DERRING DO AND DERRING DON'T
I read two very different war stories while on holiday in Greece (and no, I don't just read books about war, honest).
My colleague David Loyn has just published his account of the Frontline TV news agency.
Frontline captured some of the most compelling images of the 1990s. In the days before handheld satellite phones and portable uplinks, Frontline's cameramen went to extraordinary lengths to get their pictures out to the wider world.
Many of them were killed in the process (read Frontline founder Vaughan Smith's version of events here.)
David's book is a rip-roaring tale of adventure -- and I'm not just saying that because I get a mention in it.
Still, I have some issues with the way the book glamourises a way of life and a professional culture that led to so many fatalities.
I have similar issues with Kevin Sites' In the Hot Zone, which has just launched on Yahoo. The project's USP is that Sites' assignments are dangerous first and foremost and editorially relevant a distant second -- whereas surely it should be the other way around.
Perhaps my judgement is coloured by the fact that Sites (who is trumpeted by Yahoo as one of the world's most respected war correspondents,) makes his first stop is in Somalia, where my fellow producer Kate Peyton lost her life last year.
"In the Hot Zone" turns conflict reporting into stamp collecting. It aims to "cover every armed conflict in the world within one year." Why? And at what cost? Real insight comes from investing time and effort in a country, not rushing from one continent to the next, snapping away like a Japanese tourist outside Buckingham Palace.
I just hope the quality of the journalism Sites produces on his odyssey lives up to the distasteful showboating of "One man. One year. A world of conflict."
Glamourising life in a war zone isn't a criticism that can be levelled at War Reporting for Cowards by Chris Ayres.
Ayres' persona as a bemused hack stumbling around the battlefield seems slightly disingenuous given that he was shortlisted for a major foreign reporting award for his work in Iraq.
Even so, his self-deprecating account is a refreshing antidote to the conveyor belt of war porn currently landing on the shelves.
I read two very different war stories while on holiday in Greece (and no, I don't just read books about war, honest).
My colleague David Loyn has just published his account of the Frontline TV news agency.
Frontline captured some of the most compelling images of the 1990s. In the days before handheld satellite phones and portable uplinks, Frontline's cameramen went to extraordinary lengths to get their pictures out to the wider world.
Many of them were killed in the process (read Frontline founder Vaughan Smith's version of events here.)
David's book is a rip-roaring tale of adventure -- and I'm not just saying that because I get a mention in it.
Still, I have some issues with the way the book glamourises a way of life and a professional culture that led to so many fatalities.
I have similar issues with Kevin Sites' In the Hot Zone, which has just launched on Yahoo. The project's USP is that Sites' assignments are dangerous first and foremost and editorially relevant a distant second -- whereas surely it should be the other way around.
Perhaps my judgement is coloured by the fact that Sites (who is trumpeted by Yahoo as one of the world's most respected war correspondents,) makes his first stop is in Somalia, where my fellow producer Kate Peyton lost her life last year.
"In the Hot Zone" turns conflict reporting into stamp collecting. It aims to "cover every armed conflict in the world within one year." Why? And at what cost? Real insight comes from investing time and effort in a country, not rushing from one continent to the next, snapping away like a Japanese tourist outside Buckingham Palace.
I just hope the quality of the journalism Sites produces on his odyssey lives up to the distasteful showboating of "One man. One year. A world of conflict."
Glamourising life in a war zone isn't a criticism that can be levelled at War Reporting for Cowards by Chris Ayres.
Ayres' persona as a bemused hack stumbling around the battlefield seems slightly disingenuous given that he was shortlisted for a major foreign reporting award for his work in Iraq.
Even so, his self-deprecating account is a refreshing antidote to the conveyor belt of war porn currently landing on the shelves.
posted by Stuart at 17:05
1 Comments:
Forget about war. Have some fun in your lives! Check out my cool blog full of fun takes on the week's news and literally bursting with charisma.
www.barryscott.blogs.com
Be seeing ya,
Bazza Scott
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