
Reed was raised in a wealthy family
Has contempt for the bourgeoisie & supports the working class
He is playing at idea of revolution
He’s not a worker – became a leftist/Communist after attending Harvard
Beyond the Mountains, Part I
Mark Danner was 28, told by friend to go to Hispaniola
Haiti is the size of Maryland w/ few good roads – means the land is vast
Arrived in the middle of a city-wide riot
Revisited and wrote about Haiti for nearly 20 years
Has relevance/similarities to John Reed re: revolutions
Similarities:
Major sections written after the events occured
Bifurcated vision – shows “street terror” happening on the street but tries to describe the attacks w/ immediacy
Structures what is politically going on
Duvaliarist analysis derived after the event – all of the reporting was about how to come up w/ the analysis
Two categories of reporting in this piece:
Why do we have this violence?
Why aren’t things progressing as they should?
Not present for the massacre, but talked to a lot of people who were there
Danner over-reports when he doesn’t know what’s going on
Venn Diagram – traditional politicians, popular leaders, army, government, Duvaliarists
Judging the power of groups of very hard to do
Western media has become perilously reliant on polls; they are not reliable in the ways we want them to be reliable
Political transitions – Why is Haiti so troubled? Why isn’t it easy to transfer to democracy? How do you get an election that’s actually fair in a country were few owns everything?
Centers of power: military, industry, church, legislators, land owners, banks, labor unions/workers
Advice:
In a revolutionary situation, you have to accept that you’re going to be surprised
Make assumptions of your own and follow your instincts (if you know the history)
Separate yourself from the press corps
Author spent much of the time covering the days around the actual election
A lot of the reporting was the author going around the city and interviewing people – you’ll get better interviews the more you know about something
February 19 – President’s Day (No Class)
February 26 – Marie Colvin, On the Front Line: The Collected Journalism of Marie Colvin (HarperPress, 2012) [pp. 149 - 171, 189 - 215, 224 - 233, 369 - End.]; Paul Conroy, Under the Wire: Marie Colvin’s Final Assignment (Hachette, 2013) [all]; NYT - ‘An Endless War’
Suggested Viewing: Marie Colvin 2004 Interview, Colvin’s Final Interview with CNN, and Paul Conroy’s Interview from Baba Amr
Rosa Furneaux will present on Lynsey Addario.
Viewing and Listening: Addario’s website and NPR Fresh Air Interview.
Suggested Reading: Excerpt from It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War (Penguin Books, 2016).
Class Notes
Marie Colvin
Her collection (published in the Sunday Times) gives us a view of what she did and how she did her reporting; as does Conroy’s book
It seems likely the Syrians traced the satellite signal of Colvin’s media interviews to target the media center, the attack of which resulted in her death
Colvin started at UPI, which is a smaller institution, but it allowed her to do what she wanted to do – it’s not about the prestige of the institution, but what you are allowed to do there
Colvin has more of a focus on people and the consequences for people on the ground – hard to find a reporter more relentless about this
Colvin has an ideology that merits skepticism that Conroy has – what difference will a photo or article make?
Is she putting her life unduly at risk?
Bearing witness and not leaving when others left
Takes pride in being there last – Ex. Chechnya and Kosovo
Strong, competitive aspect to Colvin’s mentality
There’s a level of guilt and bifurcation in the life of someone who does this for a living – Colvin gets to enter and exit war zones
Dependent on the help of the FSA who they are eventually going to abandon in Syria
Final dispatch from Homs
Why did she start in the basement?
More unique than a hospital
Maybe w/ next attack the widow’s basement could be destroyed
Filed this piece verbally by traced satellite phone – risky because of security
Almost like a magazine writer, she writes longer pieces
Integrates first person really well & it always serves a purpose; doesn’t draw gratuitous attention to herself
Shows the relationship between foreign desk editors and reporters – need to make a lot of decisions and influenced by many things
Lynsey Addario Presentation
NPR podcast addresses kidnapping in Libya
About experience as a female in a male-dominated career
She had access to places none of her male colleagues did in the Middle East
Says the Congo changed her life
It’s not about how she shot it, but how she got the access – takes time with her subjects when she can
Tries to spend 1-2 hours with them beforehand
Transsexual project in NYC took months to earn the trust of her subjects before she brought her camera
Style is reminiscent of Salgado
Since becoming a mother, she has shot more mothers with their children in regions/refugee camps all over the world
March 5 – Martha Gellhorn, The Face of War (Atlantic, 1994 [1959])
Lauren Hepler presented excerpts from El Narco: Inside Mexico’s criminal Insurgency by Ioan Grillo (Bloomsbury Press, 2012)
Class Notes
Martha Gellhorn
The Face of War is reading across a life – her 20s to late 70s
Colvin looked up to Gellhorn – frivolous comparison because they’re both female and war correspondents?
Brings up: what is the subject of war? is it war? what is war correspondence?
Gellhorn writes a lot about how the war affects the civilians at home – “vox populi”: people on the street
This would be what another journalist would fill in with when they haven’t made it to the battle
How are Gellhorn’s topics news? – turning attention to that subject jus as war turned its attention to its subjects
In WWI, significant numbers of civilian casualties, but most of the deaths were military
WWII: over 100,000 civilians died from a single bomb
Covers the span of time in which civilians became casualties of war
Women focus on who is affected by war, not perpetrators of war; observations of people and how their calculations of their lives change
Very interested in adaptability, esp. women and children in how they survived during the war, not how they were injured
Tone of material in Spain
People in Spain are more casual about warfare – veneer of romanticism of Spanish people
People still believe they’re going to win; they don’t know much about the military so they believe they will win
Comparison to Homs – no hope amongst civilians, no military operations portrayed
Spain & Syria both started in revolution and ended in war
1930s Spain is a rehearsal for WWII
Nobody helps in Spain despite everyone knowing what was happening – Gellhorn began as hopeful and then covers Spain
Revolutionary spirit: when Colvin gets to Homs, the spirit is decimated
Gellhorn’s original impetus to write was political; Colvin came to writing later in life
Gellhorn’s introduction in her book begins by referring to Watergate (a good example of democracy and journalism at work)
Then Gellhorn covers WWII – what happens between Spain and WWII?
