Panel • Photojournalist
Luis Sinco, moderator William Babcock,
reservist Erik Duane, columnist Gordon
Dillow and professor Ron Milligan discussed
war
correspondents’ jobs and situations at a Program Council event Wednesday.
Jamie Rowe / Online Forty-Niner
Embedded
reports give take on Iraq coverage
By
Jamie Rowe
Online Forty-Niner
Editor in Chief
The Program Council, in collaboration with the journalism department, presented
“
Reporting on the War: What’s a Journalist To Do?” Wednesday afternoon
to bring awareness to journalism.
The event featured four panelists, including Cal State Long Beach journalism
professor Ron Milligan,”Orange County
Register columnist and former imbedded reporter Gordon Dillow, Group Gunnery
Sergeant for Third Civil Affairs Group of Camp Pendleton Erik Duane and Los
Angeles Times photographer Luis Sinco, with journalism department Chairman
William Babcock moderating.
Keya Allen, the program coordinator, came up with the idea of doing a program
focused on journalism after Peter Jennings’ death, Program Assistant
Kenneth Cooper said.
“
[His death] inspired the event in the sense that it brought the true nature
of journalism to the consciousness,” he said.
Allen approached Cooper with the idea then made him the project manager for
the program.
Babcock collaborated with Cooper and the Program Council through contacting
potential speakers who had experience in the war either through the military
or through being an embedded reporter.
“
There is no issue any of us are dealing with that is as charged as Iraq,” Babcock
said at the beginning of the event.
The speakers first described what they saw in their war experiences.
Milligan, who reported from Vietnam from 1966-69, described the United States’ efforts
as a pacification program. He
compared the Vietnam conflict to the current war in Iraq through the conventional-
versus guerilla-style warfares.
He said there were two parts to the war stories: contacting the generals to
get “the sentiment of the leaders” and getting out and talking
to the insurgents. Mulligan tried to contact the Viet Cong but said he was
never successful and understands why embedded reporters in Iraq have not done
so.
“
It’s suicidal. Look at what happened to David Pearl in Pakistan,” he
said.
“
Contact might be successful, but you never come back.”
Dillow said he embedded in a company that was a part of the first march into
Baghdad in 2003.
“
You’re assigned to one particular unit. You eat what they eat. You
sleep where they sleep. They get shot at, you get shot at. It’s our
job to see what they see,” he said.
He said this type of reporting is effective because there is no filtering or
information taken just from press releases.
“
You don’t get to see the big picture but you’re not there for
that. You get a ground’s eye view,” he said.
Duane said the military has let journalists be embedded with the war in Iraq
because “they realized they cut their own throats [with the first Gulf
War]. They were proud of what they did but there wasn’t any media so
no one back home knew.”
Babcock asked from the photojournalists’ standpoint,’“what
is the key image for the war?”
Sinco said, “You want to be at the front where the bombs are dropping.
[The images are] contractors burning from a bridge, election workers being
shot [and] the Abu Ghraib photos.”
A main point of the meeting was keeping the violence in context.
“
If the national media reported the number of murders in California every day
... people would say, ‘I’m not going to
California. It’s too dangerous,’” Gordon said.
He also said he’s not sure how to change this.
Sinco said in 2003 he didn’t have any problems getting around Fallujah,
but when he went back last year, he couldn’t go anywhere.
“
[The violence] is not getting better [despite reports] when you have 100
people killed by a car bomb. The cost of security to fill a pot hole isn’t
worth it. Leave the pot hole.”
“
A war correspondent’s job is to go where the fighting is,” Milligan
said. “The risk factor reaches a point where a correspondent says, ‘It’s
not worth my life or injury.’”
Sinco described conditions for journalists.
“
You have 80 pounds on your back from laptops and extra lenses. Bullets are
flying everywhere. Embedding is the only way to do this. People are cutting
heads off.”
Babcock asked if the panelists had any advice for the next generation of war
correspondents.
Gordon joked, “Learn the difference between lieutenant and lieutenant
colonel. The military is very arcane. This is mechanized warfare on the run.”
When Milligan asked about reporter boot camp, Gordon said,”“It
was a dog and pony show. Military only required us to be physically able to
keep up…it [is] physically very demanding. They told us to prepare for
the worst camping trip of our lives.”
He said the four reporters in his company received basic training with chemical
warfare but the training didn’t teach them anything about the military.
Sinco said his first time in Iraq he received three to four days of intense
training, focused on first aid in the field.
“
There’s a very real possibility of getting hurt…Take this seriously.
People die. They die horrible deaths,” he said.
Babcock opened the event up to audience questions. The first came from CSULB
student Kevin Malinowski who asked if the government is trying to keep a positive
view on it.
Sinco said censorship would be hard because the journalists have satellite
phones and when fighting starts and the military isn’t concerned with
what the journalists are doing.
“
After a while you become a piece of furniture and they become relaxed,” Gordon
said.
Milligan then asked about reporting atrocities. Each panelist related an experience
but agreed objectivity isn’t an issue for those who do the job well.
Babcock asked why some of the panelists have decided to return to Iraq.
Gordon said it’s exciting and reporters get a certain feeling reporting
on war. Duane said he was going partly for his loyalty to the marines and partly
for a sense of duty to finish the job.
CSULB journalism professor Chris Karadjov asked if Gordon had written an article
about the lack of training for marines. Gordon said the marines are a very
bare bones operation and at the time it was a very small thing.
Heidi Nye, also a CSULB journalism professor, asked about accurate Iraqi body
counts and about the use of chemical warfare, in particular, the use of white
phosphorus.
Sinco said it’s hard to get an accurate count, but the white phosphorous
is an incendiary that the military was using.
Journalism student Jennifer Frehn questioned the panel on how they thought
the coverage would change in the future.
Sinco said Iraq is slipping toward civil war, but Gordon said he takes an optimistic
view.
“
I think the Iraqis will get tired of the violence,” he said. “The
Iraqi people I met, I liked. I hope and pray something will make it stop.”
|
