Abstract
We won't learn what goes on in Syria until our journalists can get there, says a former frontline reporter for the BBC
The agony of Syria is being well reported on television. The pictures could hardly be more harrowing. But there is something missing and it's important. There are few British reporters on the scene. Only Dan Rivers of ITV News is near Aleppo. The BBC's Panorama on the city's agony was shot by a Syrian cameraman, although the Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen was seen to be on the ground. But what we need is British crews and more reporters covering breaking news as the Russian-led end game begins.
As it is, most of the real work is being done by local cameramen and their pictures are being re-broadcast by British TV, usually without attribution or credit. In other wars, British news teams have invariably found a way to work in the most hazardous conditions. The difference now is the so-called Islamic State.
No western TV news outfit can run the risk of having its people captured by the forces of Islamic State (IS), exploited for propaganda and murdered. So most British reporters stand outside the ring, doing their best from Beirut or the Turkish border. There's no doubt they and their crews want to cover a conflict that is defining the geopolitics of the early 21st century, exhibiting a savagery that matches that of the First World War and the beginning of mechanised killing in the 20th.
Like that war, this one seems endless and the politicians impotent to stop it. And that's why it is essential that honest and impartial reporters are there on the ground, even if that means defying insurers who would wish to veto such risks.
It's vital that reporters we know and have come to trust bear witness on our behalf. At its best, war reporting changes public perceptions and sometimes history: Russell in the Crimea, of course, but also JA MacGahan's reportage of Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria in 1876 that led to the foundation of four new countries. And Keith Murdoch's work in Gallipoli was the only instance of journalism changing anything during the first world war.
War reporting is the defining job of a free press. And it cannot be done from a bar stool in the nearest five-star hotel. You don't know if you don't go. Even if that presents terrible risks, they have to be taken. And every now and then, there's a price to be paid.
Marie Colvin is mourned by anyone who valued her vivid prose and honest opinions. Deliberately targeted by the Damascus regime, she is fresh in our memory because she was killed in Homs in 2012 while trying to make sense of the Syrian civil war for the readers of The Sunday Times.
I remember being on the Golan Heights in October 1973 and seeing the grief on the dusty, uncomprehending face of Phil Jacobson, a staffer at the same newspaper, as he told me that his colleague Nick Tomalin had just been killed; a Syrian wire-guided missile had destroyed the vehicle Nick was sitting in, writing up his notes. Terry Lloyd of ITN was killed, along with his cameraman Fred Nerac and his interpreter Hussein Osman, by American bullets in Iraq in 2003. It was judged to be an “unlawful killing” by an English coroner and “a war crime” by the National Union of Journalists. Nerac's body has never been recovered.
Ted Stoddard, a well-liked BBC news sound recordist, was killed in a Turkish minefield in 1974 and my friend Chris Morris sustained serious, permanent injuries in the same tragedy. My former colleagues Martin Bell and John Simpson were wounded in conflicts in the Balkans and Mesopotamia respectively. Death and injury can strike anywhere at anyone who puts themselves in harm's way doing the job they are paid for.
BBC cameraman Mike Lewis had gone through the second world war in the British army's film unit and might have thought he had dodged all his bullets. But I will never forget standing next to his bed in the darkened ward of an Israeli military hospital as he waited for surgery to remove shrapnel from his groin and legs. Lewis, the only Jew in the BBC camera unit, could not resist telling me how the medic in the ambulance bringing him down from Golan looked at him while holding a helmet for Mike to urinate: “You Jew?” he asked. Lewis, who had shot the footage of the bulldozers pushing thousands of corpses into pits at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, never missed an opportunity to enjoy a laugh after Belsen.
There are war lovers. Any press corps in any conflict will attract one or two. I blame Ernest Hemingway for creating the reporter as war hero, although Robert Capa and his camera contributed to the cult of blood and champagne. War lovers are dangerous and always to other people.
Derring-do is the last thing required when it's derring-don't that's needed. I didn't receive many compliments as a reporter but I do remember something better: an experienced film crew told me that they liked working with me because I got the job done without taking unnecessary risks with their lives. You have to go on to the next village and then the next and the next, but when the bombardment says stop, you pause.
“Remember,” Keith Graves once told me, “We are not officers and gentlemen. We are just reporters.” His advice came on the only occasion I was reluctant to return to the front line. I had just spent a month covering the Lebanese civil war, leaving by fishing boat to Cyprus. I had been at home for three days when I was asked to go back to Beirut. I did return but when I decided to, two weeks later. The discretion I was allowed reflected well, I felt at the time, on the TV news “management”.