Lesson: recognize fascism early and do something about it
Her writing becomes increasingly cynical
Theme: war is part of human nature (and stupidity)
Does Gellhorn lose hope? She must have some intact because she continues to write about war and conflict
She is outraged by wrongdoing and inequality – is sympathetic to people on the street – this is seen very well in her Vietnam pieces
Lived all over the world & married to Hemingway – didn’t want to be known as his wife and “a footnote in someone else’s life”
Gellhorn & Hemingway did coverage of Spain and China together – her work is better as a reporter on the ground; it’s more comprehensive, endures/reads better now
“High Explosives for Everyone”
reporting from her hotel and walking around town, mostly observation – would this be acceptable to magazine editors today?
Strength: a missed day for more correspondents becomes material that Gellhorn can turn into a pieces
Also of note: she wasn’t on deadline and had no editorial oversight – no tether that is often in place for journalists
Lesson: how to see what is in front of your face; writing about wounded people
Style
Very slow and takes her time sentence by sentence
Trope: this was this, now it’s what (i.e. how war affects life); theme of juxtaposition
Has an eye that actually works via writing – hard to teach and especially hard in a pack of reporters
Pack reporting is the opposite of Gellhorn’s writing
Why do the descriptions of the wounded work?
Not heavy-handed, simple
Not overly gruesome
Stream underneath the surface; saw the man described on pg. 25 before as someone she tried not to look at (relatable)
Very present in her work; acts as a guide in the space
Uses simple words, but the writing is very effective
Hemingway-esque: that-and
A lot of the pieces read like short stories; narrative – influence from being a novelist: feels free to make a story out of her observations
Not political analyses, no nut grafs; writes what she is observing during war
In the 1930s, Hemingway had a huge effect on magazine journalism – Gellhorn represents a trend in getting good writers to cover int’l conflict
Gellhorn is very good at sharing details and every detail pushes the narrative forward
“Use your ignorance” – use fresh vision to come up w/ something everyone experiences but no one would write about
Criticism
Doesn’t provide political background
When in contact with non-white people, perspectives becomes racist in writing (racist names to refer to groups of people, etc) – illustrative of prejudice that was inherent in America at the time
Israel pieces have not aged well
Vietnam
Humanizing the war and empathizing with civilians/what she’s actually able to see
Genocidal death toll from American bombs – Gellhorn has a capacity to see if and write it
Journalists fly in and look at other places and write about it from an external lens – journalists represent the perspective of these places
Wasn’t let back in Vietnam because her perspective was left-wing and from the people – but today, it still isn’t “enough” of a denunciation
Consecutively, there is a rage that builds up in the book
First Vietnam piece: undercuts the beginning by describing actions of American soldiers; shows the result of American policy
No one was writing about civilian deaths in 1966 (very early in the war)
Why is she so critical? – at this point in the book, the reader can see the perspective she’s coming from
Is it propaganda? Is it a legitimate piece of work? – yes, documents in detail how and who are getting killed (civilians, not Vietcong combatants)
Gellhorn’s transformation: journalism doesn’t convey permanent truth
What’s being conveyed in this piece is still being contested today – Americans were methodically killing & bombing civilians
Lauren Hepler - Ioan Grillo Presentation
March 12 -- Michael Herr, Dispatches (Vintage, 1991 [1977])
Jacob Shea presented reporting on Rodrigo Duterte. NYT - 'They Are Slaughtering Us Like Animals'; NYT - Rodrigo Duterte’s Talk of Killing Criminals Raises Fears in Philippines; NYT - Philippine Police Resume War on Drugs, Killing Dozens; New Yorker - When a Populist Demagogue Takes Power; New Yorker - Rodrigo Duterte’s Campaign of Terror in the Philippines; CNN - Duterte's crackdown: 6 stories from the front lines
Class Notes
Dispatches
Jacob Shea Presentation: Reporting on Rodrigo Duterte, President of the Philippines
Populist demagogue; sexist and violent public persona
Presidential campaign
Ran on campaign against illegal drug industry
Moralistic vendetta to clean up corruption
Promised violence early on: vowed to kill “up to a hundred thousand criminals”
Used social media effectively; won in 6 million vote landslide
Within first 100 days, listened 150 politicians and police officers publicly as involved in the illegal drug trade
According to Philippine Daily Inquirer, which tracked killings, in 3 months, more than 1,400 killed by police and vigilantes
In the past 20 months, at least 4,000 Filipinos (predominantly urban and poor) killed by police
Human Rights Watch estimates the number to be over 12,000
Adrian Chen, staff writer at The New Yorker
Normally writes profiles, intersection of technology and culture; not a war correspondent
Goal: aim to explain how Duterte could be elected, have enduring popularity
Only had two weeks in country (transportation challenge)
Read all local coverage, helped find sources
Duterte’s PR team kept offering interview and then backing out
Had connections to political elites
Articles have few scenes
Daniel Berehulak, regular contributor to New York Times
Australian, based in Mexico City
Has covered Iraq War, Afghan elections, aftermath of Japan’s 2011 tsunami, 2010 floods in Pakistan
Two Pulitzers: 2015 Ebola epidemic in West Africa and 2017 Philippines “War on Drugs”
In “War on Drugs”
Photographed 57 homicide victims over 35 days at 41 sites
One scene with police, took 300-400 images – a number of photos not filed because it was too gruesome to share
“ I have worked in 60 countries, covered wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and spent much of 2014 living inside West Africa’s Ebola zone, a place gripped by fear and death. What I experienced in the Philippines felt like a new level of ruthlessness: police officers’ summarily shooting anyone suspected of dealing or even using drugs, vigilantes’ taking seriously Mr. Duterte’s call to ‘slaughter them all.’ ”
March 19 – George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (Harcourt, 1980 [1938])
Alicia Medina presented on Rania Abouzeid’s coverage in The New Yorker of Baghdad. The Women in a Morgue in Baghdad, Out of Sight
Class Notes
Homage of Catalonia
In the canon of war reporting at the top of the list – Why?
