Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: Getting the real story

Friday, Feb. 22, 2002 | 4:15 a.m.

MEMBERS OF THE MEDIA reporting from Paris, Jerusalem or Tokyo during peacetime have never impressed me. Too many times I've watched them gather for cocktails in the evening before writing stories they have heard discussed by their colleagues. Intelligent people with cushy jobs were my conclusions.

The same negative evaluation can't be given the men and women reporting from war zones and where terrorists roam freely. At the time of this writing we have been told that Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl is dead in Pakistan. In addition to Pearl, there are eight other Western media people who have died in and around Afghanistan since Sept. 11, 2001.

Good reporters have long been putting their lives on the line in an effort to tell a story to the world. Ernie Pyle died with the infantrymen who loved him. He lived with them and reported the World War II campaigns in North Africa, Sicily, Italy and through France. Later he was in the Pacific at Iwo Jima, and in April 1945 a Japanese machine-gunner cut him down on the island of Ie Shima. Other reporters, with less recognition, also died in that big war and other smaller conflicts over the years.

A big war isn't necessary for reporters to lose their lives. Did you ever hear of Bill Stewart? He was an ABC newsman executed in Nicaragua during civil unrest. A cameraman recorded him being forced to lie face down in a street where a gunman kicked him in the ribs before killing him. The whole world could watch his body jerk as the bullets tore through it. Just another reporter that only his family, friends and a few newsmen think about 23 years later.

During my years of military service and travel, the opportunity to watch reporters from all kinds of publications in places of danger have been numerous. Most of them have been people doing a job they love, and look forward to their next exciting assignment. Many work as singles and very few have the protection and self-promotion enjoyed by showboats like Geraldo Rivera, a recent addition to Fox News.

My favorite in the field of contemporary foreign reporters is CNN's Christianne Amanpour. She is based in London but her reporting has covered some of the nastiest conflicts of recent years. Amanpour isn't just a pretty face on television who spends a few hours in a hot spot and then is back home for cocktails that night. Her coverage of the Gulf War wasn't a 100-hour affair, she followed up by going into Northern Iraq to report on Saddam's war against the Kurds. Her stories from Bosnia and other strife-torn areas never cease to amaze me and others who have watched her on the tube and in the field.

The war that Daniel Pearl and several other reporters have been experiencing is an entirely new kind of conflict. There are no safe places if the real stories are to be reported. These stories can only be written and filmed by men and women willing to face danger. In addition, they must also be sharp enough and have strong survival instincts if they want to send the story home.

The wise reporter learns where to go and where not to go. They also know how to dress, act and speak when in a den surrounded by people wanting to kill them. There are no front lines or boundaries that tell a reporter he or she is safe or in danger. Danger comes with their jobs and they must learn the games and rules the successful intelligence agents and foot soldiers have learned to use in their life-and-death experiences.

Some place in this newspaper there are one or more stories about violence, war or terrorism. There is a 50-50 chance that some reporter was in danger when collecting the information for the story. Today very few reporters have military experience and even fewer have had to deal with terrorists intending to kidnap and/or kill them. A year or more from now this shortcoming will be less because the survivors will understand the dos and don'ts of reporting in places of danger.

Enjoy your Sunday newspaper, the cost of its contents may be more expensive than mere dollars and cents.