BAGHDAD – How does a journalist report from a country like Iraq, where the dynamics of the situation and the danger level change so rapidly?
That question is put often to journalists. There is no simple answer, but the following words come to mind: flexibility, caution, experience, judgment, and calm.
Few journalists rely on a manual for covering conflict zones. Experience and common sense are often the only tools available to handle a situation.
Some journalists who are first-timers in such a situation need to be extra cautious. They will need help from colleagues. If you are a first-timer, don’t be a Rambo.
In an active combat situation, or in circumstances where violence seems imminent, the first rule is to figure as far as possible where the next bullet might come from.
An example. In 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon and pushed all the way to the capital Beirut, it helped to tell "incoming" from "outgoing" bullets – those fired by Israeli tanks and those from Palestinian machine guns.
After a while you learned to tell how far the source of the fire could be and whether it would be safe to venture into the street or not. Working out such things is a skill that can save your life.
Experience can often help predict whether, how, or when a seemingly calm situation can turn violent. The sooner you can see it coming and take protective measures, the more chances you have of reporting the next conflict.
There are numerous instances of reporters covering what at first seems like a peaceful demonstration, only to find themselves caught in crossfire between warring sides. That’s when staying calm and levelheaded matters.
Experience cannot always help. Last year I was covering a demonstration in Baghdad where supporters of Moqtada Sadr, the radical Shia cleric whose Mahdi army has been battling U.S. forces, had organized a demonstration to protest the arrest of one of their leaders.
A few hundred Sadr supporters had blocked a highway. Less than 500 meters (1,640 ft.) away, three U.S. armored cars stood facing them, with soldiers pointing their guns at the demonstrators. Both sides were reinforcing themselves, and it was obvious the situation could turn violent any moment.
I walked back and forth on the road between the two sides to interview in turn the commanders and the protest leaders.
Suddenly, a shot was fired. I could not tell which side started it and why, and it did not matter at the moment. Within seconds, that one shot turned into incessant firing of machine guns. Bullets were flying everywhere. The demonstrators dispersed.
I took refuge in a carpentry shop about halfway to a side where I could collect sound for my radio piece.
Some Sadr followers found me in the shop and roughed me up until the shopkeeper and his sons intervened. The Sadr supporters thought I was an American spy giving information gathered from their leaders to the U.S. soldiers. Walking up and down between the two sides had not been such a good idea after all.
But the incident raised questions about covering the differences between conflicting sides.
Compare for a moment Beirut in 1982 to Iraq. In Beirut the battle lines were clear. You knew where the Palestinians were. You knew where the fiefdom of the Christian militias lay. You knew where the Israelis were.
Most importantly, you knew their fighting methods. You knew, for example, that their attacks were targeted at one another. Civilians and bystanders were by and large spared.
Not in Iraq these days. Random violence and the fact that no one is fighting the war by rules such as sparing civilians has made covering this story much more dangerous.
In Iraq today you don’t know which car might be a bomb. Or which militant group might kidnap you and then decide whether you should die or go free. That makes it harder to decide who to interview and who to avoid, which streets to cross and which to shun, which cities to report and which to leave uncovered.
Many police stations and government buildings have been targets, but you do pass them all the time. If you didn’t, you would be confined to your hotel room.
It is a situation that calls for some flexibility. I believe in journalistic ethics, but when you are covering a war zone, some rules are less holy than others.
Armchair sermons hold up a clear and unambiguous declaration of who you are and who you work for as a rule that cannot be broken. I recently broke that rule, and I am not apologetic.
I went into the holy Muslim city Najaf at the height of the conflict last month along with an American radio journalist. There had been reports of mounting civilian casualties caused by indiscriminate U.S. bombing. We wanted to see for ourselves, so we decided to visit one of the main hospitals.
An administrator there was visibly anti-American but very friendly with our colleagues from the BBC, even though the British were right there with the Americans in the invasion and the occupation. My colleague and I decided to "become" Canadians. It worked, and we managed to interview a child whose family said he was injured by shrapnel from U.S. bombs.
Between moments of access it is often a waiting game. Journalists need to be patient in such situations. If I had a dime for every minute I spent waiting for an overdue appointment, I would retire rich.
But all said, and all care attempted, the possibility of being killed is real. If that worries a journalist, he or she should not enter a conflict zone to begin with.
(According to Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF), an independent international group monitoring and supporting freedom for journalists, at least 40 journalists and media assistants have been killed since the start of fighting in Iraq in March 2003, 25 of them this year. Two others are missing).