First example of immersive journalism – was a journalist but volunteered as a soldier (didn’t act as journalist in a field, but took copious notes in a diary)
Went to Spain at 33 years old – almost immediately became a soldier/grunt and then a corporal
Didn’t cover the war as a correspondent/not an embedded journalist
Very controversial book – written because he knew it would be controversial
Wasn’t a popular book when first published – not instantly deemed a classic
Examples of participatory journalism (aka I go and I do it; don’t stand on the sidelines): Paper Lion by George Plimpton, anything by Michael Pollan
Becomes a soldier for “common decency;” motivations is to kill fascists
Fascist government in Italy & Germany; WWII is on the horizon
Competing spheres of influences already seen in Spain
Wants to kill fascists because he’s a left-wing socialist writer
Descriptions of filth & smells, but not killing a lot of people and it frustrates him
What is the role of a journalist? To observe?
Orwell engages in media criticism and analysis of propaganda
Why is this book a classic? – it represents amid the thicket of disgusting politics, a self-conscious effort to tell the truth
Reader sees him struggling to tell the truth
This book was not intended to last; written very much in the present tense and focused on present political debates and issues that were not meant to last
Hochschild introduction: puts political section in an appendix (how Orwell originally wanted)
Emphasize: desire to tell the truth
Wanted to forget politics when going to the front, but found that he couldn’t escape politics at the front
Book is half about killing fascists; and then it becomes a book about politics of the Spanish Civil War; and then it becomes a book about politics and truth – and then telling the truth as a journalist/writer in a century that is a cesspool of lies
A lot of 1984 is in this work – this is the reporting he did to write 1984 and Animal Farm
Prose
As far as you can get from Herr regarding prose
Similar reporting techniques – access to different frontlines in the war
Extreme self-conscious – both have initial subjects as themselves – a lot of seeing, smelling & their first hand experience
Metaphors in his prose is always very homey/familiar
Orwell spent 115 days in Spain; short but dramatic – shot in the throat and thought he was going to die for a large part of the book
Ignorance is the greatest tool – freshness – sees everything as it is now
General arc in book toward personal understanding (political recognition/bildungsroman) – the narrator is innocent/ignorant in the beginning
Is the book without nuance?
He questions his own view in a lot of the book
Overstates degree to which revolutions are occuring
Book is supposed to be an antidote of all of the propaganda occuring at the time – ready to be critical of the political situation in Spain
It serves the narrative to establish Spain as a paradise when he first arrives to when he returns in April to see a shift
A lot of his experience is reflected on his body (being cold, his injury)
There is a lot of humor in his writing in this book – tries to be entertaining in the first half, able to convey a person that you like
Sitting for long periods of time not fighting – descriptions of firewood, landscape, etc
Scene where Orwell gets shot – uses colloquial language
Interesting that he remembers so much
Phenomenological; very clear
Prophetic nature of book – Russian Revolution behind and the Cold War in front of it
Recommended Reading
Book
Orwell in Spain (Penguin Modern Classics)
Essays
Alicia Presentation: Rania Abouzeid
Lebanese-Australian backgrounf
Took family holidays to Beirut during the Civil War
Spent 15 years reporting in the Middle East (New Yorker, TIME, Foreign Affairs, The Guardian, Al Jazeera)
Awards: Michael Kelly Award, George Polk Award for Foreign Reporting
Has covered Syria in depth
New Book: No Turning Back: Life, Loss, and Hope in Wartime Syria
“The Women in a Morgue in Baghdad”
Focus on the most invisible of the invisible
Gender, moral, nationality, social class
Feelings of the worker at the morgue
Complexity: good against evil narrative
How aftermath of violence tells us about society; double punishment
Was working in the morgue on another story when the bodies arrived – need to have an open mind to see these stories and Rania has it
This is almost a standalone poem amongst reporting in Baghdad – good + simple reporting = effective
Covering ISIS
Military defeat versus ideological defeat
Media obsession with ISIS, fueling their narrative
Binary portrayal of ISIS mirrors the narrative in the West
The media considers people living under ISIS to be pro-ISIS as opposed to oppressed
If there is no ISIS angle, there is no “sexy piece” to the editor – basic problem in war coverage: in order for Iraq to get covered in the daily US news, 20 people have to be killed or the regular news won’t cover what’s happening over there
Abouzeid is deliberate in challenging dominant narratives
March 26 – Spring Break (No Class)
April 2 – Ryszard Kapuscinski, Shah of Shahs (Vintage, 1992 [1982])
Andrew Beale presented an excerpt from Ilan Pappe’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.
Class Notes
Kapuscinski
Storied journalist, books are famous
Thought to go on to win the Nobel Prize, though he didn’t
Apparently present in 27 to 32 coup d’etats
Most famous book is The Emperor
Wrote for 35 years for the Polish Press Agency
Spent time based in Africa – any war in that hemisphere, he had to go cover it
He was there in the 60s/70s – many coup d’etats he had to cover
Late 40s/early 50s was the beginning of the American empire
Kapuscinski – covering the end of colonialism & criticized for his colonial POV
Covered coup d’etats as a daily press reporter
Shah of Shahs
About the Iranian Revolution
Periodicity – depends on when and where you were born which influences how you look at the world
Afghanistan & Iran are still the dominant key elements of U.S. foreign policy in the last 30 years – we still have troops in Iraq & Syria
The US funded the Mujahideen in Afghanistan – Bin laden was in Afghanistan where he planned 9/11 – Iran/Iraq War – Desert Storm
This has dramatically influenced what is going on in the world and in our lives, not in the least the current Syrian Civil War
First page – Shah fleeing, Khomeini coming
What is he actually writing about? – looking at his own hotel room; this is a metaphor of writing itself
Tapes, photos, notes & notebooks everywhere – taking this pile of notes and trying to derive a story out of it
The beginning is a process of understanding; the room is a blank template for putting together the story
Attempts to outline what he’s doing with the rest of the book; chaos at the beginning and then he orders the chaos
Is it effective?