Putting junior colleagues in danger
The relationship between the people covering the war and the people back at the office is invariably tricky. It is right and proper that the PBI, the Poor Bloody Infantry, should always regard the Brass Hats at HQ with distrust and contempt. But I had some sympathy with my editors. They wanted the coverage. They feared being beaten by “the opposition”. Their need for decent action pictures could become desperate. But they knew they could not get compelling stories without putting their junior colleagues in danger. There was never a shortage of volunteers to cover wars but this only increased their burden of responsibility in choosing the right person to send.
Reporters didn't get combat pay. Flak jackets came late on the scene in Beirut. There weren't courses run by ex-military types that the BBC now insists on for staff going into war zones. All your bosses could do was say, “Keep your head down”, something you simply did not want to hear. If you keep your head down, you see nothing.
I never wanted someone in London to make decisions for me and would have ignored it if anyone had tried. It would be my decision whether or not to go down a road. It was my job to lead but not to put my colleagues' necks in a noose. The only thing I ever hoped for, in any perilous part of the world, was solid moral support from the foreign desk at TV Centre and an understanding that a dumper truck full of money would be sent to my wife if I didn't return alive.
The BBC has not always been the best when the worst happens. When John Harrison, formerly of the Daily Mail, was killed in a car crash in South Africa, there was a specious dispute over whether he was on duty or not at the time. His widow was not treated with the consideration and generosity demanded by the unwritten covenant between the corporation and those who put their lives on the line in its service. I have met the mother of Kate Peyton, who was shot dead on her return to Mogadishu for the BBC in 2005, and heard how shocked she and Kate's siblings were by the corporation's less than sympathetic response to their terrible loss.
When my cameraman Peter Matthews and I were beaten up in Belfast by Loyalist thugs — in Downing Street as it happens — we were taken to hospital. When I eventually returned to the Europa Hotel, the phone rang. It was the deputy editor Alan Protheroe. He didn't ask how we were. Instead, he gave me the unmistakeable impression that he thought I had provoked the attack, even though the camera was still in our car while Matthews and I carried out a reconnaissance. I am certain that The Times did not blame its award-winning reporter Anthony Loyd and his photographer Jack Hill when he was shot and they were both savagely beaten in Iraq in 2014. Rather, the newspaper recognised their courage and fortitude on the front page.
Should more reporters be risking their lives now in Syria? There is a way to do it and they should try to get in. The Kurds have a lot to gain in their historic struggle for nationhood by welcoming the western media. The independent rebel groups, largely supported by the west, have no obvious interest in murdering people who arrive to document their battle. Without becoming embedded, which is only acceptable when there is no other way, it should be possible to present the reality on the ground, even if crews were restricted in ways that could be carefully flagged for viewers.
Keeping clear of IS is of paramount importance, but I would not hesitate to approach the regime of Bashar al-Assad to be allowed to file uncensored reports of what's really going on in the aptly named Damascus, “Blood Spill” in Arabic. During the despotic rule of his father, Hafez al-Assad, in 1974, I got the first access by an independent film crew to the Syrian front in the Yom Kippur war, where fighting continued well after Egypt had made its peace accord with Israel. All I had to do was sit in the ministry of information until I was given permission and an escort.
During the 10-year civil war in Lebanon, and the Syrian invasion of the country, it was possible to cross the green line separating the warring sides in Beirut. If you were to file a balanced report, you had to cross that line. Even with 14-year-old boys firing anti-aircraft guns at each other, up and down the street, it was possible, if you waited for the right moment.
Every TV report was on film then — it was the only way to cover a story. Each reporter told his own story, using his own pictures. There was no possibility of stitching together the video coverage from diverse and possibly dubious sources, and then top-and-tailing it with a piece to camera at a safe distance, often in a neighbouring country. That's what happens most of the time now. I am not saying that it is deliberately misleading but it can unwittingly offer a false impression. There are things that could be done. The first would be for British TV news services to clearly identify the source of the pictures they transmit. We are used to seeing logos on the screen — what do they signify? Second, viewers should always be told if the reporter did not witness the scenes and disclose the reason why: it's too dangerous. Third would be to increase efforts to get reporters where they want to be, covering the story.
Reporters will always march towards the sound of the gunfire, whatever the risk and no matter that most of them are a lot older than the teenage fighters who haven't lived long enough to truly value the wonder of being alive. There is a crucial conflict to report in Syria. We need more trusted reporters there on our behalf. Whatever the risk, normal service must be resumed.