Creation of suspense – telling the audience what his subject is going to be and what the audience going to find out
The first chapter is about what’s being shown on TV – exposition: to place you in a moment in the revolution
Page 9 – refers to the end of colonialism worldwide; also explains how the revolution changed Iran
Shah was a colonialist regime
POV is not American; POV is from Poland
At this time, Poland is a Soviet Bloc country; Solidarity (faction trying to break free of the Soviet Union) is rising
People think he is writing about Poland – treatment of Savak
Several of his books are thought to be veiled accounts of Poland
Aesopian stories – during communist era in Eastern Europe, stories that were fairy tales which brought forward the truth were popular (The Emperor was Aesopian)
Narrative bounced around a lot – hard to keep track of who was talking
Daguerreotypes – hung on photographs, notes and cassettes
A way to vitalize what is mostly exposition – history of Iran, how Iran came to be at the state it is, Shah, Mossadegh
Missing 20 pages in Polish edition that aren’t in the American version – about the coup d’etat that overthrew Mossadegh
Kapuscinski said he cut it out at the request of the US government because they didn’t like the way the CIA was portrayed
After his death, someone asked the publisher and the published debunked that story – the author cut it himself thinking it would undermine him in the US
Indicative of his dealings with the Polish secret police in his life – had appreciation/fear of intelligence services and didn’t want to piss off the CIA
Fact v. Fiction
There is no doubt in the way he writes
Is this bad journalism? It’s not fiction – it’s based on some fact
No gradation between what is true and what is false
Pg. 43-45: scene with bus stop & Savak guard
Not attributed to anybody, begins like a story (it’s a parable)
Powerfully written, holds for any police state, not just Iran
But how did he get this story?
Are his methods full of holes? Does it matter if the small facts are right or wrong? – what matters most is the larger truth?
Larger truth: this book is about revolution & autocratic power
Pg. 108-110: man and police officer don’t exist, another parable
At the heart is the question of veracity – what does and doesn’t bother us about this type of writing?
Saying something more general about how revolutions happen
Pg. 111 top – takes a large phenomenon and reduces it to a single person, which makes it effective & powerful; but the person doesn’t necessarily exist
Is this a convincing description of what the Iranian Revolution was?
The Soccer War
Some of the same fact problems
Description of what happens when reporters approach the front line
Great portrait of fear and what journalists do
Homey metaphors
Kapuscinski at his best – but is it all true?
Ilan Pappe Presentation
Writes a lot about actual military battles or lack thereof between Israel and neighbors
Great amount of detail for something that happened before the author was born
Read a book by Carmeli Brigade book; dug through declassified IDF documents (only 2% of the documents about 1948 were released)
On the ground reporting was immensely important – filled in the gaps, clarified fabrications and manipulations, gave meat to document interpretation
Needed to reconcile Israeli and Palestinian narratives
Over 100 massacres happened in 1948 that were documented, but there were probably many more based on witness testimony and no documents
When Pappe wrote about a massacre that only had witness testimony, he clarified he couldn’t find documentation on it
Example of an arc of the story that was changed by the narrative that was written/published at the time
National historical myth still influences how Israel is treated/sees itself today
April 9 – Dexter Filkins, The Forever War (Vintage, 2009). Suggested Reading: “Iraq: The War of Imagination” by Mark Danner.
Annabell Brockhues presented on journalist Verena Hoelzl & covering the Rohingya crisis.
Class Notes
There is a difference between sectarian cleansing and ethnic cleansing
Sunnis and Shia are not different ethnicities, but are different sects
Iraq has become a client state of Iran ? US invaded and put on a fairly independent election – Shia took control (despite population being largely Sunni) so now Iraq is sympathetic to Iran
Bashar al-Assad is the leader – Shia is the ruling regime, but population is largely Sunni
History of the last 30 years is coming to the front in Syria
The Forever War
What’s familiar in this book?
Normalcy in which people return to their everyday lives amidst bombings
Michael Herr voice in the book – attitude of soldiers & rhythm of paragraphs; but also spends a fair amount of time articulating the Iraqi POV (Herr doesn’t really do this)
Similarity to Vietnam? – both hopeless situations
The war was a liberal cause – they thought they had to free people
Dexter Filkins
Wrote the book as a Nieman Fellow @ Harvard
Starts w/ chaos and then moves back to provide context (not unlike Kapuscinski) – purpose: to hook reader and create suspense
Quote a personal book/a personal development boo
Main question: how did we/I get here?
Image that sticks – running
Execution in the soccer field – getting us ready for brutality in Iraq?
Filkins personally thought the American invasion was a catastrophe
Book is about the futility of Americans’ attempts to understand Iraq
Nobody knew Arabic & the situation was bad from the beginning
A lot of the book shows him trying to cope with Iraqi rejection of American “generosity,” the American invasion & it’s futility
Are second-hand stories worth telling in this book?
Pg. 210 – being implicated with a death for the first time; about his fucked up obsession with the war
Pearland section – about what being a reporter like this does to you
Most of this book is about himself
Embodiment of relationship w/ soldiers & marines because journalists are a burden to them because they are not armed
Nathan Sassaman
Military career gets tanked after tossing two Iraqis in Tigris River
Originally an NYT piece that was popular
Portrait of best & brightest officer
Why is this in the book? – creating more insurgents
Critique of American strategy and showing how ineffective it is
Strategy of microcosm – what US soldiers are doing in a specific place and why it’s wrong
Does this story succeed? Do we learn anything about the Iraq War from this story?
Verena Hoelzl Presentation
Hoelzl freelances from Burma about the Rohingya crisis
German journalist who went to J-school in France
As a school project, went to Myanmar – returned after school to become a freelancer
Lesson: don’t give up – figure out ways to get stories into the paper
Shows a great deal of creativity
Hoelzl networked before arriving with journalists & activists in Myanmar
Facebook was the most powerful tool
Advantage: she was the only German journalist in Myanmar
Main problem: no access to Rakhine state, official narrative denies conflict
Practical problems – who will pay for the trip? How to enter Bangladesh without getting arrested?
April 16 -- Sebastian Junger, War (Twelve, 2011)
Annabell Brockhues presented on journalist Christoph Reuter & covering ISIS.
Class Notes
Current structure of syllabus – addressing wars in Iraq & Afghanistan, and then circling back to the Pentagon
The Forever War Part II
Filkins – dealing w/ the Iraq War & his bewilderment/futility that results in the destruction of Iraq & the countless Iraqis that have died
Conservative estimate: 200,000
Iraq War had some altruistic intent behind it – Filkins uses intent as a point of discourse: why did it go south?
A very personal book
Theme: bewilderment at post-war – 1st three weeks: rush to Baghdad (Pg. 73-74, 75)
Author lived there 4-5 years, went running in the streets – dealt with Iraqis everyday
Trying to deal with conundrum of why they hate Americans & the revolution – doesn’t really get to it though
Tries to cope with is psychologically – is it successful?
Problem: such a complicated war to write about
Author not concerned about chronologically reporting the war – this book gives a more narrative war than a historic war
Tells you what it’s like to be a reporter there
Describes modern combat really well – what it’s like to be in the middle of a city controlled by insurgents, etc; experience of being surrounded when you’re an American journalist
Attitude of continual conspiracy is part of Iraqi politics – it is a group of people who would have a reason to be mistrustful of an institution
Two-thirds of this book was at a time when you couldn’t go out by yourself as a reporter
Many journalists were kidnapped & beheaded; represents a new phase we have now seen in Syria – far worse for Iraqi/Syrian-born reporters
Mogadishu chapter (pg. 186)
Between two long, weighty chapters; this is a reported scene
Sets up going to Fallujah, what they expected, and how it didn’t turn out to be so
Shows what the military tells the soldiers; no commentary/editorializing
There was a huge number of civilians killed in Mogadishu – special forces w/ automatic weapons gunned people down
International law forbids the use of disproportionate force – but legal to kill civilians – a gray area
American forces killed a substantial number of people at checkpoints; American POV: checkpoints were a daily weapon of war by insurgents; Airaqi POV: constantly being yelled at and don’t know what’s going on
Armies exist to kill people, but there are distinctions between different armies – US army in Iraqi killed far less people than the Soviet Army killed in Afghanistan; but US army still kills civilians
Running: theme through the book – insane to run along Tigris in Baghdad because someone could shoot him (Pg. 216)
Filkins’ POV of Iraqis is he is an outsider – what is his gaze as a writer?
War by Junger
Came to Korengal Valley 5 times between June 2007-June 2008
Author’s note regarding scenes he was present/not present for – the transparency is good in an unintrusive way
Was with a photographer, Tim Hetherington – created Restrepo and Korengal documentaries from it
Had a particular project in mind as a magazine writer – magazine journalist, the publication can pay his travels back and forth
Interested in the American soldier and their lives in Korengal Valley
Telling you something about the way soldiers think about the broad view (not at all)
Notion of heroism versus cowardice in studying the soldiers – to let the reader understand why the soldiers do what they do
A successful book-length profile – not necessarily about the subject but something much larger through the subject
Managed to get to an area that was the most desirable to journalists
Also had to be in good shape to keep up with the soldiers
Trying to give the reader a picture of 18-23 year old men – beginning with what they look like (Pg. 22)
Pg. 71 bottom – what fear does, you try to rationalize it out
Violence between soldiers at the outpost – response to escape that pattern of thinking
Pg. 34 – engaging exposition; the scientific exposition doesn’t slow down the narrative but moves it forward
Similar to memoir sections – perhaps this is what was missing from Herr’s Dispatches
Writing style: very clear writer & creative use of verbs; not very figurative but when he does utilize this, it’s very apt; not a showy writer, but a very good writer
Character development: details were so precise that you cared about these people later if they died
Christoph Reuter Presentation
Der Spiegel correspondent; foreign correspondent since late 1980s
Was only German correspondent in Afghanistan; been covering Syria since 2011 for Spiegel magazine
Being a reporter in the Middle East is about understanding, not experiencing
Overall challenges: break the dominant narrative; ISIS was not taken seriouslt enough – it’s not about content and infromation but about dramatic scenes and actions
Had never seen an organization which was able to control such a big area in such a short time
Difficult to get unbiased information about ISIS
Everything is open source – a lot of information, photos, videos; but also a lot of fake and alternative facts – high need of verification and good research
Has gone to Syria 22 since 2011 – entered with a visa until 2012; then he entered via Iraq, Lebanon, but mostly Turkey
In 2015, reported on how ISIS and other rebel groups cross the Turkish border – Turks didn't like this, arrested him and his team on a trip from Aleppo – forbidden to enter the country & couldn’t even step foot in the airport
Embedded with Al-Nusra (had freedom of reporting, didn’t care about communicating a certain narrative) & Kurdish groups (controlling of narrative like the Syrian regime)
Reuter tried to get other sources aside from those presented by the Kurdish – they don’t like it if he changes their narrative, but they let him to it because they know it’s bad for them if their exclude Der Spiegel
Utilized investigators from Syria & Iraq – main task was to stay in contact with people they met & follow them to figure out if they can be trusted and then figure out safe ways to contact sources (about 1,000 people and connections)
Both ISIS and Syrian regime hunt foreign journalists – don’t go to known media centers, high change they have moles there
Article about ISIS files:
Took one year to do this story
ISIS had to abandon headquarters and burned their files, but there were too many and not all the files were burned – Rebels rescued the files and sold them to Der Spiegel
Reuter quotes two sets of files
Content: infiltration & surveillance of all groups, personal files on fighters, applications from foreign fighters to join ISIS, plans on marrying into influential families, attack in Tall Rifaat
Difference to Rukmini Callimachi – she was actively looking for files; after she found Al-Qaeda files in mali – looked in trash, buildings related to ISIS
April 23 – Janine di Giovanni, The Morning They Came For Us: Dispatches from Syria (Liveright, 2017)
Stefanie Le presented on journalist May Jeong. Wired - The Final, Terrible Voyage of the Nautilus, The Intercept - Losing Sight, The Intercept - Death from the Sky
Class Notes
Syrian Civil War
Syrian regime used many of the same techniques in counter-insurgency
Clearing certain areas
Terror made widespread to achieve getting certain people out of certain areas
Began as a series of political demonstrations in Daraa – graffiti appeared on the walls one morning (broader international situation - Arab Spring)
Security forces arrested a group of high school kids and tortured them – parents asked for them to be released and were refused – demonstrations started – troops began shooting them
Regime: Alawite, Ba’athist secular regime – key figures all belong to minority Shia sect; majority of the country is Sunni
Large numbers of people are becoming refugees at this time – Iraqi refugees from the the Iraq War came to Syria – beginning of “refugee problem”
The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches from Syria
Powerful, difficult, wrenching read
Di Giovanni approaches the Syrian civil war with the background of covering other conflicts
Reporting of book takes place in 2012 (5-6 years ago)
Period: transformation of a non-violent protest full of hope to an armed rebellion faced w/ severe counter-insurgency techniques
Arbitrary detention, rape, torture, barrel bombs dropped on civilian neighborhoods (to make people afraid to participate in insurgency), and clear out certain neighborhoods
Use of widespread terror to suppress a rebellion – taking areas that are known to be rebel-held
At time the book was written – millions of Syrians fled and ended up in Lebanon, Turkey & Europe
This book attempts to connect all these things together
Book is about the effect of war on everyday Syrians
It is a showcase of voices, not an analysis of war
Not interested in telling the details about how the war progressed
Compressed reporting time covered – gap of 3 years from reporting to book being published
Listens to people supporting Assad & regime and are afraid of what will happen when regime falls – very rare & hard to do now; this is largely not the narrative seen today
Partly because Syria has been rejecting visas to journalists/most journalists are talking to those who have been negatively affected by the regime and not the wealthy/comfortable in Syria
Structure
Disjointed anecdotes from different times and places – vignettes
Through line: her career covering the conflict; autobiographical
She’s a reporter but also works as an investigator for human rights organizations (UNHCR, HRW)
Author questions a lot in the book about what she’s doing and whether it’s worthwhile because the world has done nothing despite be told what’s happening in conflict zones
Journalist ideology: expose horror and terror and hope that something will be done about it – Di Giovanni looks back on her career and finds out that it isn’t true – this comes across in the desperation of the book
Thinking you’ll make a difference isn’t a good criteria to judge your journalism career by – though this does diminish Di Giovanni
Can’t judge yourself on whether you end wars, only by how well you tell the story
Propaganda from Syria
Reports on the opposition competition which is good/enlightening in the book
Robert Fisk outs out propaganda supported by regime – he’s the only one embedded w/ Assad regime for years; went in with the Syrian Army
For the purpose of the government, there must not be a moderate opposition because the moderate opposition could politically win – they need a crazed, jihadist opposition
Cold war strategy: kill the moderates; isolate the boogeyman (in this case, ISIS)
Style – not a good writer, many grammar mistakes, long-winded sentence structure
Powerful writer, but not the most precise – needed a better editor (good reporter, bad writer)
Book is written in a style the way someone would speak – but doesn’t work in this case, too superfluous to read, often tries to do too much in a sentence
Problems with time sequence as well
Interviews w/ women who had been raped
Conducts some interviews as an investigator for UNHCR and as a journalist, but doesn’t specify which – this can be ethically ambiguous
Reminiscent of Bosnia where rape was used as a weapon – was rape section in the book too long? – it was very visceral and readers needed to take a break
Pg. 131-134: about her experience experiencing war, not just about Syria
Aleppo is the strongest chapter in the book
Di Giovanni is damaged and fatigued in the book
Really wanted to tell the rape stories but perhaps didn’t execute well
Stefanie Presentation - May Jeong
Jeong is a magazine writer & investigative journalist
Spent most of her career so far based in Kabul, Afghanistan (4 years)
Currently a visiting scholar at NYU’s Carter Journalism Institute & Logan Nonfiction Fellow at Carey Institute for Global Good
Writing has appeared in The Intercept, New York Times, London Review of Books, Harper’s and Financial Times
MSF Kunduz hospital bombing story on her the 2017 South Asian Journalist Association’s Daniel Pearl Award for Outstanding Reporting on South Asia
Jeong attended the University of Toronto – studied humanities, but always know she’d be a writer in some form
Moved to Kabul right after college in 2013 because she was looking for a place to freelance
“I came of age in the 9/11 generation--I learned about war through 9/11. I felt like 9/11 was the first time when history started happening on my watch. There were things that were unfolding in real time, and I think that was compelling for most people. To this day, it’s completely unfathomable that we have gone to war in Afghanistan and Iraq for the dubiest of reasons and there is nothing to show for it--I’m genuinely baffled by this. I think the human mind is attracted to mystery, so I’m confronted with what in the actual fuck happened? There was just a natural inclination towards inquiry there.”
Kabul is far away enough that I felt like America was a fictitious place. “I was really able to grow as a reporter and a writer on my own terms and that has been the greatest gift. It allowed me to come of age without any peer pressures. I can’t imagine being a 22 year old writer in New York--the competition would have been the end of me. “
When she arrived in 2013, she said “It wasn’t as competitive it had used to be and that helped me a lot.” Lesser competition = easier.
Her work is funded & supported by grants with the Nation Investigative Fund, the Fund for Investigative Journalism, the International Reporting Project, the International Women’s Media Foundation, United Nations Foundation, the Daniel Pearl Investigative Journalism Initiative, and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
“I love talking about this because I think it’s terrible that we don’t talk about it. Not to talk about it is a great lie. It’s really problematic. The drone strike story took two and a half year--obviously I wasn’t working on it full time because that would be a financial catastrophe. I live pretty cheaply--I don’t have an expensive coke habit. I keep costs quite low and whatever I make goes straight back into working.”
“We’re going back to the model of having Patrons of the Arts, which I have greatly benefited from. Without that, it just would not have been an option for me. Magazine journalism still has low rates, but at least it can sustain you for a longer period of time.”
If you’re going to be a freelancer, it makes sense to do longer projects and get paid higher rates for it--if you want to be smart about it.
“To even have the wherewithal to decide that you’re going to spend 6 months or 2.5 years on an investigation, means you’re already coming from a certain socioeconomic background. That is undeniable. If I was actually poor, not broke poor. If I had a family to support, if I had dependents--I obviously could not be doing what I’m doing. It’s a disservice to peddle this fiction that if you try hard, it doesn’t matter who you are--you can do whatever you want. It’s true but it’s going to be much more difficult for you and I feel like that is not really acknowledged when people talk about being a freelancer or being a journalist. Class is a massive component of this work.”
Doesn’t speak Pashto. Speaks a little bit of Dari, which is helpful; can arrange an interview, but can’t talk about complicated stuff.
She has fixers and translators – “These are people that at this point I’ve worked with for almost half a decade--they’re like family to me. Having the right people is usually the most important thing. If you don’t know the country at all, that dictates everything--that dictates access, the kinds of stories you end up doing--everything.”
There are some stories that are obvious (Kunduz hospital bombing story) and there are some stories you find out by going to dinners and talking to people
“I think the best trait is being curious. If you have the conviction of following your nose, I think you will be richly rewarded. As I’ve done this more, I’ve become more confident and trusting of myself that if I think something is interesting than chances are someone else will think it’s interesting too.”
Threw dinner parties every week and would have 40-50 people over – “You just build up good will--that’s what you do as a reporter.”
“In Kabul, there are no restaurants. Whenever you go out, we would bring back nice wine & champagne--stuff that you can’t get in Kabul. Alcohol, chocolate, and pork products to be honest are basically commodities. So no joke, you lure your sources over with promises of these things and then you talk to them. it’s less about that and more about building genuine connections with people and they actually become your friends. And then when a story becomes relevant or they know something, then they come to you because they trust you because they’ve been drinking with you for the past two years.”
Kunduz bombing story – “I really called in all the favors for that story--I mean, every single person I knew as a friend I called up. I could do that because I had spent the prior two years getting to know people.”
She says “I don’t do anything else really. If you do a good job of that, the reporting and writing part isn’t that hard because the building trust part is the most important part. If you’ve already one that then everything else becomes much easier.”
Losing Sight – Must have traveled 5 or 6 times to where the family lived. Going there is legit dangerous--can’t go there anymore. “So everytime I showed up, they know that I’ve literally risked my life to come see them. And so you’re not going to just turn people away when they keep coming back to you like that. I think they eventually realized that I wasn’t going to go away so they might as well talk to me.”
Being a female journalist – must always have a chaperone in Afghanistan
“What I get irked by is when male reporters say ‘Oh it must be so easy for you, you can throw on a burqa and just go places.’ Or ‘oh it must be so easy for you because you can talk to women.’ But with places like Afghanistan--it’s less about gender, it’s more about the fact that you’re the other. My gender doesn’t make it easier necessarily.”
“I think Afghanistan is a super unique place just because they place a premium on honor. It’s very rare for there to be rape--it just doesn’t happen. It’s not in the culture. I imagine in different parts of the world, that is definitely a concern.”
“The thing that I’m thinking about now is just how fucking hot it is under the burqa--nevermind, security... That’s the only thing I remember being obsessive about.”
Kim Wall piece in Wired – “It’s was the absolute worst reporting experience. I’m doing a story right now that is pretty sensitive and I feel pretty unfazed by it. I have a reference point of how terrible it can be and it’s not yet there, and so it’s made me a tougher reporter.”
“The idea came from her boyfriend. I thought it would be unfathomable to write something, but in the early days we were all looking for her, and trying to understand him and what might have happened. That process resembles reporting remarkably so. I think I just realized at some point that I was reporting without realizing it. It happened pretty organically.”
Advice:
Learn the language--it will save you tens of thousands of dollars. But also you can’t really understand anything unless you know the language.
Do things for the right reasons. You can’t do it for the glory. It’s just a slog--only people who are totally obsessed would do it because otherwise why would you subject yourself to this?
April 30 -- Rosa Brooks, How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon (Simon & Schuster, 2017)
Reis Thebault presented on Rukmini Callimachi’s reporting. NYT - The ISIS Files; AP - $0.60 for cake: Al-Qaida records every expense; AP - In Timbuktu, al-Qaida left behind a manifesto; AP - AP reporter's quest to find bodies ends in the desert; NYT - ISIS Enshrines a Theology of Rape; Caliphate podcast
Class Notes
How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything
This book is a culmination of a number of discussions this semester – plunges into the issues that under line conflicts & the Pentagon
We are currently shaped by a permanent state of low level conflict
Laws of war were created in a time when war & peace were separate, now it is a mix – as a result, the current laws of war and institutions are made for separate war and peace
Doesn’t account for type of warfare happening today – not accountability
International humanitarian law (Geneva Convention, Hague Convention, Lieber Code, etc) is different from human rights law (human beings have certain unalienable rights by virtue of being human beings) – IHL is a separate stream of law relating to conflict, is a subset of human rights law
Do drones violate IHL? – it kills civilians, BUT the number of civilians killed by drones is less than the number of civilians killed by other methods of war – is this disproportionate?
Recommended read: The Drone Papers by The Intercept
It is unclear where intel on people killed by drones is coming from – how is it decided who is to be killed?
Due process is a foreign concept in war (when killing on the battlefield) except for court martials & military law
Re: killing of Americans by their government without due process – this government process is secret & there is no appeal for it
Anwar Al-Awlaki’s father sued the government before he was killed by the suit got thrown out
Recommended read: Objective Troy by Scott Shane
War hasn’t been formally declared by Congress since WWII – but since then there have been other legislation for subsequent conflicts (Vietnam, Korea, etc)
Countries can claim self defense without approval from Congress – Obama administration seemed to use this a lot
Biggest difference – who you can kill under each circumstance:
Self defense: can only kill those who are threatening to attack/acting in a hostile way
Under law of war: can kill anyone in an enemy uniform, even the cooks
We tend to think of a division between war and peace – this is an out of date attitude
Done strikes & new warfare is bleeding into civilian life
A state of war allows the government to do different things – be secretive, kill people without consequence, etc
All the bodies of accountability are US-based – what if another country wanted to kill an American in the State with a drone?
After the Vietnam War & Cold War – US was non-interventionist – Bosnia and Rwanda happened – what does the US do? sometimes intervention saves lives
Libya example didn’t work
The current tools of international law regarding conflict is not working because terrorism & drones are not accounted for in these laws
Authoritarian regimes always say they are in a constant state of emergency
Egypt: domestic oppression
US: drone warfare is outside the US – people aren’t protesting this/don’t care about it happening
How do you cover drone warfare?
Cover the victims
Through social media networks/satellite footage
Brooks’ point: these things are outside the laws of war we have grown up with and need to try to think creatively about it
If you’re going to cover modern warfare, it will take dogged reporting and new ways to tell the story
Public secrecy – when something isn’t really secret, but secrecy is used as an umbrella term against access – a way to close down and control information flows
This is against a free press – need to become more resourceful as a reporter to find access
Drones are a horrible development in war but we are stuck with them
Brooks’ life – growing up with anti-war parents and then came face to face with Bosnia & Rwanda situations and realized that international community (including the US) should intervene
Themes in Class
Structure – how to structure longform writing – put scenes, interviews, etc together
Lesson – there is no set format; can organize around images, internal thoughts, etc
Rukmini Callimachi Presentation
Born in Bucharest, family fled the Ceausescu regime in 1978
Moved to Switzerland, then to Ojai, CA
Arrived in the States peaking only Romanian and French
At Dartmouth, balanced English classes w/ pre-med coursework – a summer class on Ezra Pound’s poetry changed her mind about med school
Studied poetry at Oxford and wanted to become a poet
Began journalism career in New Delhi, freelancing for Time and other publications – moved to the AP in Portland & New Orleans
Moved to West Africa and covered 20 countries for the AP – became West Africa Bureau Chief for AP
Mali Papers & ISIS files – unusual & creative reporting; people don’t understand it if you don’t explain it to them
ISIS Files critique – working against a misconception that the news media itself created – “gee whiz, they don’t just kill people--they are actually a bureaucracy”
Re: being a female journalist in conflict zones – feels sexism most in her offices in NYC when a man talks over her in meetings or take her ideas or when women are generally underestimated in the field
When she is reporting in the Middle East, people see her as a representative of a prestigious newsroom and respect her
Sourcing ISIS – follows them online, via Telegram, tries to meet them in person (in prisons), talks to people who are one degree removed – people who have been attacked/raped by them, people who interact with them, etc
Doesn’t talk to active ISIS members anymore because she has become known to them – they don’t talk to her
Reports on the efficiency of ISIS as a governing force – they cleaned up trash; there were thing they did that were popular (same with the Taliban in Afghanistan)
Required Texts
Rosa Brooks, How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon (Simon & Schuster, 2017)
Marie Colvin, On the Front Line: The Collected Journalism of Marie Colvin (HarperPress, 2012)
Paul Controy, Under the Wire: Marie Colvin’s Final Assignment (Hachette, 2013)
Mark Danner, The Massacre at El Mozote: A Parable of the Cold War (Vintage, 1994)
Mark Danner, Stripping Bare the Body: Politics Violence War (Nation Books, 2009)
Dexter Filkins, The Forever War (Vintage, 2009)
Martha Gellhorn, The Face of War (Atlantic, 1994 [1959])
Janine di Giovanni, The Morning They Came For Us: Dispatches from Syria (Liveright, 2017)
Michael Herr, Dispatches (Vintage, 1991 [1977])
Sebastian Junger, War (Twelve, 2011)
Ryszard Kapuscinski, Shah of Shahs (Vintage, 1992 [1982])
George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (Harcourt, 1980 [1938])
John Reed, Ten Days That Shook the World (Penguin, 2007 [1919])
Anjan Sundaram, Stringer: A Reporter’s Journey in the Congo (Anchor, 2014)
Clint Willis (ed.), Writing War: The Best Contemporary Journalism About Warfare and Conflict from Around the World (Thunder’s Mouth, 2003)
Books That Nearly Made It
Matt Martin, Predator: The Remote-Control Air War over Iraq and Afghanistan: A Pilot’s Story
Scott Shane, Objective Troy: A Terrorist, a President, and the Rise of the Drone
Jeremy Scahill, Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield
Edward N. Luttwak, Coup d’Etat: A Practical Handbook
Olga Rodriguez, El Hombre Mojado No Teme La LLuvia: Voces De Oriente Medio
Oscar Martinez, Los Migrantes Que No Importan
Jonathan Schell, The Real War: The Classic Reporting on The Vietnam War
Jonathan Schell, The Jonathan Schell Reader
Library of America, Reporting Vietnam, Parts I and II: American Journalism
John Hersey, Hiroshima
Boa Ninh, The Sorrow of War
Mark Mazetti, The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth
Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys
Joby Warrick, Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS
Jean Hartzfeld, Machete Season
Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men
Kevin Powers, The Yellow Birds
Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried
Jack Fairweather, The Good War
Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That
Artyom Borovik, The Hidden War
Ryszard Kapuscinski, Another Day of Life
Ryszard Kapuscinski, The Soccer War
Naipaul, Among the Believers
Naipaul, The Return of Eva Peron
Michela Wrong, In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz
William Finnegan, A Complicated War
Harold Moore, We Were Soldiers Once and Young
Lawrence Durrell, Bitter Lemons
David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest
Peter Carey (ed.), The Faber Book of Reporting
Jonathan Schell, The Real War
Clint Willis (ed.), Writing War
Recommended Films/Documentaries
Hearts and Minds
Apocalypse Now
Full Metal Jacket
Battle of Algiers
Only the Dead
Gunner Palace
Restrepo
Korengal
Under Fire
Platoon
No Man’s Land
The Gatekeepers
Foxtrot
The Law in These Parts
Waltz with Bashir